During game six of the National League Championship Series, the Ricketts family counted two big wins. The Cubs, the team they’ve owned since 2009, advanced to the World Series for the first time since 1945. The wealthy clan also capitalized on a sizable national TV audience to advance the political fortunes of Donald Trump, whom they’ve supported since he became the Republican nominee in July.
The only real controversy in the run-up to the World Series has had nothing to do with the Cubs. Their opponents, the Cleveland Indians, have faced protests and boycotts stemming from the team’s name and Chief Wahoo logo, which are considered to be insensitive to Native Americans. Op-eds are already rolling in demanding that the American League franchise change its name and face. Meanwhile the news of the Ricketts’s pro-Trump fund-raising and spending this year has gone largely unexamined, aside from a few scattered headlines and a couple irate letters to the editor that were muffled by the day’s Trump-inspired controversy or overshadowed by the Cubs’ on-field successes.
Joe and Todd’s fingerprints have been all over several conservative super PACs that have raised and spent at least $30 million in the pro-Trump effort, according to a report from Politico, and they’re currently in the process of raising at least $45 million more in the countdown to Election Day. In 2013, Todd—who couldn’t hack it as a Wrigley Field maintenance man in an episode of CBS’s Undercover Boss—became CEO of Ending Spending, a super PAC professing to be against wasteful government spending. But the name is rather ironic if you consider that the Ricketts asked for $200 million in public funds for new team offices and other proposed construction on Clark Street, as well as a massive federal subsidy to pay for a renovation of Wrigley Field. Joe’s anti-Obama super PAC Character Matters became notorious during the 2012 presidential election after the New York Times reported about a leaked proposal to the organization titled “The Defeat of Barack Hussein Obama: the Ricketts Plan to End His Spending for Good.” The plan, put forward by a group of Republican strategists, suggested Character Matters spend $10 million on an ad campaign that would attempt to link Obama, a “metrosexual, black Abraham Lincoln,” to the controversial Chicago reverend Jeremiah Wright.
I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $’s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2016
Here’s the kicker: according to Politico, the Ricketts also have a related pro-Trump fund called 45Committee, registered under a part of the tax code that allows tax-exempt groups to accept unlimited contributions without disclosing their donors’ names. The 45Committee essentially allows the rich to financially lend support to Trump while keeping their identities insulated from being polluted by a connection to the candidate.
Any semblance of hope for liberal thought within the Ricketts family hinges on Laura, the first openly gay owner of a major-league sports franchise and no doubt the most uncomfortable person at the clan’s Thanksgiving dinner table. For years she’s been actively involved with LGBTQ organizations and charities in the Chicago area, and she runs a super PAC called LPAC, which supports gay rights causes and whose website says it “builds the political power of lesbians and queer women by electing candidates who champion LGBTQ rights, women’s equality, and social justice.” In July she hosted Clinton at a fund-raiser in her Wilmette home.
And he was right. It hasn’t been a big deal. But shouldn’t it be? How would fans feel if by November 8, the Ricketts had helped lead the Cubs to a World Series victory and Donald Trump to the White House?
