I’m back and I wanted to remind folks we have a huge election in Wisconsin next month:
The battle over a single state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin is on track to be among the most expensive judicial races in history, fueled by donations from big fundraising names such as Elon Musk and George Soros.
Why it matters: Democrats and Republicans alike see the Wisconsin race as having outsized importance in politics, stretching far beyond the Dairy State.
- The April 1 election will determine the tilt of an ideologically divided bench in a purple state where state-level decisions carry national implications for abortion rights, legislative redistricting and election laws.
- State Supreme Court races historically have been under-the-radar affairs. But they've risen to national prominence recently, accelerated by the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn the federal right to abortion. States now determine whether to allow the procedure.
And President Elon Musk is trying to fuck shit up:
But the South African-born billionaire does not appear to be satisfied with the outsized role he has assumed with regard to the federal government. He now seeks to influence elections at the state level too—and, in so doing, to upend the civic architecture of a country where the historic and constitutional mandate was for a division of powers that guarded against kingly overreach.
This week, a Musk-backed political action committee, Building America’s Future, bought a reported $1.5 million in advertising time on television stations across the state of Wisconsin, where one of the most critical elections of 2025 will be decided on April 1. The race is for an open seat on the state’s powerful Supreme Court, which currently has a 4–3 progressive majority. The senior member of the court, widely respected progressive Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, is standing down. Running to replace her are Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford, who is backed by Bradley and dozens of current and former jurists and court commissioners from across Wisconsin, and former Wisconsin attorney general Brad Schimel, a right-wing ally of former governor Scott Walker who was appointed to a Waukesha County judgeship after being defeated in his 2018 reelection bid for the AG post.
Such campaigns are now non-partisan in name only. Republicans are lining up behind Brad Schimel while Democrats are backing Susan Crawford. It could be the most significant US election since November, an early litmus test after Trump won every swing state, including Wisconsin.
Crawford has received $3m from the state Democratic party, including $1m that the party received from the liberal philanthropist George Soros and $500,000 from the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker.
Musk’s America political action committee is spending $1m to back Schimel, a former state attorney general who attended Trump’s inauguration last month. Another group Musk has funded, Building America’s Future, is spending $1.6m on TV ads attacking Crawford, a Dane county circuit judge. It reportedly had to withdraw one social media ad after it featured a photo of a different woman named Susan Crawford.
Crawford told a recent meeting of the Wisconsin Counties Association: “Elon Musk is trying to buy a seat on our supreme court so Brad Schimel can rubber-stamp his extreme agenda.”
Something else you should know about Schimel:
At an event hosted at Marquette University earlier this month, a member of the audience told Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate for state Supreme Court, that she was “a bit afraid” of him being elected.
The woman said she’d been sexually assaulted when she was 19 and was grateful that at the time she was able to “control whether my body and life were upended with an unwanted pregnancy.”
Throughout the campaign, Schimel, a former Republican state attorney general, has been attacked for his position on the legality of abortion — an issue that is likely to come before the Court after the election on April 1.
A currently pending case before the Court will determine the validity of an 1849 law that conservatives say bans abortion in the state. The ban is now on hold after a circuit court judge said it doesn’t apply to medical abortions, but at an event last summer, Schimel said he supports the idea that the 1849 law bans abortion.
And it’s not just Musk that wants Schimel to win:
Fearful that his anti-union agenda could be upended, along with other policies that he and his right-wing legislative allies implemented before voters swept him from office in 2018, Walker has been working overtime to nationalize the Supreme Court race. He’s made no secret of his desire to get conservatives from outside Wisconsin excited about Schimel’s bid, declaring, “The April 1 election is important for those of us in Wisconsin, but it is also vitally important to the rest of the nation.”
The former governor’s message looks to have gained traction with right-wing donors, including, it appears, Musk. The mega-billionaire has made it clear that he favors Schimel, even if he does not seem to know much about how elections are run in Wisconsin. In January, after the court candidates filed their petitions to get on the ballot, Musk tweeted on his X platform, “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!”
Wisconsin voters elect Supreme Court candidates on a nonpartisan ballot, which means it is not possible to cast a vote this April on the Republican line—or, for that matter, the Democratic line.
Historically, court races in Wisconsin saw candidates attract bipartisan support. That’s less common in today’s hyper-partisan era, when huge amounts of out-of-state money pour into the state’s high-stakes judicial contests. As in the 2023 race that flipped the court from conservative to progressive control, that money tends to follow partisan lines. Along with labor and business groups, the state’s Democratic and Republican parties have been increasingly active in court contests. Crawford has gotten a boost from wealthy Democratic donors, while Schimel has attracted significant support from top Republican funders. Much of the money has come in the form of so-called “late independent expenditures,” such as a $1.35 million ad buy from Fair Courts America, an Illinois-based group funded primarily by billionaire conservative donor Dick Uihlein, which is expected to attack Crawford.
But the entry of the Musk-aligned group has stirred things up in Wisconsin, where media reports and political discussions have focused intense scrutiny on the billionaire’s latest political move.
And Crawford has been making Musk a key talking point in this race:
“Elon Musk is trying to buy a seat on our Supreme Court so Brad Schimel can rubber stamp his extreme agenda,” Crawford said at a meeting of the Wisconsin Counties Association. Schimel is slated to address the group on Wednesday.
Musk’s America PAC reported last week that it was spending $1 million on canvassing and field operations in the Wisconsin race. One of its flyers has an image of Trump saying he “needs you to get out and vote on April 1 for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.” The flyer encourages voting “to stop liberal judges from blocking President Trump’s agenda.”
″Brad Schimel welcomes Elon Musk’s involvement and Musk’s organization is now going door to door with paid canvassers handing out flyers that say that Brad has got to be on the Supreme Court to protect the Trump agenda,” Crawford told reporters Tuesday. “We don’t need that kind of politics on our Supreme Court.”
Tesla, the electric car company owned by Musk, filed a lawsuit in January challenging the state’s decision blocking it from opening dealerships in Wisconsin. That case could ultimately be decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Crawford said she thinks Musk has gotten involved in the race in case lawsuits affecting Trump’s agenda play out at the state level.
“Elon Musk seems to be in the process of dismantling the federal government right now and is Donald Trump’s right-hand person,” Crawford said, referring to Musk’s work overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency. “I think the fact that he is so closely tied to the president and the president’s agenda should be really concerning.”
Right now, polling on the race has been very sparse but we should have an idea on where the race is this week:
Marquette University Law School will release the results of its first statewide poll of 2025 with an in-person event featuring Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, and Derek Mosley, director of the school’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, on Wednesday, March 5, at 12:15 p.m. at Marquette Law School’s Eckstein Hall.
A complete news release and poll data, including toplines, crosstabs, and slides from the discussion, will be available on the Marquette Law School Poll website at 1:15 p.m., following the event. The event is free and open to the public; registration is required and available online. The program will be available to stream live online on the Marquette Law School website.
Interview availability with Franklin will include a gaggle for media in attendance following the program. Additional virtual and phone interviews will be available in the afternoon. Media interested in attending or scheduling an interview should contact Kevin Conway, associate director of university communication, at kevin.m.conway@marquette.edu in advance.
The Marquette Law School Poll’s first 2025 survey of Wisconsin focuses on issues in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, education policy in the state, and state budget proposals and policy issues. Views of state and national elected officials and reactions to the first six weeks of the Trump administration are also included.
The election is on April 1st and we need to be ready to tell Musk to fuck off. Click here to sign up to become a poll worker.
Click below to donate and get involved with Crawford’s campaign and the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s GOTV efforts: