Profile · Kenosha, Wisconsin
Reinhold Richard "Reince" Priebus
RNC chair and Trump White House chief of staff; raised in Kenosha County / Pleasant Prairie (born Dover, N.J.)
$1.16 million
Reinhold Richard “Reince” Priebus rose from a Kenosha County childhood to Wisconsin Republican Party chair, Republican National Committee chairman, and White House chief of staff. The Wisconsin Legislature’s 2011 joint resolution congratulating him as RNC chair stated as fact that he was raised in Kenosha. He was born in Dover, New Jersey, on March 18, 1972, lived briefly in Netcong, and left for Wisconsin at seven. Pleasant Prairie elementary, Lance Junior High with a briefcase, and Tremper High in Kenosha (class of 1990) framed the raise: a white brick ranch at the end of a long Pleasant Prairie driveway, a father who was a union electrician for Racine schools, and a mother, Dimitra, Greek by way of Sudan, selling real estate. He revived the Young Republicans at Tremper in a union town that still built cars, then went to UW–Whitewater (student-body president, 1994) and the University of Miami Law School (1998). After a Milwaukee firm he ran the only race of his career: the 2004 Kenosha state Senate seat, spending some $300,000 and losing 52–48 to Democrat Bob Wirch. He became the youngest Wisconsin GOP chair in 2007, RNC chairman from 2011 to 2017, and White House chief of staff for 192 days in 2017—January 20 to July 31—the shortest modern tenure in the permanent job. Pronounce it like “pints freebus.”