Elon Musk will face a referendum of sorts in next week's Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where he and his super PAC have been heavily involved in efforts to elect conservative candidate Brad Schimel.
Donald Trump's billionaire adviser has emerged as the top spender in the technically nonpartisan race, while Musk has offered voters $100 to sign a petition opposing “activist judges,” and Democratic groups and liberal candidate Susan Crawford have made the tech mogul a focal point of the campaign's final stretch, reported NBC News.
“Democrats can’t win against Trump right now,” said Wisconsin-based Republican strategist Brandon Scholz. “They can still beat the hell out of Musk.”
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Polling shows Musk, the apparent head of the Department of Government Efficiency that's slashing government jobs, is far less popular than Trump, and Scholz said Democrats risked energizing MAGA voters if they tied Schimel to the president instead of his billionaire adviser.
“I don’t think the Democrats want to draw [Schimel] to Trump," he said, "because that gives MAGA voters incentive to come out to vote."
Crawford and her backers have accused Musk of "trying to buy this election" in TV ads and claimed "Schimel always helps his big campaign donors," and the liberal judicial candidate has said at campaign events that voters "don’t want Elon Musk controlling our Supreme Court.”
“Voters are very animated by Musk,” said her campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman. “That’s why you see us mentioning Musk in the campaign.”
Musk endorsed Schimel on his X platform in January just days after Tesla filed a lawsuit challenging a Wisconsin law banning carmakers from owning dealerships in a case could end up before the state Supreme Court, and Democrats are eying the race – the most expensive of its kind in U.S. history – as a test of their anti-Musk strategy.
“This is where you send a message,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at a campaign event for Crawford. "[We're] cleaning the house — one chunk at a time, and America’s first chunk of cleaning is Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, April 1."
Polls show a slim majority of Wisconsin voters view Musk unfavorably, while they're generally split on Trump, and the president has made a late entrance into the race with a Trump Social post last week urging supporters to back Schimel, whose campaign has run ads saying that he would “support president Trump’s agenda.”
“Schimel needs Trump to win, he needs every MAGA voter to turn out to win,” Scholz reportedly said. “He wants to draw close to Trump.”