This Billionaire Is Using His Financial Weight to Influence Multiple 2024 Races

A controversial shipping magnate is once again throwing some of his vast fortune toward right-wing causes. For years he has backed controversial legislative candidates and groups, and 2024 is no different. Anti-abortion billionaire and 2020 election denier Richard “Dick” Uihlein has donated tens of millions of dollars to PACs supporting Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, The New York Times recently reported. In addition to putting his foot on the scale of the presidential race, Uihlein has been using his immense financial weight to try to influence state supreme court races and disrupt abortion rights initiatives in an effort to impose his regressive agenda across the country.

Uihlein Funds State Court Capture Operations

Uihlein has been spreading funds in various state and local races across the country in an attempt to impose his anti-abortion agenda on Americans.

In Ohio, Uihlein’s Fair Courts America (FCA) is giving heavily to Ohioans for a Healthy Economy Action — a group whose ties to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce run so deep that they share an address — and is running an ad attacking Democratic judicial candidates in the state.

Fair Courts America was launched in February 2022 as a super PAC project of Dick Uihlein’s right-wing advocacy group, Restoration of America, and its Restoration PAC. Fair Courts America is led by Andrew Wynne, a former leader of the Republican State Leadership Committee. That committee, funded by the architect of the right-wing faction of the Supreme Court, Leonard Leo, has deployed its own Judicial Fairness Initiative to run attack ads in Ohio as well. Leo is an anti-abortion powerbroker and the architect of the far right takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is only the beginning of his efforts to turn his religious beliefs into binding law.

Outside of Ohio, Uihlein has also had his hand in efforts to buy state supreme court races across the country in recent years. FCA has given $200,000 to the Montana Judicial Accountability Initiative, a PAC in support of right-wing judicial candidates Cory Swanson and Dan Wilson, this election cycle; and FCA is running a $500,000 ad campaign backing Republican Justices Kathryn King and Clint Bolick in Arizona. FCA spent $650,000 this winter in the Alabama Supreme Court primary, nearly $1 million during the 2023 Pennsylvania Supreme Court race, and heavily in key state court races in 2022, including in Kentucky and Illinois.

In Wisconsin, where Uihlein’s Restoration PAC has spent big opposing Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s reelection bid this campaign season, FCA spent over $5.5 million in the 2023 supreme court race — the most expensive state supreme court election in U.S. history. Uihlein deployed a number of vehicles to throw his voice into the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which was critical to abortion access and fair voting maps in the state. The composition of the state supreme court will play a crucial role. For example, it will hear a case this term that will determine whether or not abortion access is protected by the state’s constitution. On top of FCA’s $5.5 million, Uihlein bankrolled Susan B. Anthony’s Pro-Life America’s (SBA-PLA) Women Speak Out (WSO) PAC, which spent $2.2 million in the race. The anti-LGBTQ American Principles Project’s super PAC also received a large portion of its funds from Uihlein and spent nearly $1 million on anti-trans ads in the race. Two other groups tied to Uihlein money, Americas PAC and People Who Play by the Rules PAC, also ordered ads in that race.

Uihlein’s involvement in state supreme court races cannot be divorced from his anti-abortion zealotry.

Following the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision which struck down the constitutional right to an abortion, state courts have been hearing more abortion ban-related cases. State supreme courts serving as the final arbiter in most of these cases. For example, the Texas Supreme Court recently let a lower court decision stand, ruling that the state does not have to adhere to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. This federal policy requires states to provide emergency life-saving and health-protecting abortion care when needed, regardless of a state’s abortion ban.

Anti-abortion billionaire and 2020 election denier Richard “Dick” Uihlein has donated tens of millions of dollars to PACs supporting Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

Uihlein Funds Groups to Attack Abortion Access

Fair Courts America is not the only group Uihlein utilizes to advance his anti-abortion agenda. In this election cycle, he recently gave $6.5 million to the “Vote No on Prop 1” political action committee to try and defeat a New York ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.

Uihlein was also involved in the effort to oppose an abortion ballot initiative in Ohio last year. In 2023, he gave $1 million to a PAC supporting the effort to change the threshold to pass a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment from 50 to 60 percent of the vote in the context of an effort to amend the Ohio Constitution to protect abortion freedoms. The main opposition group to Ohio’s abortion amendment was Protect Women Ohio, a front group for the national anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

In recent years, Uihlein’s Restoration PAC has given millions to SBA-PLA and its associated PAC, WSO despite being funded predominantly by a man.

Just 10 days before SBA-PLA announced a $2 million ad buy through Women Speak Out in October, Restoration of America and its Restoration PAC gave the group $1 million, according to raw data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In addition to an ad maligning Vice President Kamala Harris, the Women Speak Out PAC launched ads attacking U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) for their pro-choice stances. Both races are key. Tester’s Senate race could determine control of the U.S. Senate, as could Brown’s reelection campaign.

SBA-PLA also used its Women Speak Out PAC to influence the Ohio Senate race. The PAC has spent approximately $835,000 against Sherrod Brown.

The Women Speak Out PAC also funded a $500,000 ad buy spotlighting the preventable deaths of two Georgia women — Candi Miller and Amber Nicole Thurman. But instead of blaming Georgia’s regressive abortion ban that forces doctors to put off life-saving abortion care until the life of the person carrying the fetus is at risk, the ad absurdly places the onus for Miller and Thurman’s tragic deaths on those fighting for reproductive freedom for all.

But SBA-PLA is doing more than buying ads this election cycle. The group announced a $92 million election ground game focusing on battleground states, such as North Carolina, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan. They are also focused on states with abortion on the ballot, such as Montana and Arizona. In a recently launched video soliciting donations on its YouTube channel, the head of SBA-PLA, Marjorie Dannenfelser, claimed the group and its Women Speak Out PAC are “reaching 10 million voters” in eight battleground states, including “4 million in-person visits to voter homes.”

Uihlein Has His Hand in Voter Data, Too

In addition to funding anti-abortion ads and campaigns, Uihlein has ties to a voter data company: American Majority Action (AMA), a right-wing 501(c)(4) that is the direct controlling entity for Voter Gravity. Voter Gravity is a company that provides detailed voter data and serves as a voter contact and canvassing management platform to right-wing campaigns and organizations. American Majority works to get right-wing candidates elected and has trained more than 23,500 candidates between 2017 and 2022, according to its tax filings.

Uihlein’s connection to this voter data company is particularly concerning given his history of funding groups that stoked the events of January 6.

Uihlein, both individually and through his Restoration network, has given millions to American Majority Action and its 501(c)(3) American Majority Inc., over the years, constituting the vast majority of the entity’s income. From 2018-2021, Uihlein directly gave American Majority Action, which is a registered PAC in Virginia, approximately $778,000. His Restoration network has also given substantially to the group. In 2021, Restoration of America gave $190,350 to American Majority Action. When this amount is added to the $350,000 that Uihlein gave directly, Uihlein funding accounts for 99.8 percent of AMA’s contribution income of $541,284 for that year. The majority of the PAC’s contribution income for 2022 also came from Uihlein’s instrumentalities, with Restoration of America donating approximately $1.4 million to AMA. Restoration of American also gave $470,000 to AMA 501(c)(3) in 2021 and another $556,000 in 2022.

The Center for Media and Democracy recently filed an IRS complaint against American Majority for violating tax and campaign finance laws, alleging that the group is engaging in political activities that are outside the legal boundaries of a 501(c)(3).

The descriptions listed for the payments in the federal and state campaign finance data provide some additional insight into Voter Gravity, suggesting it mines, analyzes and sells vast amounts of voter targeting data. Descriptions of payments made to Voter Gravity by different political campaigns in the FEC database include: “Get-out-the-vote software,” “Voter management system,” “Purchase of voter database information,” “Voter demographics” and “Voter tracking.” And descriptions of payments made to Voter Gravity in the state campaign finance databases include: “Campaign voter list,” “Service to provide information on voters information etc to use for door knocking and phone banking for campaign,” “Voter data management system / map-based canvassing tool / virtual phone bank” and “Voter targeting.”

Uihlein has also had his hand in efforts to buy state supreme court races across the country in recent years.

In 2021, Center for Media and Democracy, Common Cause and Alliance for a Better Utah filed campaign finance complaints in 15 states and an IRS whistleblower complaint against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing bill mill heavily funded by the Koch network and a Project 2025 advisory board member. The watchdog groups alleged that ALEC had given and received campaign software linked to the Republican National Committee. The software in question, dubbed “ALEC CARE,” was created by Voter Gravity. ALEC challenged these complaints, claiming that the software was only used to communicate with constituents and not for campaigning.

Extremist billionaires like Dick Uihlein are throwing obscene amounts of money around to capture key democratic institutions, like our courts, to push their regressive agendas on us all. But regardless of their financial might, people are continuing to organize to protect reproductive freedoms.

True North’s Director of States Courts and Democracy Project Evan Vorpahl contributed to this article.