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Richard Uihlein
Status
Born in 1945. Living in Lake Forest, Illinois.
Criminal status: No personal convictions
Summary
Richard Uihlein co-founded Uline with his wife Elizabeth in 1980, growing it from a basement operation into one of North America's largest distributors of shipping, packaging, and industrial supplies, with an estimated $8.1 billion in annual revenue and over 9,000 employees. He has served as CEO since the company's founding.
Alongside Uline, Uihlein has become one of the most prolific political donors in American history. He and his wife spent over $400 million in federal races backing conservative candidates, including $140 million in the 2023-2024 election cycle alone, operating through Restoration PAC and a network of dark money groups.
Business Relationships
Richard Uihlein's business activities are centered on Uline, a privately held company he co-founded with his wife in 1980. His broader professional footprint has been primarily in political organizing and philanthropic giving through the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation.
Ownership
Uline is privately held. Richard Uihlein co-founded the company and has served as its CEO since 1980, while Elizabeth Uihlein serves as president. Together they maintain full operational and ownership control of the business, which operates distribution centers across North America and supplies businesses in all 50 states and Canada.
Family & Heirs
Richard Uihlein married Elizabeth (Liz) Uihlein, who co-founded Uline and serves as its president. They have three children. His brother Steve serves as a vice president at Uline. Richard is a descendant of the founders of the Schlitz Brewing Company, one of the United States' most prominent nineteenth-century brewing dynasties.
Evidence
2018-07-27 - 😇 - Ed Uihlein Family Foundation gave $175,000 to Teach for America Chicago in 2016
2020-03-23 - 😈 - Ed Uihlein Family Foundation gave the Heartland Institute, a leading climate-denial group, USD 354,000 from 2014-2018
2022-01-20 - 😈 - Ed Uihlein Family Foundation donated $16.8M in 2020 to election-denial organizations and an SPLC-designated anti-Muslim hate group
2026-02-13 - 😈 - Uihlein pumped $15.3M into Restoration of America PAC in the second half of 2025, representing over 90% of the PAC's total revenue in that period
Analysis
Richard Uihlein has deployed his Uline fortune to reshape American political institutions on a scale that places him among the most consequential political actors of his era. Since 2016, he has personally spent over $233 million in federal political donations, funding election-denial candidates, dark money networks, and organizations that helped organize the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack.
He was among the largest donors to Jan 6-linked candidates including Pennsylvania's Doug Mastriano and Nevada's Jim Marchant, and an internal document from his Restoration of America group stated its goal was to "get on God's side of the issues and stay there" and "punish leftists." Money from his Restoration PAC also flowed to a media network that supplied voter-roll data to the Voter Reference Foundation, a group that used discredited techniques to allege voter fraud.
His foundation gave $16.8 million in 2020 to a sprawling network that included an SPLC-designated hate group, outlets that published debunked fraud narratives, and legal groups that constructed the post-election challenge strategy. By the 2024 cycle, he was pouring $49 million into a single PAC in a single quarter, and in 2026 he extended the spending to fund campaigns restricting the rights of transgender people.
Beyond federal candidates, Uihlein has funded opposition to specific rights measures at the state level: $1 million as the sole donor opposing an Illinois constitutional amendment guaranteeing workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, and $4 million as the top funder of an effort to require 60% voter approval for Ohio constitutional amendments, specifically to block a reproductive-rights measure. In Wisconsin, he and his wife's combined $1 million in donations made up 83 percent of everything the state's College Republicans have raised since 2009, funneling money to a gubernatorial candidate past individual contribution limits. His foundation has also funded climate-change denial, giving the Heartland Institute $354,000 from 2014 to 2018.
Inside Uline itself, the record includes a sustained sexual harassment scandal in which 30 to 40 workers were assaulted over years while management — including Uihlein himself — ignored their complaints, later terminating those who reported. A multi-year visa abuse scheme exploited Mexican workers through falsified training documentation, paying them below US wages. The company has also subjected employees to politically-loaded workplace surveys that required employer logins, creating conditions where political surveillance of workers was possible.
Questions
Uihlein's political donations are legal under current U.S. campaign finance law. At what point does that scale of spending — over $400 million, directed primarily toward candidates who denied election results and toward campaigns restricting civil rights — constitute something qualitatively different from ordinary political participation?
The Uline Children of Employees Scholarship Fund and the Teach for America donation are genuine charitable acts. How should observers weigh these against the scale, direction, and documented harms of his political spending?
Redemption Arc
Each election cycle since 2016, Uihlein's political spending has grown in both volume and scope — from backing anti-establishment Republicans in 2016, to funding election-denial organizing in 2020, to directing nearly $50 million into a single pro-Trump PAC in a single quarter in 2024, to bankrolling anti-transgender ballot initiatives in 2026. His $50.7 million in spending in the 2026 cycle already trails only a handful of donors nationally.