Liberal wins Wisconsin court race, despite Musk’s millions

By Reid J. Epstein

A liberal candidate for a pivotal seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court overcame $25 million in spending from Elon Musk and defeated her conservative opponent Tuesday, the Associated Press reported, in a contest that became a kind of referendum on Musk and his slashing of the federal government.

With turnout extraordinarily high for a spring election in an off year, Judge Susan Crawford handily beat Judge Brad Schimel, who ran on his loyalty to President Donald Trump and was aided by Musk, the president’s billionaire policy aide.

Musk not only poured money into the race but also campaigned personally in the state, even donning a cheesehead. But his starring role seemed to inflame Democratic anger against him even more than it helped Schimel.

The barrage of spending in the race may nearly double the previous record for a single judicial election. With about 95% of the vote counted Tuesday evening, Crawford held a lead of roughly 9 points.

“Today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” she said in her victory speech Tuesday night. “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”

For Democrats, the result is a jolt of momentum. They have been engaged in a coast-to-coast rhetorical rending of garments since Trump returned to the White House in January and embarked with Musk on an effort to drastically shrink federal agencies, set aside international alliances and alter the government’s relationships with the nation’s universities, minority groups, immigrants and corporate world.

Coming on the heels of Democratic triumphs in special elections for state legislative seats in Iowa and Pennsylvania and the defeat of four Republican-backed state referendums in Louisiana, Crawford’s victory puts the party on its front foot for the first time since last November. Her win showed that, at least in one instance, Musk’s seemingly endless reserves of political cash had energized more Democrats than Republicans.

The race could also have implications for control of Congress, where Republicans’ razor-thin edge was fortified Tuesday when the party held on to two Florida seats in special elections. Democrats have quietly argued for months that a Crawford victory would pave the way for a liberal-tilting Wisconsin Supreme Court to order new congressional maps, which could help Democrats defeat one or two of the state’s Republican House members.

Crawford herself participated in a meeting with liberal donors in January that was pitched as a chance to put two House seats in play, a prospect echoed last week by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chamber’s Democratic leader. And Republicans, led by Musk, sought to make that possibility the central focus of their campaign to defeat her.

Musk, describing the stakes of the contest in near-apocalyptic terms, seemed to personify the campaign on Schimel’s behalf even more than the candidate himself. Never before had a single donor sought to influence an American judicial race to such a degree, and few had invested comparable sums in an election in which they were not themselves running. Through his super political action committee, Musk underwrote an $11.5 million ground game that targeted voters with messages urging them to help Trump by supporting Schimel. A separate organization with Musk ties spent $7.7 million on television advertising, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.

Musk also offered Wisconsinites $100 each to sign a petition in opposition to “activist judges.” By Tuesday, his super PAC was offering voters $50 to post a picture of a Wisconsin resident outside a polling place.

The victory for Crawford, 60, who won a 10-year term, maintains a 4-3 majority for liberals on the court, which in coming months is poised to deliver key decisions on abortion and labor rights. It may soon determine the legality of the state’s congressional district lines, which were drawn by the Republican-controlled state Legislature and have delivered six of eight House seats to the party in the evenly divided state.

Liberals are likely to maintain a court majority until at least 2028. Conservative justices on the court face reelection in each of the next two years. Unless a liberal justice vacates her seat and is replaced by the governor, conservatives cannot flip a seat until 2028.

With control of the court on the line, the formally nonpartisan election was always going to be expensive and hard-fought, but Musk’s investment beginning in mid-February supercharged the stakes, attention and cash flowing into the state. The involvement of the billionaire, whose electric-vehicle company, Tesla, sued Wisconsin in January for the right to open dealerships in the state, turned what would have been a state contest into something approaching a national bat-signal for Democrats to support Crawford.