Fake Tweet Promoted By Pritzker-Funded 'Fair Tax' Committee

LAKE FOREST, IL — A political action committee funded almost entirely by Gov. J.B. Pritzker spent at least $10,000 on an ad campaign to promote a fake tweet purportedly posted by Lake Forest billionaire Liz Uihlein.

A screenshot of the social media hoax — captured less than a minute after it was posted — remained on the committee's Facebook page days after the account was revealed to be an impersonator.

The committee, Vote Yes For Fairness, was formed last year to support an amendment to the Illinois constitution eliminating its "flat tax" provision to allow for multiple rates of income tax. Supporters of the amendment characterize it as a "fair tax" that will lead to only the richest paying more in taxes, while opponents say it will harm small businesses and drive high earners out of state.

The group campaigning for the amendment is chaired by Quentin Fulks, who was deputy campaign manager of Pritzker's campaign for governor. Fulks declined to discuss the paid ad campaign his group financed to promote a fake tweet.

Pritzker has given $56.5 million to the committee — more than 99.99 percent of its total funding. At a news conference Wednesday, the billionaire governor dodged questions about the incident.

On Friday morning, whoever was operating the Vote Yes For Fairness Facebook account posted what appeared to be a screenshot of a tweet from an unverified account with the handle @liz_uihlein and the name "Liz Uihlein."

The imposter account was accompanied by a photo of Uihlein, president and co-founder of the Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin-based industrial supplier Uline. As of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, her family had an estimated net worth of $4 billion.

The screenshot appeared to have been taken within 50 seconds of a reply to a tweet from the Vote Yes For Fairness account. The group did not respond to questions about who took the screenshot.

"Why should I be expected to subsidize my employees' taxes? They don't need a handout from me, they already get a paycheck," the @liz_uilein account said. "Vote NO on the tax hike amendment. #FairTax #FairTaxNo"

Uihlein spokesperson Ellie O'Neil confirmed the account was fake.

"Liz Uihlein has never had a Twitter account," O'Neil said. "After being reported to Twitter, the fake account has been removed by Twitter for impersonation."

A Twitter spokesperson said the company does not disclose private information. That includes when the account was created, when the tweet in question was posted or whether the account it was taken down by the company for some kind of violation or by the user itself.

But in the promoted Facebook campaign, which was purchased to target up to 1 million Illinois voters, the Vote Yes group presented the fake post as factual.

"This is how opponents of the Fair Tax think of hardworking Illinoisans," it said. "Billionaires like Liz Uihlein don’t care about our middle and lower-income families — they only care about protecting their bottom line. That’s why they’re fighting to stop the Fair Tax, which would make them finally pay their fair share, while giving a tax cut to 97% of Illinoisans."

Fulks' Vote Yes group did not respond to questions about whether it knew the tweet was fake before paying to promote it — or whether the group has paid to promote any other content that was later determined to be fake.

While the paid Facebook campaign was listed as inactive after it was first reported by Greg Bishop of The Center Square, the fake tweet remained on the Vote Yes page as of Wednesday evening.

According to Facebook, the committee spent between $10,000 and $15,000 to promote the fake tweet and more than $2.5 million on political ads since it was created in August 2019.

In the last week alone, the group has spent more than $400,000 on political ads, according to data from the social media company, which has faced criticism — including from former employees — over the large-scale, targeted disinformation campaigns enabled by its platform.

Uihlein and her husband have contributed close to $100 million to Republican candidates in the past decade, Bloomberg reported earlier this year. She has opposed efforts to limit business and other activities to stem the spread of the coronavirus, writing a mass email to Illinois lawmakers on March 13 with the subject: "The Media is Overblowing COVID-19." She said cancellations of events and school closures were causing unnecessary panic and fear in the population.

"What happens in 2 weeks? Are you willing to indefinitely close institutions? At what point do we go back to our normal lives?" she asked. "This has been a huge disruption."

According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, the Uihleins have contributed $100,000 to the Coalition to Stop the Proposed Tax Hike Amendment. That puts the couple in a tie for the third-largest contributor to the vote "no" campaign, right behind fellow billionaire Jennifer Pritzker, cousin of the governor.

The constitutional amendment does not change tax rates on its own.

In addition to passage of the amendment, Gov. Pritzker and Democratic state lawmakers are backing a progressive tax structure which — based on pre-pandemic projections — will not raise income tax rates on households reporting less than $250,000 a year. Those proposed tax brackets could be modified by the legislature in the future.

The proposed constitutional change also eliminates the line in Article IX, Section 3, of the Illinois Constitution that says "there may be no more than one such tax imposed by the State for State purposes on individuals and one such tax on corporations," opening up the possibility of new types of income taxes being introduced in the future.