Wisconsin voters repudiate Musk and Trump

Marsha Rummel

Posted April 6, 2025

The most expensive judicial election in US history concluded on April 1st with liberal Dane County Circuit Court judge Susan Crawford winning a position on the nonpartisan Wisconsin Supreme Court by a decisive 10-point margin, maintaining the 4-3 liberal majority won in 2023. The combined expenditure of both campaigns this year is estimated at almost $100 million, up from $50 million in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

The loud message heard from Wisconsin voters on Tuesday is that the court is not for sale.

Susan Crawford’s victory was a massive repudiation of billionaire Elon Musk’s unprecedented $20M+ individual and PAC investment in support of conservative Republican and former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel. Musk parachuted into Green Bay, Wisconsin, the weekend before the election, donned a cheesehead hat, and gave out $1 million checks from his America PAC to two voters. Through his PAC, he had already offered $100 to voters who signed a petition opposing “activist judges” — a violation of state election anti-bribery laws.

Elon Musk’s humiliating defeat gives lie to the Republican Party’s argument that Musk’s intervention and money would inspire low-propensity voters to show up. Instead, Musk’s intervention pumped up popular disgust and record-breaking voter turnouts to defeat Trump’s nominee.

The historically large numbers of voters in Milwaukee and Dane County/Madison and notable swings for Crawford in every county in the state in a spring election with traditionally low voter turnouts is a referendum on Elon Musk, who is the face of Trump’s reign of chaos. Seven polling places in Milwaukee ran out of ballots that had to be replenished during the evening rush.

Election results in Wisconsin and elsewhere indicate voters are rejecting Trump’s efforts to consolidate power in all branches of government and transfer wealth from the working class to the 1% through ferocious attacks on the civil rights and well-being of the majority of Americans.

Lessons of this moment in Wisconsin.

Maintaining the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court provided a much-needed lifting of existential dread for progressive voters. Crawford’s victory means that key upcoming court decisions will be pro-women, pro-worker and pro-democracy. In the next term, the Court will clarify the legality of abortion, review a recent lower court ruling to overturn WI Act 10, a law that abolished collective bargaining rights for most public sector employees in 2011, and potentially redraw Congressional maps.

Musk’s attacks on so-called waste in federal agencies in order to pay for $4 trillion in tax cuts have alarmed voters who are showing up to town hall meetings (and empty chair town hall meetings) and attending rallies to share their opposition to dismantling government services.

The huge turnouts at the Fighting Oligarchy Tours with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the nationwide Hands Off rallies this weekend (with 29 events scheduled in Wisconsin alone!) are more evidence that the people are leading the way. The labor movement is calling for Hands off our Social Security. Hands off our public schools. Hands off our Medicare. Hands off our jobs. And Hands off our unions and our contracts!

Elon Musk (and his Tesla brand) offers a popular target to organize around. The majority of people polled strongly dislike him. And Musk’s devastating defeat might encourage Trump to pull the plug on his vicious, unelected co-president which could slow down the firing of government workers and cuts to federal offices, programs and services.

But even if Musk steps off the political main stage, the threat of authoritarianism lurching toward fascism increases with Trump’s recent Executive Order to strip the right to organize from hundreds of thousands of federal workers, not to mention his vicious assault on the civil rights of immigrant workers and students. The destruction of labor rights is a hallmark of fascist regimes.

Progressives and socialists must demand that the Democratic Party protect working-class people from the harm raining down on them, while keeping up mass mobilizations and bottom-up organizing to defeat the rightwing attacks.

Resistance is alive. In February there were over 2,000 protests nationwide. As we say in Wisconsin — Forward! To May Day and beyond.