Billionaires associated with Project 2025 unload cash on Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin’s race for governor

The Uihleins found a roundabout way to make sure Tom Tiffany would get much more than what original campaign limits would have allowed.

The billionaires with Wisconsin ties who played a major role in funding Project 2025 hope to parlay that success into making US Rep. Tom Tiffany the next governor of Wisconsin.

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, whose Wisconsin-headquartered ULINE business and shipping products company has made them billionaires many times over, have used a backdoor approach to funnel more money to Tiffany than originally intended by campaign finance laws.

Both Uihleins gave the maximum individual donation of $20,000, as listed in Tiffany’s most recent campaign filing. The Uihleins’ direct donations trail the $86,000 given to Tiffany by the College Republicans of Wisconsin—but if you think a group named for college students wouldn’t normally have that kind of money to give, you’d be right. CRW only had $3,100 in the bank last July, according to the Isthmus newspaper in Madison. They later received a pair of $500,000 checks from the Uihleins, allowing the group to funnel $86,000 to Tiffany, the publication reported.

The Uihleins have contributed tens of millions of dollars, if not more, to conservative candidates and causes, including at least $13 million, since 2020, to groups that created Project 2025, the far-right blueprint being used by President Donald Trump to slash services, shift tax dollars toward breaks for corporations and the very wealthy, and undermine American democracy. That would make the Uihleins the fourth highest donor to groups that assembled Project 2025. 

“The same billionaires who bankrolled Project 2025 are now Tom Tiffany’s biggest donors, and that’s no coincidence,” said former Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, one of seven Democrats running for governor of Wisconsin this year, in a statement to UpNorthNews. “Trump has already been signing that extreme agenda into law piece by piece, sending costs skyrocketing and making families less safe with masked men parading American streets with military vehicles. Now, those same billionaires want to bring Project 2025 to Wisconsin through Tom Tiffany.”

A study by a group fighting the spread of climate misinformation lists six wealthy families as having donated more than $120 million into Project 2025 advisory groups, with about $53 million coming from a Wisconsin family at the top of the donor list. The Bradley Foundation, known as one of America’s top funders of right-wing causes, is based in Milwaukee.

“We need to reject Donald Trump, Tom Tiffany, and their dangerous Project 2025 agenda,” Barnes said,  “and elect leaders who will actually fight to lower costs and make life more affordable for Wisconsin families. That’s exactly what I’ll do as governor.”