On Tuesday, Wisconsin voters will go to the polls for one of the first major electoral contests since the 2024 presidential election. The race is for an open seat on the state's Supreme Court. But the most talked about person in that race... The race is being seen by many as a proxy battle over the Trump administration and Elon Musk. Both Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates have sparred over Elon Musk's role in the campaign.
That's right. The Trump advisor and Tesla CEO has been campaigning for the conservative judicial candidate, Brad Schimmel. Musk's super PAC is spending big on the race. and he used his social media platform X to urge voters to support his pick for the court. Reach out to your friends and family in Wisconsin. Educate them as the importance of this race, which might not seem important, but it's actually really important.
And it could decide the fate of the country. On the other side, Democrats are hoping that voters will be turned off by Musk's involvement. Here's the candidate endorsed by Democrats, Susan Crawford. She's talking to a liberal social media influencer. He started running these attack ads against me back in February. The first ad that he ran had a picture of a different Susan Crawford in it. Somebody named Susan Crawford, not me. He doesn't know anything about this state, but...
This dynamic has helped make the contest the most expensive judicial race in history. And it's turned into a test case over the strength of Trump and Musk's support among voters. From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Colby Ickowitz. It's Monday, March 31st. Today, I talk with Post Reporter and my Democracy Team friend, Patrick Marley.
He covers voting issues from where he lives in the key swing state of Wisconsin. We break down why Elon Musk cares so much about this judicial seat, that he's giving away actual checks to registered voters. And we'll talk about what Democrats hope they can prove here. after their stinging 2024 defeat. Patrick, hi. Hello. Tell me, what is Elon Musk doing?
in this race in Wisconsin. Elon Musk is spending a lot of money. He's going to spend $20 million, maybe more, to elect Brad Schimmel. So he's running digital ads. He's doing a big field operation where he's... hired people to go door-to-door knocking on conservative voters. He and other conservatives are really focused on getting out Trump supporters. They see that as the recipe to winning here.
paying voters again? I remember that was something he was doing in the lead up to the presidential election. Yeah. So that's something he started recently where he put out a petition that says, if you oppose activist judges, sign this petition and get $100.
refer a friend and provide their contact information and get another $100. And that essentially gives him an opportunity to buy a bunch of data from people who he thinks might support Schimmel, and then he can bombard them with text messages or... other messaging to get them to come vote. And he's escalated that by now telling us that he has chosen petition signers.
and given them a million dollars. And so he's doing this lottery that we saw him do right before the presidential election, where he gives would-be supporters cash in hopes that it will help generate interest in the race. Get a victory. And it's like a legit lottery. Like people get $100 just for signing it, but there's a chance they could win a million. Exactly. Wait, Patrick, is that even legal?
Well, that's a good question. After the first giveaway, Musk announced that he was going to come to the state and give another $1 million check to two voters in the state. That prompted the attorney general of the state, Josh Call, he's a Democrat, to file a lawsuit arguing that it violated an anti-voting bribery statute in the state that says you can't give something of value to someone for voting.
That case moved through the weekend and got to the state Supreme Court, but really nobody took up the attorney general on his request. And so Musk was able to give out more money. He held a rally on Sunday in Green Bay. Everybody, thanks for coming. Musk is there in a foam cheese head that you wear at a Green Bay Packers game. What do you think of my hat? He's in front of a giant flag.
He's got a crowd of a couple thousand people in MAGA gear. And early on in the event, he held up the oversized check. But let me first hand out two $1 million checks in appreciation. Had two people come up. Okay, so the first check goes to Nicholas Jacobs. Handed them the money, which he said was just a way to bring attention to what is a low turnout race that he's trying to get. the media to pay attention to this stuff so that voters know that there's an election.
You know, the reason for the checks is that it's really just to get attention. We need to get attention. And somewhat inevitably, when I do these things, it causes the legacy media to kind of lose their minds. After Elon Musk handed out these two $1 million checks, he announced another way that he's going to be giving voters money, and that is for them to go out into their neighborhoods, find people who can vote.
get them to hold a picture of Brad Schimmel, the candidate he supports, and give a thumbs up. If they take a photo of that and provide it to Musk's pack, he'll give them $20. So it's another way to use cash to try to generate interest in the race.
So Patrick, Elon Musk is saying this race is really important. What is he talking about? What's at stake in a state-level judicial race? So Elon Musk the other day hosted a live stream on... x the social media platform he owns he had brad shimmel on he had senator ron johnson on to talk about the race and to start it off elon musk talked about
why he got involved in the race. This is a very important race for many reasons. I mean, maybe the most consequential is that it will decide the congressional... districts, how congressional districts are drawn in Wisconsin. And he said it was because he feared that this court, if the liberals maintain their control of it, would redraw the House seats for the state and give Democrats an edge in.
running for Congress. My view, this is about preserving democracy in America and not having ridiculous districts drawn that effectively disenfranchise voters in Wisconsin. Patrick, redistricting is complicated. Explain to us, why would the courts play a role in redrawing the maps?
So after every census, the states have to draw new maps to account for population changes and make sure all of their legislative districts have equal populations and all of their congressional districts have equal population. And as it happens, who draws the lines gets to determine a lot of which party has an advantage in election. So when states draw these lines, there's often a lot of legal fights because, you know, either Republicans or Democrats.
will have given themselves an edge in political races. And is that when the court comes in? Yes. Then a lawsuit is filed and it's the Wisconsin Supreme Court in this case that, I mean, they've already had two redistricting cases that were decided and they could have more. And so what is... Elon Musk's fear if a Democrat wins when it comes to redistricting.
Yeah, after the liberals took control of the court, there was a lawsuit over the state legislative maps, and the court ruled in the favor of Democrats, new lines had to be drawn for the state legislature. The Republicans worry that that's going to... come back with a lawsuit over the U.S. House seats and that the court could draw them in a way that gives Democrats two more seats from the state. Right. And for Elon Musk, it's...
in part, ensuring that Republicans stay in the majority in the House. Absolutely. He says that if the Democrats take control of the House, they'll be able to thwart Trump's agenda, and he doesn't want to see that stop.
Patrick, let's take a moment and understand these candidates and their history. Let's start with Brad Schimmel. Who is he? Brad Schimmel is a... former prosecutor from waukesha county it's just a suburb of milwaukee he was the district attorney there and before that was an assistant district attorney your job title shouldn't define you but in the job i'm running for it should i'm brad schimmel and justice is my life's work use that to
get himself elected as attorney general served one term he's a republican after one term he lost and when he lost the outgoing governor scott walker appointed him as a judge in waukesha county so he's a trial court judge in that county justice for me it's not a title it's my mission statement would you consider him or would people consider him maga oh he's absolutely maga
Big supporter of Donald Trump, a loud and proud supporter of Donald Trump. He has said that he hoped that Trump would hold a rally in Wisconsin for him. That doesn't look like that's going to happen. Trump, he's formally endorsed Brad Schimmel, which... Schimmel was very excited about. And again, I know this is different in different states, but when you run for a state Supreme Court, are you running as a specific political party? Well, LOL, it's a nonpartisan race.
And I say LOL because although they don't have party designations on the ballot, there's really no fiction that it is nonpartisan. The Republican Party has endorsed Brad Schimmel, and that's... More than just saying we support him, that is actively campaigning for him. That is the full-time operation of the state Republican Party right now. Likewise with the state Democratic Party, they have endorsed...
Crawford and their sole focus right now is helping Susan Crawford win this race. So they're very partisan affairs. Well, and tell us a little bit about Susan Crawford then, the not Democrat Democrat running for this. Sure. Well, Susan Crawford worked for a Democratic governor, Jim Doyle. She was... chief counsel and held some other key positions for him she also worked for him when he was attorney general and then after she
left that office. She went to work for a private law firm that often works on liberal causes. And then a few years ago, she was elected to be a judge in Dane County, which is the county where Madison, Wisconsin is based. On the kind of ideological spectrum, where is Susan Crawford? Would you consider her like a very far-left liberal, more centrist? I mean, it's a little harder to chart her.
positions than say brad shimmel just because she hasn't been a legislator or held a job like attorney general Fair, impartial, common sense. That's Judge Susan Crawford. She has worked for unions to help them as they fought restrictions on unions in the state. She's... worked for Planned Parenthood as a lawyer. For me, being a judge is really pretty simple. There's right and there's wrong, and I'll always do the right thing for Wisconsin. So she's taken on a lot of liberal causes.
And she got endorsed by Barack Obama the other day. So, you know, the sort of usual suspects on both the Democratic and Republican side line up in expected ways in this race. So Patrick, we talked a little bit about the stakes of the race. about redistricting and the fact that the judges could have a role in redrawing congressional and legislative maps. Is that the main thing that's at stake for Musk and Trump and the MAGA brand in particular? Why else are they so?
involved in this so right before musk's political operation got involved in the wisconsin race it filed a lawsuit against the state over a law that it has that bars car manufacturers from owning dealerships. So Tesla structures its sales as direct to consumers. So they want to own these dealerships in the state. They've tried to do that. The state has said you can't. Now Tesla is suing the state to get the right to sell its cars. How much do you think that is playing into Elon Musk's interest?
in this particular race? Well, it's certainly an interest of Musk's to make that happen. He's fought this for a long time. Now he's doing it through litigation, but before that, they tried to change state law or get legislators to change the state law.
so it's it's definitely important to him at the same time you know musk has many business interests and the sales of tesla in one relatively small state are not going to make or break the company obviously he's got spacex and many things so that is to say it is a business interest of his for sure it's probably not the Biggest thing facing his business interests right now. After the break, we'll discuss how Democrats are trying to make Musk, and by extension, Schimel, the villain in this race.
Even mixing up their names at one point. You know, I have support from all over the country and it is because Elon Schimmel is trying to buy this race. We'll be right back. Okay, real talk. We're all kind of hooked on our phones. It's full of shiny apps designed to keep your attention captive forever. But there's real-life stuff to do other than scrolling, and I'm here to help. I'm Christina Quinn, the host of Try This. a podcast from The Washington Post.
The show explores solutions for life's common problems. And this season, we're learning to tame the dopamine beast and reclaim our attention in this noisy and distracting world. So let's tame the beast together. Find Try This from The Washington Post wherever you go. So, Patrick, we've talked about the Republicans and Musk's role. So let's talk about the Democrats. What has been their strategy?
their strategy is to paint brad schimmel as a pawn of elon musk and to a lesser extent a pawn of donald trump the democratic party is holding events around the state that they bill as the people versus musk town hall meetings i went to the first one they held which was in sock city a city near madison maybe 30 minutes away that's one of the swingiest places in the
certainly the swingiest county in the state. They checked out a room in the public library, 100-plus people showed up, and they just went around the room one by one. raising their concerns about what Trump is doing and what Musk is doing to the federal government. If you are concerned about what Elon Musk and Donald Trump are doing to this country, to this state and to this county, raise your hand. Ben Wickler, the chairman of the Democratic Party for the state, was leading the event.
is at the same time trying to destroy Social Security, the Veterans Administration, the Department of Education, so many things that affect working families across our state and across our country. They talked about Susan Crawford too, and... emphasized the importance of voting for her as they saw it and this is the test case whether he can file his money in to grab control of the the highest support in the state
But really, it was a session to vent about Elon Musk and Donald Trump. We can tell he wants to operate outside the law, outside the Constitution. Nobody voted for Elon Musk to be president of the United States. They see Musk as unpopular, and because he's spending so much in this race, they're trying to use that to double back on him and say, this guy's taking a chainsaw to the federal government and creating chaos. That's there.
perspective of it. Brad Schimmel is just going to do whatever he wants. And so they see this as a way to make this race all about Musk, which they think will get their base out and persuade swing voters to. have a say in this race. As to the type of person who showed up here, it was your typical Democratic voter. I mean, it was their core coalition of voters, people who were regular, reliable voters. And that's what these elections are.
about because they're much smaller turnouts than fall elections. So really the most dialed in voters are historically the ones who show up. And both sides see this race as relying on just generating the best turnout they can, getting the people who are paying attention to come out and vote. Basically, if voters are feeling angry about what Musk is doing in Washington.
they might turn out to vote against a Musk-backed candidate. That's right. They're trying to tap into all the liberal anger that they feel because they're so out of power and say, this is a concrete thing you can do to send a message to Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Are Democrats investing in this race at any way or the same level? Like, who is backing Crawford? Elon Musk, you know, he's drawing all the headlines. He is a big spender in this race. But, you know, with...
$80 million or more being spent. It's pretty even in terms of the two sides spending the money. And Crawford's gotten money either directly or through the state party from some big-name billionaires as well. you know jb pritzker the governor of illinois the co-founder of linkedin reed hoffman who often spends for liberals george soros his you know long-time supporter of democratic candidates and causes he's given money in this race
And a lot of small donors. Susan Crawford has raised a lot of money. We just got a campaign finance report for her that she says shows she's raised more money than any candidate for judicial office.
us history anywhere and a lot of that money started flowing as soon as elon musk started pouring his money into the race so there was sort of this small donor response that she was able to capitalize on Republicans are quick to say, hey, look, these billionaires are helping out the Crawford team as well, which is true, but they're not doing it anywhere near the scale of Elon Musk.
all of this money and all these big name donors are going to matter in the end. Is the race going to come down to who spent the most or is it really going to come down to just what is it going to come down to, I guess? Yeah, so the money matters and it's important, but I don't think you can say whoever spends the most is the one that's going to win. The key point here is it's about even, and that's a change from the past where you had the liberals.
having a big financial advantage over the conservatives. And the spending in this race is really... quite something i think to put it into perspective you know you need to think of it like a governor's race or u.s senate race that's the spending level we're at not what you would normally see for an obscure state supreme court seat and now that the that they're kind of on an even playing field i think that um you know either candidate could win the last time you did see
The liberal candidates winning by very sizable margins, you know, 11 points, I think, in both of the last two races. This one's going to be much closer than that. Right. I mean... For Musk, you know, he's made himself, you know, the bank roller of MAGA. And it seems like people are looking at this race as the first test of Trump 2.0. And you and I have...
covered politics for a really long time. You can't merely make broad national assumptions about one race in an off year. But how much should we take away, you know, depending on who wins? What does it tell us about voter sentiment right now? Well, it is certainly the first test of Trump 2.0. There's no question about that. They're spending all this money because of how important this race is and a sense that it can give them inroads into the 2026 midterms. Trump just won all the swing states.
His team wants to continue that momentum and build it out. They did a really good job of winning by getting low propensity voters to come out. Now they're trying to use that same strategy for a much lower turnout election. There's a lot of room to grow because you have so many people who don't vote in these elections, but also it is much, much harder to get people to vote in a state Supreme Court race.
uh or they don't know the candidates donald trump's not on the ballot whether he's someone who motivates you to vote for him or against him he's not there democrats meanwhile are completely out of power in washington and they want to come back and if they can win this they can start to put the pieces back together for midterm elections that they hope that will be good for them. Now, I absolutely agree with your point that
You know, no one should overread the results here. This is just going to be one election in one state. It might tell us something, but it's not going to tell us definitively who's going to win in 2026 or anything like that. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. Patrick Marley covers voting issues for The Post. As of Monday, there's an updated tally for how much has been spent on this race.
It's now more than $90 million. That's according to the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. There are two other special elections we're paying close attention to. that are also on Tuesday. There are elections for two congressional districts in Florida. One to replace former Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, and the other to replace Trump's national security advisor, Mike Waltz.
You might recognize his name from the Signal Chat debacle. If you want to keep updated on all these contests, please subscribe to The Washington Post. Not only is it a great way to help us continue to do this work, but you can now get access to Washington Post podcasts ad-free in Apple Podcasts. Today's show was produced by Laura Benshoff. It was mixed by Sean Carter and edited by Reena Flores. Thanks to Dan Egan.
I'm Kolbie Echowitz. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post. Okay, real talk. We're all kind of hooked on our phones. It's full of shiny apps designed to keep your attention captive forever. But there's real-life stuff to do other than scrolling, and I'm here to help. I'm Christina Quinn, the host of Try This. a podcast from The Washington Post.
The show explores solutions for life's common problems. And this season, we're learning to tame the dopamine beast and reclaim our attention in this noisy and distracting world. So let's tame the beast together. Find Try This from The Washington Post wherever you go. you listen.