Green Bay, Wisconsin
CNN
—
Elon Musk has thrust himself into the center of a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin. Democrats are trying to use it to their advantage.
In the final stretch of the election, Musk has intensified his involvement in the contest, pouring millions of his personal fortune into the state to boost the conservative candidate, Brad Schimel. On Sunday, the tech billionaire made the trek to Wisconsin to directly pitch voters and handed out two $1 million checks to attendees at a town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
“Everybody’s got to mobilize everywhere like crazy for the next 48 hours,” said Musk, who started the event wearing a cheesehead that he threw into the crowd. “I think this will be important for the future of civilization. It’s that significant.”
The liberal candidate, Susan Crawford, and her Democratic allies are using Musk’s involvement to frame the race as a referendum on him, betting it will motivate voters turned off by his big spending on the race or by DOGE efforts to slash the federal government.
The push comes as the April 1 contest is set to provide the first electoral gauge of voter sentiment in the opening months of President Donald Trump’s second term, in which Musk and DOGE have played a central role. The race also will test Musk’s influence on local races after he spent more than a quarter-billion dollars to aid Trump’s 2024 campaign.
The matchup between Crawford, a Dane County Circuit Court judge, and Schimel, a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge and former state attorney general, will determine the ideological balance of Wisconsin’s high court, which currently has a liberal majority. The contest is officially nonpartisan but has attracted attention from the national political parties and will offer insight into how the swing state’s voters are assessing the early months of Trump’s second term.
In the first major election of the year, Musk and groups aligned with him have poured more than $20 million into the race. America PAC, the super PAC Musk formed to support Trump in 2024, has disclosed more than $12 million in spending on messaging and field operations so far.
Musk has also personally contributed $3 million to the Wisconsin Republican Party for the contest, while Building America’s Future, another group with links to the DOGE leader, has spent more than $7 million on waves of sharp attack ads targeting the liberal candidate in the race.
In the final weeks of the campaign, Musk’s PAC reprised controversial get-out-the-vote tactics used in the 2024 election. America PAC launched a petition against “activist judges,” offering Wisconsin signers $100 and an additional $100 for each additional signer they referred. The group later announced it would offer $1 million awards to signers of the petition, with the first check delivered to Scott Ainsworth, a mechanical engineer from Green Bay.
And Musk invited fresh controversy with an early Friday X post saying he would speak at an event in Wisconsin on Sunday and present $1 million checks to two people “in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.” Entrance to the event was also limited to those “who have voted in the Supreme Court election.”
By Friday afternoon, Musk had deleted the original post and clarified that those who signed the petition would be admitted into the event and the million-dollar checks would be presented to “2 people to be spokesmen for the petition.”
Wisconsin’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul attempted to block Musk’s cash giveaway by asking the state Supreme Court to intervene after an appeals court denied his initial lawsuit on the matter.
But the court denied Kaul’s request in a decision that came just minutes before Musk’s event was scheduled to begin.
At the town hall Sunday, Musk handed out two $1 million checks “in appreciation” to two attendees who had signed the petition — Nicholas Jacobs and Ekaterina Diestler. He also announced the creation of a “block captain program,” offering further cash incentives two days before the election.
“We’ve got to pull a rabbit out of the hat, next level,” Musk said, noting that betting odds strongly favor Crawford. “We’ve actually got to have a steady stream of rabbits out of the hat, like it’s an arc of rabbits flying through the air and landing in a voting booth.”
“That’s basically what’s needed, is we need to generate an anomaly in the matrix,” he continued.
Schimel, who received Trump’s endorsement, has argued Musk’s political operation is working independently of his campaign. But he did team up with Musk for a discussion on X in recent weeks. Asked by CNN about voters who think Musk should have stayed out of the race, Schimel decried big money from Democrats.
“I hope that they also think George Soros and JB Pritzker and others (should) stay out,” Schimel said after an event in Elkhorn. “Why are they so worried about what Elon Musk does that I can’t control when (Crawford’s) got money coming directly into her campaign that she can control?”
Liberal megadonors have waded into the race, though on a smaller scale than Musk. Financier George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have donated a combined $3.5 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which can transfer money to Crawford’s campaign. The race has smashed spending records to become the most expensive judicial contest in US history.
Crawford and her Democratic allies have run ads trying to tie Musk to Schimel, and she frequently brings up Musk in her campaign speeches, including at one point jokingly referring to the billionaire as “my opponent.”
“I don’t think this comes down to, you know, red or blue or Democrat or Republican,” Crawford told CNN in a recent interview. “I think all voters in Wisconsin should be concerned about this, about somebody coming in and trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”
Debates over Tesla and redistricting
Musk’s election engagement comes as Tesla is waging a legal battle over a state law that prevents the electric vehicle company from opening company-owned stores in Wisconsin. Crawford has used the lawsuit, which could make its way to the state’s Supreme Court, to argue Musk surged money to the race because of his business interests.
“Elon Musk wants to sell more cars here. So that’s one way to do it,” Crawford said at a stop in Janesville. “He’s looking for access and influence to the Wisconsin judiciary.”
Pressed by a reporter on whether he would recuse himself from the Tesla case if it came before the court, Schimel said he would evaluate the circumstances the same as any other case.
“I’m running to uphold the law as the legislature passes,” Schimel said last week. “So if his reason is to support me because he thinks he’s going to get a result he wants, he might be supporting the wrong candidate.”
The potential redrawing of congressional maps also has emerged as a campaign flashpoint. The court could weigh redistricting in a state where Republicans hold six out of eight US House seats even as statewide races have seen narrow victories for both parties. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently said the way to address “gerrymandered congressional lines” in the state is with “an enlightened Supreme Court.”
Musk also touched on the issue at his event Sunday, portraying the stakes in dramatic terms. “What’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the US House of Representatives,” he said. “Whichever party controls the House, to a significant degree controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. I feel like it’s one of those things that may not seem it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”
Crawford, in an interview, told CNN that if the court took up the validity of congressional maps, she would “examine what the facts are based on the evidence.”
“I’ll apply the law and make a decision that does not take politics into account but that follows the law,” Crawford said.
Politics usually is not the focus on Monday afternoons at RiversEdge Bowl in Janesville, where several dozen seniors take over most of the lanes for their weekly bowling league. But in the closing stretch of the election, many of the bowling voters were keyed in on the race and frustrated with the flood of outside money.
“These people are interfering where they shouldn’t interfere,” said Marvin Whitson, a Trump voter who is undecided but leaning toward Schimel in the Supreme Court contest. “(Musk) should stick to figuring out what he’s supposed to be figuring out for the government and let us do our job as voters.”
Raymond Huntoon, an independent who favors Crawford for the seat, said Musk’s spending in the race is among the issues factoring into his vote.
“For a judge to have that kind of money going into it, somebody wants something from up above,” Huntoon said. “He could be like your puppeteer and be pulling, pulling the strings on something that him or the president wants to get through.”
George Buehl, a Trump voter who is supporting Schimel, disagreed.
“I don’t think one side is any better than the other when it comes to the money. That’s part of life,” Buehl said. “I’m not in favor of the left-wing agenda that’s going on with the Democratic Party, so that’s why I’m gonna make sure I’m there, because I’m trying to stop it.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s David Wright and Fredreka Schouten contributed reporting.
