billionaire transforms Wisconsin court contest

If it were not for Elon Musk, Scott, a Republican-leaning IT worker in Appleton, Wisconsin, might never have voted in this week’s state supreme court election.

But the billionaire Trump backer’s decision to plough an unprecedented $22mn into a conservative candidate’s campaign for a seat on the high court has riled up the 52-year-old.

“It’s concerning that the world’s richest person is getting involved in politics,” said Scott, who was born in the Midwestern swing state and plans to vote for the progressive candidate. “He certainly has the resources available to him to possibly sway some elections.”

It is people like Scott, who asked for his surname not to be used to avoid an online backlash, that the Democratic party in Wisconsin is counting on to defeat Musk and his preferred candidate, Brad Schimel, in what has become the most expensive judicial race in American history. Total spending is expected to exceed $100mn.

Seizing on the fact that Musk — who spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting Donald Trump elected — is less popular in the state than the president, the Democrats have flooded the airwaves with an ad campaign called “People vs Musk”.

It features the Tesla boss wielding a chainsaw and celebrating cuts made by his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), and a clip of him making a gesture at a Trump rally that critics claimed was a Nazi salute.

It is a tactic that is being watched closely by campaign strategists across the country, who expect Musk to use his nearly bottomless war chest to support pro-Trump candidates in big and small races in the lead-up to next year’s midterm elections.

“The whole world is watching what happens [in this election],” said Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democrats, who was recently a candidate to run the party’s national committee.

If Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate in a technically non-partisan race, prevailed against Musk and “his Maga armada”, it would prove that “the flame of democracy is not extinguished”, Wikler told the crowd at a packed town hall in Outagamie County during the final stretch of the campaign.

A Crawford win would maintain a liberal majority on the state’s high court, which is likely to hear cases on abortion rights, election law and other hot-button issues — including one involving Musk’s company Tesla — in the coming years.

But Musk’s dollars, mostly donated via the same vehicles he used to back Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, have transformed what is usually a low-key, provincial election into a referendum on the current US administration’s policies and agenda.

“If the president’s supporters do not come out in this election,” conservative candidate Schimel, a former state attorney-general, said in a virtual town hall on Thursday, “the movement that is restoring America to its greatness will bypass our state”.

Phoning in to the event, Trump, who won Wisconsin by just less than a percentage point in 2024, echoed this warning: “If the radical Democrats win, they’re planning to abuse the law to unilaterally rewrite Wisconsin’s electoral map, creating a tremendous problem for our country.”

Musk also appears to be focused on how Wisconsin’s electoral map could, in two years’ time, shape the balance of the US Congress, the body he hopes will solidify some of his Doge cuts by enshrining them into law.

In an interview broadcast on his social media platform X last week, the White House adviser said he had waded into the supreme court race because it “will decide how congressional districts are drawn in Wisconsin”.

“It could cause the House to switch to Democrat if that redrawing takes place and then we wouldn’t be able to get through the changes that the American people want,” he said.

In recent days, Musk has revived a potentially illegal tactic first deployed in swing states during the presidential election last year, offering potential voters $100 each to sign a petition opposing “activist judges” and awarding $1mn to one of the signatories, Scott Ainsworth from Green Bay. Musk handed out two more such awards in person on Sunday, after the Wisconsin courts declined to stop him from doing so.

Musk’s involvement has turned the race into a nail-biter, with Schimel, who was polling 13 points behind Crawford, moving to within the margin of error, according to research by Musk’s campaign vehicle. If the conservative candidate were to prevail, Ron Johnson, US senator from Wisconsin, said last week that his party would “have to thank Elon”.

Some senior Democrats worry the election may have come too early to capitalise on dislike of Musk and Washington. A party campaigner conceded that Trump’s tariffs were “blinking in and out of existence” and had not yet hit Wisconsin — home to more than 58,000 farms. Doge’s personnel cuts also have had a limited effect on the state.

Still, Schimel, the Musk-backed candidate, faces an uphill battle. The billionaire has played down the chances of success, saying a win was “difficult, but not impossible”.

“Dems have more recently had an advantage going into the spring elections — their electorate is just a little more engaged,” said an adviser to the Schimel campaign. The conservative candidate in the last judicial race, Dan Kelly, who reportedly refused direct cash transfers from the state Republican party, “got smoked on the money and then he lost by 11 points because of it”, the adviser added.

Thanks to Musk’s funds, Schimel could “level the playing field” and “was able to get on TV first . . . so that he could start to remind the electorate of who he was”, the adviser said.

Crawford’s campaign and its supporters in Wisconsin have had little trouble raising money of their own. Billionaire George Soros gave $1mn to the state’s democratic party ahead of the campaign, while Illinois governor JB Pritzker, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and a political action committee set up by Mike Bloomberg also contributed large sums.

But the injection of cash has not been fully celebrated by Wikler, the state party chair, who sees it as an unwelcome outcome of the US Supreme Court decision, known as Citizens United, that allowed corporations to donate unlimited amounts to campaigns.

“This race is a reductio ad absurdum of Citizens United. It’s preposterous that a non-partisan judicial seat should be the subject of nine-figure political spending,” he said.

“But, you know, from the perspective of Democrats, it’s even worse if the world’s richest man can buy whatever judicial seat he wants to buy.”

In Outagamie County, which Trump won by 10 percentage points in November, the Crawford campaign is hoping to focus minds on why Musk might want to buy a seat on the court.

In January, Tesla filed a lawsuit against the state in a court in the county over Wisconsin’s refusal to let the carmaker bypass rules for local dealerships. Just days later, Musk’s political vehicles began donating to Wisconsin Republicans, records show.

Musk did not respond to a request for comment on the case, while Schimel has repeatedly said he would make an impartial decision on any cases that come to the supreme court.

At a campaign event for Crawford in the Outagamie town of Appleton, where stickers reading “Impeach Elon” were being handed out, the idea of an outsider inserting himself in Wisconsin’s affairs enraged left-leaning voters.

“He has to mind his own business and get out of our state politics,” local retiree Nancy Hyman-Rabe said. “This is crazy.”

According to Crawford, a victory on Tuesday for Musk, who has reportedly set his sights on an upcoming county commission race in Nevada, which is home to a Tesla factory, and two special congressional races in Florida, would be an ominous sign for electoral contests across the country.

“If Elon Musk is successful here, if he can buy a seat on a state supreme court in Wisconsin . . . he’s gonna try that in other places as well,” she told the crowd in Appleton.

“This is his test case.”

Data visualisation by Sam Learner