Wisconsin supreme court race a litmus test for Elon Musk's political power

The Guardian

29-03-2025

A race to determine control of the Wisconsin supreme court that has profound stakes for voting, abortion and labor rights in the state, is also shaping up to be a litmus test of Elon Musk's political power, making it one of the most consequential elections of Donald Trump's second term.
Liberals currently hold a 4-3 majority on the state supreme court, but the liberal justice Ann Walsh Bradley is retiring. Susan Crawford, a liberal judge, is facing off on Tuesday against the conservative judge Brad Schimel for the seat. The winner will determine which party has control of a court that is set to rule on the future of the state's 1849 abortion ban, collective bargaining rights and the makeup of the state's six congressional districts.
The election has become the most expensive judicial election in American history, with more than $80m spent on both sides so far. Musk began spending in the race earlier this year, shortly after Tesla filed a lawsuit challenging a Wisconsin law that blocks the company from opening car dealerships in the state.
The billionaire's Super Pac is offering $100 to those who sign a petition in opposition to 'activist judges'. So far, Musk and groups he funds have spent more than $20m in the race. On Friday, he posted on Twitter/X and said he would campaign in Wisconsin this weekend and give away $1m as part of a sweepstakes-like contest to people who had voted. He later deleted the post after experts pointed out such a program could be illegal under state law. He posted a revised tweet saying he would distribute the money to people to act as spokespeople for the petition. The Wisconsin attorney general, Josh Kaul, a Democrat, also sued Musk and his Pac on Friday to stop the giveaway.
'This is kind of a test case for Elon Musk,' Crawford, a former prosecutor, said in an interview. 'He wants to make sure that nothing stands in the way of what he's doing to try to dismantle the federal government.'
Schimel's campaign did not respond to an interview request.
Musk's entrance in the race comes as he has railed against federal judges who have threatened to halt Trump's agenda, calling for the impeachment of some and backing Republicans who have heeded the call.
So much money being spent in a state supreme court election would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. Wisconsin supreme court justices are elected to 10 year terms, and until recently the candidates had low profiles and few paid attention to the races. In a 2020 state supreme court race, both candidates spent a combined $10m.
But in recent years, awareness has grown of the powerful role state supreme courts can play in defining major issues, bringing more money and hard-nosed politics to these races. In North Carolina, a Republican candidate is seeking to overturn a supreme court election he lost to a Democratic candidate by 734 votes.
'What we've really seen in recent years is just how important state courts are in determining election law and how elections are run,' said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the state democracy research initiative at the University of Wisconsin law school. She noted that Trump carried the state by just 30,000 votes in 2024 and Biden by even less in 2020.
'Really what we're seeing is state courts are playing a huge role not just in determining issues for the state, but in determining rules for elections that can have impacts at a national level when you're looking at a swing state like Wisconsin,' she added.
Schimel, a former Republican state attorney general, has made no secret that there would be little daylight between him and Trump, praising the president and talking about the need for a 'support network' for him. He has also posed with a large inflatable Trump and said the justices 'screwed [Trump] over' by keeping a Green party candidate off the ballot in 2020 (Trump narrowly lost the state to Joe Biden that year). He has also called one of the female justices on the state supreme court 'dumb as a sack of hammers' and another female justice 'crazy'.
Trump endorsed Schimel on 21 March.
State Democrats have made the race a referendum on Musk, putting up 'people v Musk' billboards across the state and holding town halls. When the party tested messaging, it showed ads highlighting Musk's connections to Schimel to 'motivate Democrats who otherwise want to tune out politics entirely to come out, cast a ballot, and recruit their friends', said Ben Wikler, chairman of the state Democratic party.
'If Brad Schimel loses this race and Susan Crawford wins, it'll become clear to Democrats that they can fight back against Musk and win,' said Wikler. 'And it'll be clear to Republicans that Musk may not be able to save their bacon if they keep going along with his attacks on our country. That could have a profound impact on the whole arc of American politics in this era.'
The race has energized Democrats. 'Back in November and December, I think a lot of people I was talking to were pretty discouraged by some of the results that they saw in the November election after having put a lot of time and energy into some of those campaigns,' Crawford said. 'That has dramatically changed in the last couple of months as the administration has taken a lot of actions in a hurry that have made people really worried and concerned about the direction our country is heading.'
In the weeks after Musk got involved in race, Wikler said, he saw Democrats 'get up off the mat and lean into the fightback'.
Even before Musk's involvement, the high stakes of the race were clear. The court heard oral arguments in a case challenging the state's 1849 abortion ban last year and is set to consider another one dealing with whether the state constitution protects the right to an abortion.
In 2020, the state supreme court narrowly voted 4-3 to turn away a Trump lawsuit challenging his loss in the state and seeking to overturn the results.
In 2023, Democrats won a major victory when the liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz won a seat on the court and flipped its ideological balance. Last year, the new state supreme court struck down state legislative maps, getting rid of Republican districts that were so distorted they gave Democrats no chance of ever winning a majority. Republicans went from having a near two-thirds supermajority to a slim majority in the statehouse.
The next court could hear a challenge to Wisconsin's congressional maps, in which Republicans hold six of eight seats. That balance is also considered severely askew in favor of Republicans and could ultimately help determine control of the US House, where Republicans hold a majority of just a few seats.
The spending in the race has shattered the more than $50m spent in the 2023 race. Musk has spent more than $18m through America Pac and Building America's future. The Republican mega-donor Richard Uihlein has gotten somewhat less attention, but Uihlein-aligned groups have spent at least $5.3m in favor of Schimel, funneling it through various entities, according to campaign finance records.
Lynde Uihlein, a cousin of Richard Uihlein has also been a major donor to the group A Better Wisconsin Together, which has spent more than $6m in the race supporting Crawford. The family members were also on separate sides of the 2023 state supreme court race.
Robert Yablon, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that the huge spending in the race was only possible because of the state's loose campaign finance laws. People in Wisconsin can donate unlimited amounts to state parties, which can pass that money on to candidates. There are also very weak anti-coordination laws between independent expenditure groups and campaigns.
The race, Yablon said, was a 'test for judicial independence'. If Musk succeeds in winning and ultimately gets rulings favorable to him, it could undermine that perception.
'You would hope that in a judicial race, you might have different candidates – maybe they have different ideologies or philosophies, different ways that they talk about the law, but it's shared ground that they believe that the judiciary ought to operate independently from other branches, ought to check those branches,' he said.
The turnout in Tuesday's election is expected to be much lower than the turnout in the November presidential election, making it difficult to make firm conclusions about the voter reaction to Trump so far. But there still may be signals to take away from Tuesday's contest.
'If there is a strong win for Crawford, it will at least be evidence of the energy of liberals and the extent to which opposition to the Trump administration, to Elon Musk, has been effectively activated,' Yablon said. If Schimel wins, he said it 'will probably be quite disheartening for liberals, for the Democratic party that's invested so much in this race, and they may then really have to go back to the drawing board'.