In Wisconsin, conservative groups spent over $53 million on a state Supreme Court race, including millions from two political action committees linked to Elon Musk. In Florida, two Democratic candidates outraised their Republican opponents by millions.
Yet in both of these closely watched elections, the sides that raised and spent the most both failed to turn those dollars into advantages in voter turnout.
In Wisconsin, liberal Judge Susan Crawford is projected to win Tuesday’s election, despite record-shattering spending against her from allies of her conservative opponent, Judge Brad Schimel. She was considered the favored candidate to win, but national GOP figures like Musk and President Donald Trump waded into her race, Musk opened his wallet and Republican mega-donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein and Diane Hendricks cut checks too.
Crawford and her allies raised and spent plenty, including from billionaires of their own. But in the litmus test on Trump’s influence and Musk’s money, Democrats came out on top.
It was a different story in Florida, where Democrats were always seen as long shots in two special House races. In Florida’s 6th District, Democrat Josh Weil, a middle school teacher, brought in over $14 million, while Republican Randy Fine reported less than $1 million in contributions to the Federal Election Commission through mid-March. In Florida’s 1st Congressional District, which Trump won by 37 percentage points five months ago, Democrat Gay Valimont raised over $6.4 million, while her Republican opponent, Jimmy Patronis, raised $2.1 million.
Yet for the major fundraising advantages, the Associated Press called the races for Republicans Fine and Patronis 30 minutes after polls closed.
Money didn’t translate to solving Florida Democrats’ biggest problem: their voter registration disadvantage. Despite the massive war chest, Democrats trailed Republicans in new voter registration over the past three months.
“We burned through donor dollars on campaigns that will leave nothing behind: no new voters, no stronger party infrastructure, no sustained momentum,” Florida Democratic consultant Chris Mitchell wrote in a column in Florida Politics ahead of the election. “Just grifters with a payday and a movement no stronger than it was before.”
Yet in the weeks ahead of the election, Democratic leadership leaned into the optimism around an overperformance, at least, if not a win.
“Chickens are starting to come home to roost,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last week. “You’ve seen it in a variety of different special elections at the state and local level over the last several months, and it will be interesting to see what happens in Florida.”
“These districts are so Republican, there would ordinarily be no reason to believe that the races will be close,” he said.
Public polling showed Weil within the margin of error. A recent survey from Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio even showed Fine down by three percentage points after leading by 12 points in February. The fundraising numbers and polling led to the Trump administration suddenly pulling Rep. Elise Stefanik — who represents a district Trump had carried by 20 percentage points — as its nominee for U.N. ambassador because officials were so worried about Republicans’ thin margins in the House.
Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, spent the final Saturday before the special elections not in Wisconsin, but campaigning with Weil and Valimont.
At the same time, other Democrats expressed concern that the optimism and big dollars wouldn’t translate to results.
“Democrats have to be strategic,” Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz told NOTUS ahead of the results. “We wasted $300 million in Texas trying to win the governor’s race and the Senate race twice in losing causes. So we’ll have to see if this was smart to put $14 million in there or not.”
“We have a registration problem in Florida. $14 million would have done a lot right to build registration so Democrats can win the state,” he said.
Even though Fine’s margins were smaller than now-National Security Adviser Mike Waltz’s — a shift Democrats hoped to frame as a referendum on Trump — “moral victories aren’t worth a penny,” Mitchell told NOTUS after Fine’s race was called Tuesday. “We were never going to win these races.”
“The Democrats literally took $10 million and they’re going to light it on fire in a dumpster,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said. “And if that’s what they want to do with their money, that’s their prerogative.”
Weil and Valimont’s fundraising efforts were led by a controversial, progressive youth-led Florida consulting firm, Key Lime Strategies. Founder Jackson McMillan defended its massive haul against criticism that the races were never winnable.
“We made them build a turnout machine, take time out of the president’s schedule to engage specifically here on election day. To be clear, if Elon Musk did not personally intervene and the crypto PACs that dumped millions in here in the last minute, we would have dominated these races,” McMillan told NOTUS on Tuesday night. “Josh Weil is just a teacher. Every single one of those donors put him on the map and made him the face of a resistance that made MAGA tremble in its boots.”
A few weeks ago, the two Florida races had gotten little national buzz. But massive fundraising hauls coupled with optimistic polls and promising results for Democrats in other special elections put the races on the map, despite significant Republican majorities in the districts.
Democrats were winning state special elections where they had no business winning. In an Iowa district that voted for Trump by a 21-point margin, Democrat Mike Zimmer won a state Senate seat less than two weeks after Trump was sworn in. And last week in Pennsylvania, Democrat James Malone flipped a state Senate seat in a district that voted for Trump by 15 percentage points.
In the final weeks, Republican leadership began sounding alarm bells around the race.
Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, pushed Fine to get his act together and work harder as the committee saw the margins closing in, a source with direct knowledge told NOTUS. Additionally, the chair also sent staffers down to Florida in recent weeks to work with and help Fine.
The source said that Fine had been complacent since Fabrizio’s poll from February showing him up by 12 percentage points.
“He got a late start in the general,” Hudson told reporters on Tuesday. “Once he engaged, once he went up on TV, he’s been up and we’ve been helping him with turnout.”
Hudson said the fundraising was a factor, but that Democrats’ haul wouldn’t be enough in two districts with such large Republican registration advantages.
“Democrats always have a structural advantage of fundraising,” Hudson said. “So I think one lesson coming away from this is you’ve got to pay attention to every special election, because they’re all special.”
In Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, where the ideological majority on the court was at stake, money was in no shortage for anyone. But the conservative candidate saw particularly extensive spending. Figures from the Brennan Center for Justice showed GOP-backed conservative Judge Brad Schimel and groups supporting him spent over $53 million by April 1.
That included over $12 million from Musk’s America PAC and near $6 million from Building America’s Future, another group linked to Musk. Fair Courts America, a project from GOP mega-donor Richard Uihlein, put more than $4.4 million into the race supporting Schimel’s candidacy, and the Republican State Leadership Committee tossed in over $2.3 million.
Meanwhile, supporters of Democrat-backed liberal Judge Susan Crawford and groups supporting her shelled out more than $45 million — another extremely large sum, except hers led to a victory.
On a national level, the election in Wisconsin served as a litmus test for the influence of Trump and Musk: if conservatives had finally cracked how to get finicky Trump-driven voters to turn out for someone else so soon after the state flipped red, and if Musk’s checkbook could help change the tides for these off-season elections where Democrats have typically had a strong turnout advantage.
“Republicans were aware before this explosion of Musk involvement that it would benefit them to see the race more nationalized in terms of fundraising. Democrats here in Wisconsin really cracked the ability to raise especially small dollar amounts from a nationwide audience,” Charles Franklin, who heads the Marquette Law School Poll, said ahead of the election.
And Elon Musk, with his millions, provided that and more: even continuing a trend from last fall and handing out million-dollar checks. But nonetheless, GOP operatives remained anxious throughout the night.
Democrats, meanwhile, hoped the name recognition between Musk and Trump would be so unpopular that it could cement a victory for them in a race where they were generally considered the favored party. And like in a similar race for the ideological majority in 2023, they were able to draw large fundraising figures themselves.
Ultimately, Democrats retained a turnout advantage, and Wisconsin Republicans have been aware for a while that was a problem for them.
Musk’s dollars, and other GOP groups, were heavily leveraged to try to boost conservative turnout.
“Musk has spent a tremendous amount of money, and a lot of that has gone to door knocks and trying to turn people out. Also, Turning Point Action, another conservative organization, has been very active here in the state. Those are enhancements of the Republican Party’s usual get-out-the-vote efforts,” Franklin said.
Early turnout estimates — including over 600,000 early votes — indicated total turnout might surpass 2 million. Milwaukee had ballot shortages, and the city’s suburbs saw increased turnout, too. But Schimel was running behind Trump in Waukesha County early in the night and other redder counties just weren’t making up for that.
In June, well before the Supreme Court election was making airwaves and when most attention was on the impending federal elections, Wisconsin GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden grumbled to NOTUS not just about the liberal court majority, but conservative voters’ role in how it got there.
“Republicans don’t vote in April elections,” Van Orden said then. “My thing is, if you don’t vote, you don’t get a say. I don’t want to hear you complaining. Did you vote? No? Well, then go sit over in the corner.”
—
Katherine Swartz, Nuha Dolby, and Claire Heddles are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows.
Reese Gorman, a reporter at NOTUS, contributed to this story.