A few months ago, Wisconsin Democrats were raising plenty of money for this year’s pivotal State Supreme Court election, but they were struggling to persuade their voters to pay much attention.
Wisconsin Republicans had momentum from helping President Trump win their state in November but were on track to be outspent as usual by the more organized Democrats.
Then along came Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is both helping direct White House policy and running an outside political operation that has swiftly become the primary vehicle to power pro-Trump candidates.
Months after he spent more than $250 million to return Mr. Trump to office, becoming the 2024 election’s biggest donor, Mr. Musk has shoveled more money than anyone else into the race for control of a court poised to make decisions about abortion rights, redistricting and labor rights in a top battleground state. He has posted about the contest countless times on social media, held a livestream with his chosen candidate and is planning to visit Wisconsin on Sunday evening, two days before the Tuesday election.
In doing so, Mr. Musk has made himself the face of a contest with significant real-world stakes, and turned it into a test of whether rising Democratic anger can eclipse a billionaire’s political machine.
A victory by the liberal candidate, Susan Crawford, would signify a backlash to Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk’s collective stewardship of the country, giving Democrats hope that all is not lost.
A triumph by the conservative contender, Brad Schimel, who is backed by more than $20 million from Mr. Musk and allied groups, would mean that the billionaire has written a new recipe for success for Trumpian officeseekers across the country while making himself, rather than the candidates, the center of attention.
“Everyone has an opinion on him,” said Rohn Bishop, the Republican mayor of Waupun, Wis. “He’s the talk of everything.”
Mr. Bishop recalled a town-hall meeting with local Republican state legislators this month that was hijacked by questions about Mr. Musk’s efforts to disembowel large parts of the federal government.
But Mr. Musk comes bearing financial incentives. He is offering $100 to Wisconsin voters who sign a petition “in opposition to activist judges,” and, repeating a gambit he used in Pennsylvania before the presidential election, he created a sweepstakes in which he would hand two $1 million checks to people who signed the petition and voted. He later clarified that he would not condition the payouts on voting. Campaign finance experts suggested that paying for votes would violate state law.
‘The Whole Country Is Watching’
While judicial races in Wisconsin are technically nonpartisan, nobody is fooled. Democrats want Judge Crawford, a liberal jurist in Dane County, to win and maintain the court’s 4-3 liberal majority. Republicans want Judge Schimel, who sits on a court in Waukesha County, to seize back control for conservatives after they lost it in 2023 — making this the second straight State Supreme Court race that has turned into a national referendum on party enthusiasm.
Top officials in both parties have focused attention on the race. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House minority leader, said on a livestream on Monday that a victory for Judge Crawford could help Democrats claw back two House seats in Wisconsin — a prospect also broached in a January call that Judge Crawford participated in with party donors.
“There are gerrymandered congressional lines right now in Wisconsin,” Mr. Jeffries said. “We need to be able to revisit that and have fair lines. The only way for that to be even a significant possibility is if you have an enlightened Supreme Court.”
Mr. Trump hosted a conference call for Judge Schimel’s supporters on Thursday night and reiterated the national implications for Republicans. The president said his agenda could be impeded if a liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats.
“It’s a very important race, actually,” Mr. Trump said. “I know you feel it’s local, but it’s not. It’s really much more than local. The whole country is watching.”
Wisconsin Democrats, who had planned to try to make the election about abortion rights, zeroed in on Mr. Musk the moment he began spending on Judge Schimel’s behalf in February.
Judge Crawford made opposition to Mr. Musk a core part of her stump speeches and television advertising. A statewide tour was branded “The People v. Elon Musk.” And Judge Crawford’s allies rarely pass up a chance to remind voters that Tesla, the electric vehicle company controlled by Mr. Musk, is suing Wisconsin for the right to open dealerships there.
Wisconsin Democrats say that with Mr. Trump now a decade into his tenure as the chief boogeyman for liberals, it is helpful to have a new villain.
“I see people who are only tangentially political posting selfies about how they’re knocking on doors,” said Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator from Madison. “Now, people are paying attention, and now I’m seeing the type of awareness and attention that was missing earlier in the race.”
An Avalanche of Money and Ads
So much money has been spent — $90 million and counting, according to a tally by WisPolitics, a political news site — that the campaign has become political white noise for much of the state. Nonstop ads on television and cellphones as well as constant mail and door-knocking have spurred early voting at a pace far exceeding the 2023 Supreme Court race, which at the time was the most expensive judicial campaign in American history.
This year’s contest could wind up costing nearly twice as much.
While voters uniformly say they dislike the barrage of political ads, an internal analysis from America Votes, one of the largest Democratic voter mobilization groups, found that in the first week of in-person early voting, turnout was twice what it was two years ago, largely because of increased Republican enthusiasm for the practice.
The America Votes memo, circulated among Wisconsin Democrats this week and obtained by The New York Times, concluded that Judge Crawford probably had a lead of eight percentage points among the 500,000 votes that had been cast. But it warned that Judge Schimel was likely to win among Election Day voters.
“Elon Musk, the disdain for what he’s doing at the federal level, is helping to fuel the fire,” said David Crowley, the Democratic executive of Milwaukee County. “There are things happening at the federal level that we can combat next week.”
Don’t Forget About the Candidates
With all the focus on Mr. Musk, the actual candidates have fallen a little under the radar.
Judge Crawford has gone out of her way to present herself as an unassuming candidate in the mold of Senator Tammy Baldwin — the third-term Democrat from Wisconsin who has never lost an election.
Even before ascending to the bench in 2018, Judge Crawford was judicious about voicing her personal politics. Buried in a 263-page Republican opposition research document on her was the fact that she did not sign petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, in 2012. At the time, the recall, which eventually failed, was a cause célèbre for Wisconsin Democrats.
Judge Schimel, a former state attorney general, has been a bit more colorful. His fondness for Mr. Trump is such that he dressed up as him last Halloween, and this month he posed with a 50-foot inflatable version of the president. Mr. Trump endorsed him last weekend.
Mr. Walker, in an interview this week from aboard Judge Schimel’s campaign bus, predicted that Democrats’ focus on Mr. Musk would boomerang to benefit Judge Schimel. “The more they’re attacking the president or even Elon Musk, they energize their base, but that base is already pumped up,” Mr. Walker said.
But attacks on Mr. Musk, he said, are also exciting Republican voters looking for a way to defend the president: “The more you elevate the race and make the connection to Trump, since there’s such a personal affinity a lot of these voters have for the president, the better the odds become.”
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