Illinois husband and wife Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein are working to reshape the Right with profits from their privately held shipping products empire. Are they the next Kochs?
As Americans increasingly ship everything everywhere, the folks selling packaging materials and industrial supplies are doing great. No one distributes more of the stuff than 76-year-old Richard Uihlein, an heir to the Schlitz beer fortune, and his wife, Elizabeth, 77, who together started a company called Uline in their basement in 1980. Today the Wisconsin-based business, which they run as CEO and president, respectively, does an estimated $6.1 billion in annual sales, enough to make the pair worth $4 billion apiece, according to Forbes’ estimates.
They may not be famous nationwide, but people know them in D.C. Both have been donating to Republican campaigns since the ’90s, contributing roughly $15,000 a year on average up to 2009. In 2010, the Supreme Court blew up efforts to limit political spending with its rulings in Citizens United v. FEC and a couple of related cases. The Uihleins have ratcheted up their giving every cycle since, reporting more than $190 million in political donations in all. That’s more than anyone not named Bloomberg, Steyer or Adelson.
POLITICAL POWER PLAYERS
The Uihleins have reported giving $194 million to federal candidates and causes, the fourth-most of all billionaires in America.
In the last election cycle, the Uihleins put more than $70 million into various conservative causes. Thirty million went into Restoration PAC and Americas PAC, which in turn spent $18 million trying to get Donald Trump reelected. Another $27 million went to the free market-oriented Club for Growth super PAC, a favorite of fellow billionaire megadonor Jeff Yass.
The Uihleins’ passion for politics permeates their business, too—even company catalogs. In between praise for her employees and listings for boxes and bubble wrap, Elizabeth Uihlein poses provocative questions: Is America in decline? Is China taking over? Are we spending too much on welfare programs? “Your family, your house, your yard, your own little corner of the world—these are things you can control and make better,” she wrote in one letter. “You can’t fix everything—the world’s problems are big.” But with enough money, you sure can try.