Democrats and many Republicans in Illinois were horrified by the ad: a 60-second spot released by Gov. Bruce Rauner’s GOP primary challenger, Jeanne Ives, featuring a parade of politically incorrect takes on thorny cultural issues. A deep-voiced man portraying a transgender woman tells Rauner, “Thank you for signing legislation that lets me use the girls bathroom.” Then a young woman thanks Rauner for “making all Illinois families pay for my abortions.”

But equally shocking to the content was the person who had made the ad possible: Richard Uihlein, a little-known Republican donor who had until recently been one of Rauner’s biggest supporters. After a fallout with the governor over abortion policy, Uihlein gave $2.5 million to Ives in a single week this past January — essentially bankrolling her campaign to defeat Rauner in a Republican primary on Tuesday.


It’s the latest example of Uihlein’s burgeoning role as one of the most influential, but still little-known, political donors in the country. His early six- and seven-figure contributions to emerging Republican candidates, and penchant for disruptive politics, have been crucial to building a raft of anti-establishment Republicans seeking to emulate Donald Trump's formula for success during this year’s midterm elections.

And Republicans say he has found a pitch-perfect political moment to push his rigorous social and economic conservatism on the national stage, to the detriment of opponents, like Rauner, who cross his path.

Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, are currently the biggest Republican donors of the 2018 midterm elections, having given $21 million to candidates for federal office and super PACs that will support them. And that doesn’t include their funding of state candidates, like Ives.

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The Uihleins have long been a reliable source of midrange campaign checks but hadn't invested much in candidates outside Illinois and Wisconsin prior to the 2016 presidential election. Over the past year, they’ve shifted into a higher gear, according to operatives who have regularly courted the family for money over the years. "There is a sense," said one Republican operative familiar with Uihlein's past support of candidates, "that he's wanting to leave a mark."

Uihlein is filling a void created by the demise of Steve Bannon, whose GOP revolution — with Republican megadonor Robert Mercer as his supposed benefactor — was derailed when he became a party pariah. While Mercer and other big donors like Sheldon Adelson have so far been circumspect with their money this year, Uihlein has begun to shape Republicans’ efforts back in the Senate. In addition to donating to tea party groups and the Club for Growth, which Uihlein has supported in the past, he’s given several million dollars to super PACs backing specific candidates in Senate races.

More than a dozen operatives in politics and the nonprofit sector who have worked with Uihlein spoke to POLITICO for this story, many of them requesting anonymity because of his influence over their work.

“Here is a passionate social and economic conservative who is willing to spend a large sum of money wherever he can in hopes of moving the needle, knowing he’s going to lose a lot of bets,” said an Illinois Republican with knowledge of Uihlein’s political giving. “He’s not measuring himself by wins and losses — he’s measuring himself by moving the debate.”

Uihlein is intensely private and has said little publicly about his goals in politics, or the steep increase in the amount of money he’s given starting during the 2016 elections. Neither Uihlein nor Uline, the packaging supplies company that is somewhat eponymously named after his family, retain spokespeople or staff to handle the press.

His giving has not followed a definitive ideological pattern. While Uihlein has given to establishment-backed Senate candidate Josh Hawley in Missouri, his stable of candidates during the past year consisted mostly of conservative bomb-throwers like Ives, anti-establishment state Sen. Chris McDaniel in Mississippi and Roy Moore in Alabama.

In Wisconsin, Uihlein’s support alone vaulted a long-shot Republican candidate to the front of the pack for the Republican Senate nomination. The candidate, Kevin Nicholson, was initially met with skepticism from fellow Republicans due to his past role as president of the College Democrats of America — until Uihlein decided to support Nicholson after a meeting with him, brokered by a mutual friend. Eight different super PACs that receive Uihlein funds, including the Club for Growth, have signaled their support for Nicholson, convinced by Nicholson’s conversion story, as Uihlein was.

Uihlein's funds have similarly given heft to other candidacies across the country, especially in Senate races that could prove crucial to Republicans seeking to keep their majority in the chamber. Uihlein has spent six-figure sums in at least seven Senate races thus far, including a super PAC supporting state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey over Rep. Evan Jenkins in West Virginia, and McDaniel, who is running in a special election in Mississippi for a soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat this fall.

Uihlein was also one of few donors to give money to a pro-Moore super PAC in last year’s special Senate election in Alabama — after Moore was accused of having solicited women as young as 14.

In Tennessee, Uihlein put $500,000 into a PAC last August with an indeterminate purpose; the PAC’s operator, listed as failed 2014 Senate candidate Joe Carr, did not respond to requests for comment.

In Illinois, Uihlein works with a tight-knit group of operatives who also run two groups he funds heavily: Illinois Policy Center and Liberty Principles PAC. People who have solicited Uihlein for money describe him as detail-oriented and engaged with the causes he supports.

“He’s a more thoughtful donor than a lot of people — he pays a lot of attention and he checks up on things,” said Jack Miller, a longtime friend of Uihlein’s and namesake of the Jack Miller Center, a nonprofit focused on the teaching of America’s founding principles and history. Uihlein pays the center to have a staff member specifically to advise other donors on how to most effectively gift money to universities, Miller said.

“I know if we screwed up, he wouldn’t be so loyal then,” Miller added.

The Uihleins don’t often attend glitzy donor retreats, such as the twice-yearly summits for donors to the Koch network, to which they contribute money. They prefer to meet candidates in Lake Forest, Illinois, where they live, or across the Wisconsin border at Uline's corporate headquarters, where Richard Uihlein sometimes gathers groups of friends and colleagues to have conversations with candidates.

His wife, Elizabeth, runs the day-to-day operations for the business that she and her husband started together in their basement in 1980 with money borrowed from Uihlein’s father, the grandson of one of the founders of Schlitz Brewing Co. The company is privately held and in some ways old-school: Men are expected to wear suits to work.

Elizabeth Uihlein has also taken a strong interest in revitalizing the tourist economy in Manitowish Waters, a lake-dotted town in northern Wisconsin where the Uihleins operate a lodge, coffee shop and spa and have financed local construction projects. The Uihleins‘ investments have earned them friends and critics, who worry they have too much control over the look and feel of rural Manitowish.

"I am not the kind of person who gives money and then walks away," Elizabeth Uihlein told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2015 in defense of her work to improve Manitowish. "I'm very entrepreneurial, dominating. Do you think I got this way by being subtle and introverted?"

Elizabeth Uihlein also opines on politics in a regular letter printed in the company catalog. She has lamented that “government regulations are costing us all,” complained about government spending (“Every time I turn around I hear someone mention they are applying for a grant to pay for this or that”) and called for a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying that current trade agreements “have not worked out so well.”

These views reflect her husband’s fervent belief in less regulation, lower taxes and cracking down on unions. They were indirectly on display last month when the Supreme Court heard Janus v. AFSCME Council 31, a case that could severely curtail unions' power. Uihlein has been a major donor in recent years to the nonprofit representing the case’s plaintiff, Mark Janus.

The Uihleins' interests in getting rid of government regulations and cutting taxes are well-aligned with the Trump administration's goals. But like many big-ticket Republican donors, the couple did not originally line up behind Trump during the election, instead supporting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's bid for president and later Sen. Ted Cruz. Richard Uihlein later signaled support for Trump by donating to the pro-Trump Great America PAC and giving $500,000 to Trump's inauguration.

Uihlein donated heavily to Rauner when he first ran for governor in 2014. But after a falling out with the governor, he flipped his longtime allegiance and almost single-handily breathed life into Ives’ once-stagnant primary challenge. Now many Republicans worry that, win or lose in the primary, Ives is successfully damaging Rauner’s already wobbly reputation and creating an opening for Democrats to take back the governorship.

The circumstances of Uihlein’s break with Rauner underscore Uihlein’s commitment to conservative social causes: It was Rauner’s decision to sign a bill in 2017 expanding abortion coverage for women on Medicaid that ended their once-powerful alliance.

Uihlein donated $2.6 million to Rauner in the past, and he supported the governor’s work through the Illinois Policy Institute and Liberty Principles PAC, which primarily funds conservative candidates for the state legislature and has received more than $12 million from Uihlein. The groups supported pro-Rauner candidates and policies from the outside — until Rauner, reeling from an unexpected legislative setback, decided to shake up his administration and got help from the Illinois Policy Institute.

Rauner's chief of staff, communications staff and chief campaign strategist, some of them former aides to former moderate Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), were fired or resigned in July 2017. And he brought in conservatives, such as former Illinois Policy Institute head Kristina Rasmussen, who became Rauner’s new chief of staff. All told, more than 20 Rauner staffers departed.

It was a major victory for Uihlein and officials at IPI, who had for years been prodding Rauner to govern more conservatively. A top Uihlein ally, Dan Proft, also offered Rauner help beefing up his forces in the legislature, according to reporting by Crain’s Chicago Business at the time: a $30 million investment from donors including Uihlein in state legislative races.

But Rauner’s turn to the right was rife with setbacks. He had to fire his new body man, who had interned at a nonprofit affiliated with IPI, on his first day on the job after past homophobic tweets on his Twitter account surfaced. The governor’s new communications staff bungled a response to a cartoon posted by IPI that critics denounced as racist, forcing Rauner to sidestep his own office’s public statements. Critics lambasted Rauner for, they said, being too slow to provide relief during a July flood.

Within a month Rauner changed tack again: He asked his communications team to resign after the cartoon incident, and Rasmussen soon departed, too. Then in September, Rauner signed a bill expanding taxpayer-funded abortion that conservatives widely expected him to veto — a clear signal that conservative Republicans didn’t control the governorship. The incident was enough to give Rauner the label of “Benedict Rauner” in a Facebook post written by Illinois Policy Institute CEO John Tillman, a close associate of Uihlein’s. “Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, a politician loses when he gives his word to many people and goes back on it,” Tillman wrote.

Four months after Rauner signed the abortion bill, Uihlein cut $2.5 million in checks to Ives, who had finished 2017 with less than half a million dollars in her campaign. Rauner, a wealthy self-funder, boasted more than $50 million. Ives ran the controversial television ad within days and is parroting IPI’s “Benedict Rauner” attacks.

“His support of Jeanne Ives was seen as her ability to really attract the GOP donor base,” said Sarah Brune, executive director of the nonprofit Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. “It was major, and it was meaningful in that primary.”

The Illinois Policy Institute, which received $2 million from the family foundation operated by Uihlein in 2016, the most recent year available, has meanwhile encountered troubles of its own. A joint investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Sun-Times described unusual accounting practices surrounding both non- and for-profit entities connected to Tillman and his associates.

Public officials have called for investigations into whether the group violated tax law. Illinois Policy Institute officials did not respond to interview requests for this story.

It’s not the first time that money that came from Uihlein has come under scrutiny: He is a major donor to Walker and outside groups that support him, which was the subject of an investigation as to whether the Wisconsin governor had illegally solicited donors to contribute to outside groups supporting him during his 2012 recall election. Ultimately, the Wisconsin Supreme Court closed the investigation.

Skeptics of Uihlein and IPI’s approach worry they’ve left the Republican Party fractured — and they wish he’d taken a less combative approach. And they look at Ives’ inflammatory campaign as a prime exhibit.

“If [Uihlein] wants to pull the party to the right, I’m all for that. I want people to participate. I want more Republicans,” said Pat Brady, former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party. “He could support candidates who are conservative that could probably win if they weren’t the fringe right, homophobic bomb-throwers that these people had convinced him early on to support.”

