Pete Ricketts Net Worth, Family, wife, Education, Children, Age, Biography, Political Career

Pete Ricketts Biography

John Peter Ricketts is an American politician and businessman serving as the 40th governor of Nebraska since 2015. He is a member of the Republican Party.

Ricketts is the son of Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade. He is also, with other family members, a part owner of Major League Baseballs Chicago Cubs. In 2006, he ran for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Ben Nelson, losing 64% to 36%. He ran for the Nebraska governorship in 2014, narrowly winning a six-way Republican primary, and defeated Democratic Party nominee Chuck Hassebrook 57.1% to 39.2%. He was reelected in 2018, winning by a similar margin as in 2014.

Pete Ricketts Net Worth

Pete Ricketts Net Worth is $ 200 Million in 2022.

Pete Ricketts Family, Parents

Ricketts was born in Nebraska City on August 19, 1964, the oldest of four children of Joe Ricketts and Marlene (Volkmer) Ricketts. The family later moved to Omaha. Joe Ricketts founded First Omaha Securities in 1975, one of the first discount stockbrokers in the United States. It prospered, changing its name to Ameritrade, going public in 1997, and changing its name to TD Ameritrade after acquiring TD Waterhouse in 2006. Marlene was a teacher.

Ricketts and his siblings, Tom, Laura, and Todd, all attended Westside High School in Omaha, from which Ricketts graduated in 1982. He attended the University of Chicago, receiving a BA in biology in 1986 and an MBA in marketing and finance in 1991.

Pete Ricketts Wife, Children

Pete Ricketts Married Susanne Shore in 1997. They have 3 Children.

Pete Ricketts Career and Achievement

After completing graduate school, Ricketts returned to Omaha. He worked for the Union Pacific Railroad for a year, then as a salesman for a Chicago environmental consultant. In 1993, he went to work for his fathers business, initially in the call center for a few months, and subsequently appointed by his father to a number of executive positions, ultimately becoming the companys chief operating officer during his fathers tenure as CEO. In a 2006 report, he stated his net worth at between $45 million and $50 million.

In 1997, Ricketts married Susanne Shore. A native of Garden City, Kansas, Shore grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and earned a bachelors degree in English and then an MBA from Oklahoma State University. After a stint working for the dean of students at the University of South Dakota, she came to Omaha to complete a one-year course in nursing at Creighton University. At the time of her marriage to Ricketts, she was working as a nurse at St. Josephs Hospital in Omaha. Ricketts and Shore have three children.

In 2006, Ricketts left Ameritrade to run for the U.S. Senate. After his loss to incumbent Ben Nelson, he returned to the companys board, remaining until the Ricketts family relinquished its board seats in 2016.

In 2007, Ricketts co-founded, and became director and president of the Platte Institute for Economic Research, which he called a "free market think tank" and which Nebraska newspapers have called "conservative". He resigned from the organization in 2013 to concentrate on his 2014 gubernatorial campaign. From 2007 to 2012, Ricketts was a national committeeman for the Republican National Committee; from 2007 to 2013, he was a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute.

In 2009, the Ricketts family trust bought the Chicago Cubs baseball team from Tribune Media. Ricketts and his siblings occupied four of the five seats on the teams board of directors; as of 2018, the four continued to hold those seats. Due to this, Ricketts has a 2016 World Series title to his credit, as the Cubs won the championship that year (fulfilling a pledge he had made in 2009 during the press conference to announce the familys purchase of the team, when he and his brother Tom guaranteed a World Series win for the Cubs under their ownership).

Ricketts is a Roman Catholic. He is a member of the Knights of Columbus and a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.

2006 U.S. Senate Campaign

Ricketts was the 2006 Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Ben Nelson. His opponents in the primary were former Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg and former state Republican chairman David Kramer. Ricketts spent nearly $5 million of his own money, outspending his opponents 10–1 in winning the nomination.

Ricketts received some high-profile campaign assistance, most notably from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Bush appeared at a campaign rally for Ricketts on November 5, 2006, just days before the election, in Grand Island, Nebraska.

Ricketts ran on a conservative platform, emphasizing fiscal responsibility, immigration reform and agriculture, as well as championing a socially conservative platform opposing same-sex marriage and abortion. In all, he contributed $11,302,078 of his own money to his campaign, triggering the Millionaires Amendment which allowed his opponent to raise larger amounts from each donor. He spent more money than any Senate candidate in Nebraska history, but lost to Nelson by a margin of 36%–64%.

Governor of Nebraska

2014 Election

In the 2014 election, Ricketts ran for the Nebraska governorship. The incumbent, Dave Heineman, was barred by Nebraskas term-limits law from running for reelection. Two candidates considered strong contenders for the Republican nomination withdrew by early 2013: lieutenant governor Rick Sheehy, who was embroiled in a scandal; and Speaker of the Legislature Mike Flood, whose wife had been diagnosed with cancer. Ricketts officially joined the race in September 2013, at which point he and state auditor Mike Foley were regarded as early front-runners in a race that also included state senators Charlie Janssen, Beau McCoy, and Tom Carlson. In February 2014, Janssen withdrew and state attorney general Jon Bruning declared his candidacy. Despite his late entrance, Bruning supplanted Ricketts as the perceived front-runner.

Ricketts won the May 2014 primary with 26.6% of the vote. Bruning received 25.5%; McCoy, 20.9%; Foley, 19.2%; Carlson, 4.1% and Omaha attorney Bryan Slone, 3.7%. In the general election, Ricketts faced Chuck Hassebrook, who had run unopposed for the Democratic nomination. Hassebrook was a former member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, and former director of the Center for Rural Affairs, which calls itself "a leading nonprofit organization with a national reputation for progressive rural advocacy and policy work". Ricketts advocated tax reductions; Hassebrook argued that Rickettss proposed cuts would primarily benefit the rich and deprive the state of funds for what he called needed public services. Ricketts opposed the proposed expansion of Medicaid under the provisions of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Hassebrook favored the expansion. Ricketts opposed an increase in the states minimum wage; Hassebrook supported it.

Over the course of the general-election campaign, Ricketts outspent Hassebrook by a considerable margin. In the last spending report filed before the election, he stated that he had loaned his campaign $930,000, and that the organization had spent about $6.0 million. Hassebrook reported expenditures of slightly more than $2.5 million.

In the general election, Ricketts received 57.1% of the vote to Hassebrooks 39.2%. Libertarian Mark G. Elworth Jr. received 3.5%, and write-in votes accounted for 0.1%.

2018 Election

On June 5, 2017, Ricketts announced his candidacy for reelection. During his speech, he said "lowering property taxes" would be his main concern if he were reelected. Ricketts also asked Nebraskans to "rehire" Lieutenant Governor Mike Foley. Ricketts was reelected on November 6 with 59.0% of the vote.

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