Political Leanings: Republican/Anti-Trump Super PAC
Spending Target: Unknown
Our Principles PAC was formed in January 2016 to thwart Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Its founder, Katie Packer, is a veteran Republican strategist who was the deputy campaign manager of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. She founded Burning Glass Consulting, a firm whose goal is to attract female voters, and is a founding partner of WWP Strategies, a political consulting and issue management firm based in Washington, D.C.
Our Principles PAC hired former Jeb Bush campaign spokesman Tim Miller as its communications adviser. Miller was previously executive director of America Rising, a Republican organization formed to conduct opposition research on Democrats. Jamie Jodoin, a political accounting specialist at Robert Watkins & Company, serves as the super PAC’s treasurer. Hewlett Packard Enterprise President and CEO Meg Whitman, who served as finance co-chair of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign, has helped the super PAC with fundraising.
On Feb. 22, Packer released a memo outlining the PAC’s strategy “to prevent Donald Trump from hijacking our great Party.” As of March 8, the PAC had spent $4.4 million on independent expenditures, including TV ads, voter guides and mailers targeting Trump, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
As of Jan. 31, Our Principles PAC raised more than $3 million from individual donors, according to its February report filed with the Federal Election Commission. Almost all of its funding came from Marlene Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise, wife of billionaire T.D. Ameritrade founder J. Joe Ricketts, and mother of both Republican Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts and Todd Ricketts
Marlene Ricketts was a top contributor to Unintimidated PAC, a super PAC that supported Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s failed 2016 presidential bid. She also has been a major funder of the fiscally conservative Ending Spending Action Fund, which was founded by her husband, Joe, and is run by her son, Todd. And, in 2015, Ricketts also gave $10,000 each to super PACs backing the presidential campaigns of Bush and Christie, as well as former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.