Stop Elon Musk's hostile takeover of Wisconsin: vote Judge Susan Crawford on Tuesday, April 1st

On April 1st, the eyes of America will once again be upon Wisconsin as Judge Susan Crawford and former Governor Scott Walker's attorney general, Brad Schimel, face off in a race that will determine control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This is a tipping point seat - whoever wins it will determine control of the court for the conservatives or liberals. Put starkly, the fate of such things like abortion rights, fair and unrigged maps, public education, and more are riding on the outcome of Wisconsin's April 1st election.

Wisconsin not long ago had another high stakes race for a supreme court seat in 2023: said race smashed spending records for a judiciary race in the state and flipped ideological control of the court from the conservatives to the liberals. Now, in 2025, the spending arms race is ever more frenzied, with far more money having been spent on this race compared to 2023.

What also makes this race different compared to 2023 is the intense attention given to it by the world's wealthiest and most terminally divorced man: Elon Musk. As of writing, he has spent ~$20 million on backing Brad Schimel in the race, with the understanding that Schimel will be a rubber stamp for Musk's business interests and anti-labor policies. Musk has gone so far as to offer bribes to voters to vote for Schimel, promoting a sweepstakes-like giveaway of a million dollars to randomly-selected voters who sign a petition against Crawford. If you read that and think, "that sounds like vote-buying to me!" You'd be right.

It's also worth pointing out that Musk's company Tesla has a lawsuit in the Wisconsin court system owing to it not being allowed to set up a dealership in the state - a case that could very well end up before Brad Schimel if he is elected to the Wisconsin supreme court. Quid pro quo - I give you a fortune in campaign donations, and you give me whatever I want. Schimel, a sitting judge in the Waukesha area at present, has also promised to support Trump's policies should he be elevated to the court.

And if you want a concrete example of that, just note that he supported Donald Trump's stunning pardon of 1500 J6 attackers (that is to say, pretty much all of them). These people violently disrupted the peaceful transfer of power, attacked and wounded over 100 police officers, and several wore shirts emblazoned with Nazi symbology and slogans, like one attacker wearing a shirt that said, "Camp Auschwitz." These people were and are fascist thugs, simple as that. And Brad Schimel supports Trump's nakedly corrupt pardon of them, because they are pro-Trump. That's it. He's openly said he'll be an empty suit for Donald Trump, and we have no reason to doubt that it's true.

I gotta be honest when I say that even as an intensely political person, I sometimes get tired of how pivotal this state is to... well, everything. As Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer put it bluntly in his own article about our upcoming judicial race, "We are so sick of this." Indeed, I had a very kind woman when I was door knocking today who told me that she was working on getting her mother to vote. Though she thought that she would ultimately vote, she also told me candidly that her mother "is exhausted." I can't say I blame her.

And yet... there's another part of me that sees this moment as a golden opportunity to strike back against the sinister machinations of the world's richest man. To tell him that he doesn't get to control everything so he can become even more disgustingly wealthy and engorged on power. In Wisconsin, we have an opportunity to tell both Musk and Trump: enough of the bullshit. We will stop you.

To borrow a phrase from Dan Shafer's article cited above: it's up to us, Wisconsin.

We go back to a question I asked in an article I published the day after Trump was inaugurated for his second term in January, "Shall the people rule?" What I said then I repeat now: it remains an open question.

If Musk can buy his way to a supreme court seat so he can further seize power, it will further affirm that democracy faces an uphill climb in this country. A victory for Brad Schimel will embolden Musk and the Republican Party that is all too happy to take his millions while eagerly doing his bidding, no questions asked. The law? Checks and balances? Mere niceties! We're all about that cash money, baby. Let's state it plainly: Judge Susan Crawford will consider what's best for Wisconsin's democracy; Brad Schimel will consider the interests of his wealthiest patron.

But I refuse to concede ground preemptively. Many are mistakenly saying that free and fair elections have already ended in America, despite the fact that the Democrats have been overperforming in most of the elections held since Trump won in November. They scoff at and patronize those of us who continue to try to defeat the Trumpists at the polls.

Trump and Musk will indeed continue to attack our election systems - more than they already have - in the near future. That is certainly true. But I refuse to give ground on this beforehand; I refuse to embrace the defeatist approach that some counsel. We have an opportunity to strike back at Musk and Trump's hostile takeover of America here, and we should use it. The defeatists are promoting an attitude that feeds an outcome - a Musk-Trump victory - that they claim to not want.

This is not to say I am satisfied with the performance of the Democrats in this crisis. The truth is I've been furious with many high profile Democrats - most notable among them is Chuck Schumer, who I think is completely out to lunch right now with his insistence on a business-as-usual approach to the assault on American democracy by the Republicans and the world's richest man.

While some Democrats, such as AOC or JB Pritzker or Tim Walz, seem to get this moment, far too many do not. As I said in another article, we are living in an ascendant dictatorship. Business-as-usual simply will not cut it.

I am soldiering through my very real anger right now to knock doors for Judge Crawford because I have seen firsthand what happens when the Republicans consolidate power in Wisconsin. As I laid out recently to a deeply-scared-but-unsure-what-to-do voter in a rural area I was canvassing in, Republicans get a lot of their dark ideas for what to do at the federal level at the state level first.

Perhaps no state has exemplified this better than Wisconsin, where the Republicans here have worked overtime to rig themselves into permanent power. They have often found themselves frustrated in such efforts only by the furious efforts of the people of this state. I've now knocked on over 100 doors for this election, in both a city and a small town, and the message I was hearing from many people was clear: they do NOT want Musk buying our elections or our court system.

Indeed, I had one voter - a retired teacher - who told me that her Trump-voting husband was going to be voting for Susan Crawford, because he was concerned about the level of influence Musk was exerting over Schimel. It's no secret why the Wisconsin Democrats have been hosting town halls under the title The People v. Musk: Musk's full-frontal assault on the federal government under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency - no such department has been authorized by Congress - has been poorly received by most Americans. According to a CNN poll taken earlier this month, 62% of Americans said Musk lacks the experience needed to oversee changes to the government, and 61% say he lacks proper judgement.

Frankly speaking: Musk is trying to brute force this election and corrupt it. Not only with his millions of spending for Schimel, but also - as mentioned earlier - by trying to bribe voters with $1 million checks, in clear violation of Wisconsin's anti-corruption laws. I will generally avoid quoting law to my blog's readers, but here is the relevant text:

12.11 Election bribery.(1) In this section, “anything of value” includes any amount of money... which exceeds $1. The prohibitions of this section apply to the distribution of material printed at public expense and available for free distribution if such materials are accompanied by a political message.(1m) Any person who does any of the following violates this chapter:(a) Offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend... anything of value... to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person, in order to induce any elector to:1. Go to or refrain from going to the polls.2. Vote or refrain from voting.3. Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.4. Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular referendum; or on account of any elector having done any of the above.

So yeah, Elon Musk isn't just trying to buy himself a seat on Wisconsin's supreme court in the form of pro-Schimel ads and paid canvassers - he is quite literally trying to buy himself a seat on Wisconsin's supreme court by bribing voters to vote for Schimel. Here's the post Musk made on Twitter saying as much:

Wisconsin, we need to reject this brazen corruption. We need to vote for Judge Susan Crawford, who I truly believe will uphold democracy in this state and not merely roll over for rich people trying to increase their wealth and power. I do not believe she will be thinking about what's good for Elon Musk when considering cases before the court. Can we honestly say the same of Brad Schimel, a man who has received a quite literally record-shattering amount of money from Elon Musk? I am being serious: nobody in American history has spent as much on a single state supreme court race as the ~$20 million Elon Musk has spent for Brad Schimel.

I've belabored the point, but I will say it again: we need to stop this.

Oh yeah, about the other statewide race we're having

Wisconsin also has a lower-profile-but-nonetheless-crucial race for state superintendent of public instruction - the leader of Wisconsin's department that oversees its public schools. Dr. Jill Underly is the incumbent, first elected in 2021. I believe Underly has done a good job at navigating public ed funding in a bitterly divided state, where Republicans control the legislature in Madison and Democrats control the governorship.

She has promoted increased state funding for public schools, with a particular focus on making sure the state supports special education funding more than it currently does. And unlike her opponent, Brittany Kinser, she opposes the attempt to illegally dismantle the Department of Education by the Trump administration - again, such an action would require action by Congress, and cannot be done simply by executive order.

Among other things, the federal Department of Education makes sure that kids with disabilities can receive an education. It also ensures that civil rights law is enforced in America's public schools. Oh yeah, and it provides just shy of 10% of public education funding for Wisconsin's schools, which is nothing to sneeze at when you consider that the legislature in Madison has not been funding public education as much as it once did. The proportion of federal support is even higher for many rural districts, such as in northern Wisconsin, an area of the state where Trump won all but a handful of counties by double digits.

Apparently, all this bothers Republicans - so chainsaw away! The consequences to America's public school children be damned. The Trump administration's attacks on the Department of Education are just one of a long litany of attempts to destroy the federal government itself, facilitated by Elon Musk's DOGE and its broccoli-topped goons. We have a simple way to fight it here in Wisconsin: re-elect Dr. Jill Underly to lead Wisconsin's public schools.

Some final musings

A frothy brew of emotions I've seen expressed both in my own circle and when door knocking is exasperation and uncertainty, with a big dose of anger. Hell, I've felt plenty of this myself! The question seems to increase in urgency as we are continuously fire hosed with stomach-churning news: what can we do?

There is no one magical solution, no one cool trick to get us out of this. Re-electing Donald Trump was a catastrophic move; so too has been Trump's mindless empowerment of Elon Musk to dismantle the federal government so Musk can further enrich himself at public expense. But a simple thing we can do is this: ensure that Donald Trump - and by extension, Elon Musk - cannot simply dictate their whims to Wisconsin. To resoundingly say to both of them: that's far enough. We can ensure that public education, labor rights, reproductive freedom and more are protected in Wisconsin. The short-term answer, then, to the question of "what can we do?" is simple: to stop Musk's hostile takeover of Wisconsin, vote Susan Crawford and Jill Underly on Tuesday, April 1st. It matters.

You can find voting resources at https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/.

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