Richard Uihlein is the founder of Uline Products, and one of the largest donors to Illinois politically conservative causes.
There is a good reason to thank God that men like Richard Uihlein are willing to publicly engage in the Illinois political arena with the aim of saving our state. Even Steve Bannon says good things about him—which is no small thing. Bannon calls most Republican big donors morons.
It is easy to find hundreds of millions of dollars of political donations over the past dozen years or so that Uihlein has given to Illinois-based organizations and campaigns. The recipients of those dollars have produced nothing worthy of the millions they have received.
There is more than a decade of evidence that those he has chosen to trust with his money and act as his gatekeepers do not understand how to win in Illinois. It is easy to argue that they have accomplished nothing.
The question for today is: how much failure is Mr. Uihlein willing to tolerate? That is an important question because many other big donors in Illinois follow his lead. So when he wastes his money, so do those other donors.
Strangely, two of the largest wasted dollar recipients now live out of state. These two people know so much about what to do in Illinois they gave up and moved south. Both are failed Illinois Republican candidates who still meddle in politics, and both have had plenty of time to figure out why they have failed and change course.
Here is a simple suggestion that should be obvious but evidently it is not: if someone has moved out of Illinois to Florida or Texas or Arizona or anywhere else, they should be ignored in Illinois.
On the one hand, no one has done more financially to try and save Illinois over the past dozen years than Richard Uihlein. On the other, no one has wasted more money during that period of time than Mr. Uihlein.
If Uihlein continues on the same path, the next decade in Illinois will look a lot like the one we just lived through. We are down to 3 Republican members of the U.S. House, we hold no statewide offices, and in both chambers of the state legislature the GOP holds a super-minority status.
Giving to the same people and expecting a different result will only continue the misery Illinoisans suffer due to terrible leftist public policies.
Up next: The Reality of the 2026 Illinois Elections.
Click here for the ongoing series.
Image credit: alchetron.com/Richard-Uihlein.
