Co-President Elon Musk is handing out gobs of cash to Wisconsinites as part of his naked effort to buy a seat on the state Supreme Court in order to get favorable rulings for his right-wing beliefs and his flailing car company.
Musk's super PAC is offering $100 to every voter who signs a BS petition that declares their "opposition to activist judges," and enters them for a chance to win a bigger $1 million prize. The gambit is similar to the scheme he ran during the 2024 campaign to help his buddy Donald Trump, in which he held $1 million sweepstakes to registered voters in swing states, which the Justice Department told him was likely illegal.
Musk on Wednesday announced the first $1 million prize winner in a misspelled post on his disinformation site X.
“Exciting to announce our first million dollar award for supporting our petition against activist judges in Wisconsin!” Musk wrote. “Next million dollar award will be announced in 2 days.”
Musk has now spent $17 million on the April 1 race between liberal nominee Susan Crawford and conservative candidate Brad Schimel in an effort to buy a seat on the state Supreme Court and flip control from liberal to conservative.
Flipping the ideological balance of the court would allow Republicans in Wisconsin to do everything from ban abortion to restrict voting rights.
Elon Musk
Musk also wants a favorable court in order to help his struggling Tesla car company win a lawsuit challenging a Wisconsin law that prohibits Tesla from selling cars directly to consumers. Current Wisconsin law requires that cars are sold through franchisees.
But Musk's meddling in the race could actually hurt Republicans more than help.
Musk is currently deeply unpopular with the Wisconsin electorate. A Marquette University Law School poll from earlier in March found just 41% of Wisconsinites had a favorable opinion of Musk, with another 53% saying that Musk is “disrupting programs required by law.”
Wisconsin Republicans have also faced angry crowds of voters at town halls who are demanding they stand up to Musk. The billionaire, with the help of his Department of Government Efficiency, is firing thousands of federal workers and making changes to programs like Social Security that imperil older and disabled Americans from receiving the benefits they have rightfully earned.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party is running ads tying Schimel to Musk.
“Brad Schimel is corrupt and will do anything to get on the Supreme Court,” a narrator says. “And who did he beg? Elon Musk: A man who needs a guaranteed vote on the Supreme Court because his company is suing the state of Wisconsin. Schimel begged, and Musk unloaded $10 million to rig the court. So how much does it cost to buy off a corrupt politician? Just ask knee-pad Brad.”
A recent state legislative special election in Pennsylvania shows just how potent an ad like that can be. On Tuesday, a Democratic candidate that ran on a platform of stopping Musk's destructive cuts to the social safety net flipped a state Senate seat in Pennsylvania that Trump won by 15 points in November—a massive upset in a district that is far more Republican than the purple state of Wisconsin.
And now a new poll in the race shows that the liberal candidate,Crawford, is ahead of conservative nominee Schimel by 8 points less than week out from the April 1 contest.
“If you don't want Musk mucking around in elections all over the country for the next decade, make sure he loses this one—and Susan Crawford wins,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler wrote in a post on X.
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