The Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 1 may be technically nonpartisan, but it is already shaping up to be a battle between two billionaires with incompatible political worldviews: Elon Musk and George Soros.
The race appears on track to become the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history. Democrats have spent almost $18 million to boost Susan Crawford, while Republicans have spent about $12.7 million backing Brad Schimel.
Both Crawford and Schimel serve as circuit court judges and formerly worked as prosecutors. Schimel served as the Badger State’s attorney general from 2015 to 2019. Schimel has taken a “tough on crime” stance, while Crawford touts a case in which she represented Planned Parenthood.
According to NBC News, Crawford has slammed Musk, who has contributed to two political action committees backing Schimel: Building America’s Future (which spent about $2.4 million on ads in the race) and America PAC (which has spent more than $4 million). It remains unclear how much Musk personally bankrolls these PACs.
“You know, when I was a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be fighting the world’s richest man for justice in Wisconsin,” Crawford said.
Meanwhile, liberal billionaire George Soros gave $1 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party in January, while Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, gave $500,000, and Reid Hoffman, a well-known liberal donor, contributed $250,000. State campaign finance laws allow state parties to transfer cash to the candidates’ committees.
Schimel campaign spokesman Jacob Fischer slammed Crawford for accepting money from “extremists like George Soros and JB Pritzker.”
So, why are Musk and Soros pouring money into this race?
1. An Early Political Test in the Second Trump Era
Three key elections will take place on April 1, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race promises to be the most competitive.
Florida voters will elect two members to the House of Representatives, replacing Michael Waltz, a Republican who left to become President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, and Matt Gaetz, who resigned after Trump briefly nominated him to become attorney general. Both Gaetz and Waltz won with 66% of the vote in November, and their districts are likely to elect Republican candidates in April. Trump won both handily.
Trump won Wisconsin by a narrow margin, however. Trump won with less than one percent more of the vote than Vice President Kamala Harris. He prevailed with 29,397 more votes in an election of more than 3 million votes. The left-leaning candidate won the last Badger State Supreme Court election, in April 2023, by ten points (54% to the conservative candidate’s 44%).
Analysts will closely watch this race, and some will call it a bellwether for where the country is headed in the 2026 midterm elections.
2. The U.S. House of Representatives
Yes, you read that right. A Wisconsin Supreme Court race may swing the House. How? Because Democrats have been suing to change the Badger State’s redistricting in an attempt to get more left-leaning seats. Republicans currently have 218 seats in the House, while Democrats have 214. Even one seat may make the difference if the 2026 elections are close.
The Badger State’s Republican-majority Legislature drew up congressional maps that favor Republicans, but the state’s highest court threw those out as unconstitutional. As a compromise, the legislature passed maps drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Even though Evers signed those maps into law on Feb. 19, he urged the court to take up a legal challenge from the Elias Law Group, Politico reported.
Republicans hold six of Wisconsin’s eight congressional districts, with only two seen as competitive. The Elias Law Group’s proposal aims to make the districts more competitive.
Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer who frequently challenges election results (most recently the U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania), seems likely to challenge the maps yet again.
3. Bureaucracy or Democracy
Musk and Soros don’t just represent two conflicting political parties. They represent two contradictory approaches to government.
As I exposed in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” Soros’ nonprofit, the Open Society Foundations, helps to bankroll a network of leftist groups that staffed and advised the Biden administration, pushing woke priorities on the American people through the bureaucracy.
A preference for technocratic government—trust in “experts” more than in the voters and their elected representatives—forms a key part of the woke “progressive” mentality.
This approach helps explain why the deep state exists. A whopping 64% of Washington, D.C.-based federal bureaucrats who voted for Harris in the last election said they would not follow a lawful Trump order if they considered it bad policy.
Soros favors bureaucracy because the “experts” often align with him ideologically.
Meanwhile, Musk has brought his approach to creative destruction into the government with the Department of Government Efficiency.
Madison is not Washington, D.C., but these basic approaches to government are at odds in the Badger State, just as they are in the nation’s capital.
