Liberal Judge Susan Crawford is projected to win the seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, per the Associated Press, marking a loss for President Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk in one of the first major electoral tests of this administration.
Crawford defeated conservative judge and former GOP state Attorney General Brad Schimel, giving liberals on the state’s highest court the majority, multiple outlets projected.
The race was as much a test of Musk’s influence as it was Trump’s — maybe more. Musk has spent millions in support of Schimel, primarily through his political action committee. Democrats backing Crawford have capitalized on the link, calling Musk “one of the most reviled national figures in our state,” as Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, put it to NOTUS in March. “He’s deeply unpopular and unites Democrats.”
“I think the advantage for Republicans of having Musk involved and his organization and their ground game is that they may well succeed in boosting turnout among Republicans,” Charles Franklin, a political science academic who leads the Marquette Law School Poll, said before the election. “But the risk they run is that they also are lightning rods for counter-mobilization from Democrats.”
The state Democratic party, which transferred millions to the Crawford campaign (state law allows for unlimited transfers from the state parties to candidates), has run Musk-related advertisements, press releases and a The People v. Musk campaign. The Democratic National Committee also used this race to run its first paid media explicitly calling out Musk.
“Tonight, the people of Wisconsin squarely rejected the influence of Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and billionaire special interests. And their message? Stay out of our elections and stay away from our courts,” Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a victory statement. “This is why we organize everywhere — to protect people’s fundamental rights and freedoms, to stop the richest men in the world from buying the government, and to win elections that ultimately improve lives. Democrats are overperforming, winning races, and building momentum.”
This election was the “first opportunity, in a big way, to show that Democrats still have the will to fight back in the second Trump era. If we’re able to defeat the candidate that is bankrolled by Elon Musk, and who has himself eagerly supported Donald Trump, that will sort of shatter this image of invulnerability that Elon Musk has,” Haley McCoy, a spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, told NOTUS in late February.
State policy issues, like a ruling on Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law and in a collective bargaining and key union case, also became liberal talking points.
Republicans, who were financially outmaneuvered by Democrats in a similar 2023 race for ideological control of the court, found themselves on more solid financial footing this time around thanks to Musk. Those supporting Schimel argued that a Crawford win could result in rewriting the state’s House of Representatives maps, which currently favor Republicans 6-2.
It was an appeal to the “millions of Americans [who] voted for President Trump for an agenda, and they want his agenda done,” Wisconsin GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden told NOTUS last month, an impossibility without a GOP majority in the House of Representatives.
Also at risk, they said, were already existent or future state policies that a cemented liberal majority court could overturn. What the liberal court does will be closely watched: The state has Supreme Court elections every year until 2030.
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.