The richest man in the world attempted to buy an election in Wisconsin. His effort crashed and burned, establishing a model for the fight against Trumpism.
Susan Crawford accepts victory in her race for Wisconsin Supreme Court justice on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wisconsin.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
Two days before Wisconsinites went to the polls in an election he tried to buy—with more than $25 million in spending to benefit a right-wing state Supreme Court candidate, and an expensive effort to mobilize voters against what he claimed was “judicial activism”—Elon Musk jetted into Green Bay and said, “This is one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”
Musk gets a lot wrong. But let’s hope he was right about the importance of Tuesday’s election.
Because, last night, voters across the nation’s ultimate battleground state, from urban centers and college towns, suburbs and rural communities, delivered a stunning rebuke to Musk’s money. But not just that: to President Donald Trump’s crude attacks on the progressive candidate in the court contest, and Republican efforts to make the race a referendum on the independent judiciary that the oligarchs in Washington—including a billionaire president and the richest man in the world, who serves as his slashing-and-burning “special government employee”—seek to disempower.
Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, the candidate supported by progressive US Senator Tammy Baldwin, labor unions, supporters of abortion rights and LGBTQ rights, and the resurgent Wisconsin Democratic Party, defeated former attorney general Brad Schimel, the candidate of Trump, Musk, corporate interests, and the state Republican Party, by an overwhelming 55–45 margin.
Crawford’s win entrenched the existing 4–3 progressive majority on the powerful state Supreme Court, which is now expected to take up crucial cases on abortion rights, labor rights, and voting rights. That was a big deal. But the election was just as important because of where it took place: a state that Trump narrowly won last November.
US Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI) summed that message up when he explained on Tuesday night, “Today’s election in Wisconsin for the Supreme Court was a referendum on Elon Musk and Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s actions nationally. People don’t want programs cut for the middle class and [they don’t want] to give tax breaks to Trump and Musk. We spoke out. They lost. End of discussion.”
For his part, Musk immediately tried to pretend that he hadn’t cared all that much about the outcome of a race he had previously said “might decide the future of America and Western Civilization!” Instead, he said that Wisconsinites’ decision to enshrine a voter-ID amendment into their Constitution was “the most important thing” that happened on Tuesday, despite the fact that the state has already had a voter-ID requirement on the books for nearly a decade.
Celebrating her victory, Crawford, a onetime lawyer for labor unions and Planned Parenthood who was mounting her first statewide campaign, recalled her roots in a working-class community in western Wisconsin, saying, “Growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I would be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin.… And we won.”
Crawford had proven to be a brilliant contender during the course of what became the most expensive state court race in American history. Candidates, parties, and political action committees are expected to have burned through $100 million when all the receipts are in, with at least $25 million of that coming from Musk alone.
Crawford was widely seen as the winner of the single debate with her opponent, whom she referred to as “Elon Schimel.” She kept her cool as Musk wrote bigger and bigger checks and Trump labeled her a “Radical Left Democrat.” And she framed the result of her race in precisely the right terms.
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“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections, and our Supreme Court,” Crawford told her cheering supporters. “And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale.”
There was no hyperbole in that statement. The race to fill an open seat on the court, following the decision of progressive Justice Ann Walsh Bradley to retire, was always going to be consequential. It was destined to determine whether progressives or conservatives would control the state Supreme Court. And the decision of Musk and Trump to intervene on behalf of Schimel made it the clearest referendum yet on the first months of Trump’s second term. There was never any question that a Schimel win would be read as a vindication for Trump’s authoritarian agenda. It would have suggested that the richest man in the world’s money could not be beaten at the ballot box.
But Wisconsin had other ideas. Throw in Tuesday’s comfortable victory for Jill Underly—a rural progressive who was bidding for a new term as state superintendent of public instruction against a challenge from a well-financed, Republican-backed supporter of school vouchers—and it was clear that the state was not just deciding officially nonpartisan statewide contests. It was rising up against the oligarchic excesses coming out of Washington and delivering a wake-up call for Republicans and Democrats nationwide.
“Voters are furious at what Elon Musk and Donald Trump are doing to this country,” declared the dynamic Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair, Ben Wikler, shortly after the results were known. For Democrats thinking of running for national, state or local posts, said Wikler, “this is the time to run.” For Republicans who are thinking about running, Wikler added, “Any politician allied with them could swiftly face the end of their political career.”
“Tonight,” continued Wikler, “Democrats got up off the mat and fought back. The world’s richest man tried to buy Wisconsin’s democracy in order to corrupt Wisconsin’s judiciary, but Wisconsinites demonstrated that our state is not for sale. In a moment of national darkness, Wisconsin voters lit a candle. Let the lesson of Wisconsin’s election ring out across the country: Hope is not lost, democracy can yet survive, and the voice of the American people will not be silenced.”
