Charlie Sykes laid out the stakes in Tuesday's election for an open seat on Wisconsin's Supreme Court, which he said has become a referendum on Donald Trump's presidency and Elon Musk's influence.
The president has been campaigning for conservative candidate Brad Schimel in the nominally nonpartisan race against liberal candidate Susan Crawford, and Musk has been personally and financially invested in the race, which he claims would restore "faith" in the judicial system by eliminating politics from the courts.
"Well, first of all, the irony, it burns," Sykes said, "because virtually every piece of literature supporting the conservative candidate has Donald Trump's picture on it, saying, 'We need to support the Trump agenda, we need to provide Donald Trump a support network' – so, so much for an independent judiciary. Look, the stakes in Wisconsin, of course, are very, very high. Objectively, this election will determine control of the court. It's got a 4-3 liberal majority. If Brad Schimel wins, it will flip to a 4-3 conservative majority – huge consequences for abortion rights, for congressional redistricting, public employee rights."
"But the reason we're talking about this is because it's been nationalized," Sykes said. "It's a proxy race now between Trump and the Democrats and, you know, quite frankly, it has become a referendum on Elon Musk and his money, and it's become a referendum on the first 60, 70 days of the Trump administration.
"You know, we're not California, we're not Florida, we're not New York – $100 million in a state like Wisconsin is extraordinary. It would be extraordinary for a Senate seat, much less a judicial seat, so I think that what you're seeing here is that Elon Musk is flexing his muscles. He wants to show the rest of the Republican Party that he is the biggest stick in the country, that he is the No. 1 enforcer, that he is the No. 1 influencer, and so he's got a lot riding on this, which is why he's put so much money into this race."
Wisconsin's presidential elections have long been won by razor-thin margins, but the liberal candidate won the last court race by 11 points two years ago, and if Crawford wins, that would lock in a liberal majority until at least 2028, while the majority would be on the line again next year if Schimel wins.
"Almost every major race has been decided by 20,000 votes," Sykes said, "and the Musk folks and the Republicans are testing their theory that they can turn out low-propensity Trump voters, the kind of voters who would normally sit home during a low-turnout judicial race, and so they're trying to get them to come out like they did in November. The Democrats are testing the theory that they can make this a referendum on Elon Musk and Elon Musk's attempt to buy a seat in Wisconsin. So, you know, we have these dueling theories here, and because they've never been tested out before in an election like this, nobody really knows."
"The polls have been close. Elon Musk is not particularly popular in Wisconsin. A poll taken earlier last month showed him, you know, underwater with a 41-percent approval rating, 53 percent disapprove," Sykes added. "But that was before a lot of things have happened, right? I mean, that was before we had the stories about Social Security and Medicare. That was before Signalgate. So this race, again, big, you know, has big consequences for my home state.
"But I think it's really going to shape the national narrative about the popularity of the Trump agenda. It will play into either Republican jitters about the economy and about congressional races, or it will be the moment in which Elon Musk says, you know, 'I am the master of the universe, you can send me anywhere in America with my big stick and my $26 million, and I can determine the outcome of races in swing states.'
"So it's going to be, I think, the significance will be the way it will shape the national narrative over the next few days."
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