Wisconsin Refuses to Be Bought by World’s Richest Man
Liberal candidate Susan Crawford won the state’s Supreme Court election—and I just can’t believe Elon Musk's screaming about the end of 'Western civilization' if his candidate lost didn’t work!
Photo: Getty Images Politics
Elon Musk spent about $25 million on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race on Tuesday, only to lose in spectacularly embarrassing fashion. The race was called within a couple of hours of polls closing, with liberal candidate Susan Crawford, a Dane County Court judge who’s formerly represented clients like Planned Parenthood, defeating Schimel by about nine points. With Crawford’s election to a 10-year term, liberals now maintain their 4-3 majority.
In Crawford’s victory speech, she took a pointed jab at Musk’s naked attempts to buy the court—which, on Election Day, included offering $50 to anyone who took a photo with a Wisconsin resident outside their local polling place and, at a rally for Schimel on Sunday, handing out $1 million checks to two voters. Beyond Musk’s cash giveaway offers, his PACs harassed Wisconsin voters by texting them photos of Emily Ratajkowski in a bikini to get their “attention,” and pretending to be aligned with Crawford to misinform people about her positions. “Today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” Crawford said on Tuesday night. “Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”
But perhaps the most scathing message Wisconsinites sent to Musk wasn’t their rejection of his money—it was their rejection of him as a personality. Musk’s desperate, highly personal campaign efforts for Schimel, including rallying for him on Sunday night while wearing a block of cheese on his head, conjoined them into a singular, deeply cringe entity in the eyes of the electorate. Schimel ran about five points behind the only other statewide Republican candidate on Tuesday. Crawford even won Brown County, where Musk rallied voters on Sunday, after Trump won that county by eight points in November.
Here’s a pitch to Republicans: Please, please, please keep sending this guy on the campaign trail in swing states and swing districts across the country. Hell, send him to deep-red districts!
Elon’s involvement in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race cost his candidate around 5% of the vote–even though he spent $25 million dollars on his behalf.
Elon’s endorsee ran 5 points behind the other statewide Republican candidate. That’s an unbelievably negative return on investment.
— Max Berger (@maxberger.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 11:15 PM
In the aftermath of Crawford’s resounding victory, Musk didn’t tweet for over three hours, which is a remarkably long time for the 53-year-old father of 14, who averages at least a dozen or so tweets per hour. Musk on Sunday night said the Wisconsin Supreme Court race could decide “the course of Western civilization,” pointing specifically to how the court could soon rule on redrawing the state’s wildly gerrymandered congressional map. (Speaking of Musk’s invocation of “western civilization,” all I’ll say is… that is exactly something that someone who “accidentally” hit a Nazi salute would bring up!) Wisconsin’s map currently gives Republicans a 6-2 majority, but could potentially be redrawn to give Democrats two more seats—and, consequently, control of the U.S. House. If Democrats retake the House, Musk is likely to face an onslaught of investigations scrutinizing his corrupt role in the Trump administration as well as the $38 billion in federal funding his businesses hoard.