MILWAUKEE — Two record-breaking races in Wisconsin, one for state Supreme Court, the other for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, will wrap up on Tuesday as the candidates make their closing arguments and voters get ready to head to the polls if they haven’t already.
At this point in the race for the state’s highest court, you might have expected to hear each candidate tout why they are the best person for the job. While there was some of that, even more talk has been about Elon Musk.
The billionaire and senior advisor to the president took the stage on Sunday in Green Bay to make good on his promised giveaway.
“They claim to be the party of empathy, and yet they're burning Teslas and shooting up dealerships and calling for the death of the President and me. I'm like, guys, you know, that's insane,” Musk told a crowd of about 2,000 people.
Musk gave out $1 million checks Sunday to two Wisconsin voters who he said are spokespeople for his political group that is fighting so-called “activist judges.”
“The reason for the checks is that it's really just to get attention,” Musk explained. “It's like we need to get attention and it's somewhat inevitable when I do these things, it causes the legacy media to kind of lose their minds and then they'll run it on every news channel.”
Susan Crawford, the liberal-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, who has received her own campaign contributions from out-of-state billionaires, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and philanthropist George Soros, called out Musk’s giveaway.
“I think it's a sad state of affairs when we have somebody like Elon Musk, you know, outsider, billionaire, richest man in the world trying to come into Wisconsin and bribe people to vote,” Crawford told reporters. “That's really what I see happening here. And it is also really unfortunate that my opponent, Brad Schimel, seems to be complicit in the whole thing.”
Crawford spent her Saturday in Waukesha County where her opponent, Brad Schimel, who is backed by conservatives, is a current circuit court judge.
“We want to have a justice on the Supreme Court who will be fair and impartial in interpreting our laws,” Crawford said. “Who believes that our laws and Constitution exist and should be interpreted to protect the rights of every Wisconsinite.”
Schimel also spent his Saturday on the road, rallying in Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee and Ozaukee counties.
“She says, I bend my knee to Elon Musk,” Schimel replied of Crawford’s criticism. “The only being I've ever bent my knee to is my Lord and Savior. I don't bend my knee to anybody. My whole record of 35 years as a public servant demonstrates that I've enforced the law the way it's written. I've defended Wisconsin law the way it's written.”
He told reporters “Any liberal, leftist activist on the Supreme Court will dismantle everything.”
“They'll have at five years unchecked power,” Schimel added. “I'm not prepared to let that happen and that's why I've campaigned in all 72 counties and almost all of them over and over and over again because that's how we have to win this.”
Spending in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race has already shattered the previous record of $56 million spent in 2023. The now-most expensive judicial race in American history has reached $81 million according to the Brennan Center and even topped $100 million by some estimates from WisPolitics.
Meanwhile, the contest for the Department of Public Instruction has also broken spending records with a tally of $4.5 million spent so far.
