Will Elon Musk’s cash splash pay off in Wisconsin?

TO GET A sense of what the Republican Party thinks of the electoral value of Elon Musk, listen to what Brad Schimel, a conservative candidate for the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, has to say about the billionaire. At an event on March 29th at an airsoft range (a more serious version of paintball) just outside Kenosha, five speakers, including Mr Schimel, spoke for over an hour about the importance of the election to the Republican cause. Mr Musk’s political action committees (PACs) have poured over $20m into the race, far more than any other donor’s. But over the course of the event, his name came up precisely zero times.

Mr Schimel went last and concluded his speech with a denunciation of big money in politics. “If we’re ever going to stop national liberal billionaires from pledging all this money into this race, we have to prove that it doesn’t work,” he said. “Why do you want people from California and Illinois and New York deciding who’s on the Wisconsin Supreme Court?” Asked afterwards by The Economist why nobody mentioned Mr Musk, Brian Schimming, the chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, replied: “Why would we?”

The race in Wisconsin, which concludes on April 1st, is in theory to pick a non-partisan judge. But nobody thinks it is anything but a political contest, and it has become the first electoral test of how Mr Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are going down with voters. On March 30th the Tesla boss appeared at an event in Green Bay, in the north of the state. He argued that the race could “affect the entire destiny of humanity”, and handed two cheques for $1m each to supporters who had apparently won a lottery. Local Republicans are delighted by his money. Mr Musk himself they seem less sure about.

Running against Mr Schimel is Susan Crawford, a circuit judge from Madison, the state capital. The winner will determine majority control of the court. That in turn will have implications for both the state and the country. The majority will be able to determine everything from the fate of Wisconsin’s 176-year-old abortion ban to maps for the state’s eight congressional districts. That is why both Mr Musk and well-heeled opponents on the left—notably George Soros and J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire governor of neighbouring Illinois—are pouring in money. So far over $80m has been spent, perhaps $25 per registered voter and far more than in any previous judicial race in America.

In normal times Ms Crawford would probably have the advantage. Wisconsin is a finely balanced state and in recent years Democrats have tended to win slightly more than they have lost, especially in off-year races. They have built a remarkable get-out-the-vote machine, particularly around Madison, where there are lots of students. In a similar race two years ago, which also determined majority control, another leftish judge, Janet Protasiewicz, won a landslide victory against a conservative. In 2018 Mr Schimel lost his race to be re-elected as attorney-general.

But Mr Musk’s involvement may change things. It is not only how much he has spent; it is also the way he has spent it. Reprising a dubious tactic he developed during last year’s presidential election, his America PAC has offered registered voters $100 to sign a petition, this one denouncing activist judges. The group has not revealed how many people have signed. Participation in the lottery for the $1m, he initially claimed in a tweet, would be limited to people who could show they had voted. That tweet was swiftly deleted after Democrats noted that paying people to vote is illegal.

Bribes or not, Mr Musk and Republicans seem to be betting that the money will help to turn out supporters of Donald Trump who would not otherwise bother to vote in a judicial race. The question is, will it be enough to overcome a backlash against Mr Musk among Democrats? Ben Wikler, the state Democratic Party chairman, wants the race to be framed as “the rule of law versus corruption by the world’s richest man”. Big protests against Mr Musk across the state seem to suggest at least some voters agree.

There is no public polling, so predicting the winner is tricky. It is clear that turn-out is already way up, which recently has tended to favour Republican candidates. At the Republican event in Kenosha a spokesman for the party, one Jefferson E. Davis, led your correspondent through early voting data showing vast increases in turn-out from the 2023 race. The biggest increases, he noted, were in Republican-held counties. If Mr Schimel wins, he will have Mr Musk largely to thank. But so too if he loses.■