Democrats’ Message in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race: Reject Elon Musk

Elon Musk traded his “dark MAGA” hat for a cheesehead Sunday as he headlined a rally in Green Bay, seeking to tilt Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election Tuesday to conservative Brad Schimel. This election is “a super big deal,” the tech billionaire told a crowd. “I think this will be important for the future of civilization,” he added, as he handed out million-dollar checks to voters who had signed pledges against “activist judges.”

Musk, who has been decimating the federal government on behalf of Donald Trump as the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, has emerged as a main character in the race between Schimel, a Waukesha County judge backed by Trump, and Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, who was endorsed by former President Barack Obama last week. The state-level race will determine the partisan lean of the swing state’s high court and carries massive—if not necessarily civilization-altering—implications. Not only could the Tuesday election determine the future of abortion rights, collective bargaining rights, and other matters for Wisconsinites; but it could also, as Musk himself noted at his Sunday rally, determine the state’s congressional map ahead of next year’s midterms, when Republicans will be seeking to expand their majority and Democrats will try to gain back any potential to exercise some legislative check on the Trump administration. “They will try to stop all the government reforms we are getting done for you,” Musk told his town hall, “the American people.”

Of course, Trump’s power grab has unsettled even some Republicans—not that they’re prepared to do anything about it—and Musk’s purge has been even more unpopular, with the DOGE chief polling 10 points below the president in a CNN survey this month. While the race is nominally non-partisan, Democrats in Wisconsin and beyond are hoping the state Supreme Court contest could deal a blow to Musk. With the money and political capital he’s put into the race, he is testing his status as a right-wing kingmaker. If Crawford prevails, it could “make clear that voters will reject Musk and Musk’s tactics so that we don’t create an incentive for him to keep rampaging through every level of American politics,” as Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler told me last week. “If Musk succeeds in buying the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Wikler said, “then he’s going to bring exactly these same obscene tactics and ludicrous quantities of money to every future race.”

Musk has put nearly $20 million into this historically expensive race, one with an $81 million price tag that far eclipses the roughly $56 million that made Wisconsin’s last Supreme Court race in 2023 the most costly judicial race ever—in which Janet Protasiewicz swung the bench 4-3 in favor of the liberals. The big money—a result, as Megan O’Matz noted in ProPublica last week, of the state voting ten years ago to approve unlimited campaign spending—is distasteful enough on its own. But Musk’s stunt of writing million-dollar checks to a handful of voters who signed a pledge from his PAC is especially grotesque, if not outright illegal, as Democrats have alleged. (Josh Kaul, the state’s Democratic attorney general, challenged the Musk giveaways, but the state Supreme Court declined to hear the case.)

Democrats have framed their proxy campaign against Musk as a kind of David and Goliath fight—but they have some Goliaths on their side, too. Billionaires George Soros and JB Pritzker, the governor of neighboring Illinois, have spent big on the election. And the Democratic National Committee has gone all out, even putting out full-page ads targeting Musk in ten Sunday newspapers across the state. “Schimel has an anti-freedom, anti-health care agenda that will put billionaires like Musk ahead of working families,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement to Vanity Fair. “Every Wisconsin voter can send a message to Musk and the country that our elections aren’t for sale by voting for Susan Crawford and other candidates that will move Wisconsin forward.”

To Democrats, the election is an opportunity to take some of the shine off Musk with Republicans. “If Musk turns out to be politically toxic, we can see Republicans trying to distance themselves from him as rapidly as possible,” Wikler told me. “Which would be good for America, because every day that he has unlimited power, with no check from Congress, is a bad day for democracy.”

But the race is also the first chance for Democrats to start resuscitating their own party, which remains dispirited and disarrayed following their November defeat. A Crawford win, Wikler told me, “could put new steel in Democratic spines across the country, and inspire Democrats to fight back even harder.” That fight will be a slog—especially for Wisconsinites, who can look forward to state Supreme Court elections for each of the next six years, as the other justices hit their term limits.