WAUKESHA, Wis. — The liberal-leaning candidate is projected to win a high-profile and historically expensive election in Wisconsin on Tuesday, protecting progressive majority control of the battleground state’s Supreme Court, which is likely to rule on crucial issues like congressional redistricting, voting and labor rights, and abortion.
The Associated Press projects that Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford will defeat Brad Schimel, a former state attorney general who currently serves as a state circuit court judge in Waukesha County. Schimel, the conservative-aligned candidate in the race, was endorsed by President Donald Trump.
With a massive infusion of money from Democrat-aligned and Republican-aligned groups from outside Wisconsin, which turned the race into the most expensive judicial election in the nation’s history, the contest partially transformed into a referendum on Trump’s sweeping and controversial moves during the opening months of his second tour of duty in the White House.
Also front and center in the electoral showdown was someone who, along with Trump, was not on the ballot: billionaire Elon Musk, the president’s top donor and White House adviser.
THE OTHER MAJOR ELECTIONS TODAY – IN THIS RED STATE – ARE ALSO A REFERENDUM ON TRUMP
Elon Musk speaks during a town hall on Sunday, March 30, 2025 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)
Musk, the world’s richest person and chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who has taken a buzz saw to the federal government workforce as he steers Trump’s recently created Department of Government Efficiency, dished out roughly $20 million in the Wisconsin race through aligned groups in support of Schimel.
And Musk, in a controversial move, handed out $1 million checks at a rally in Green Bay on Sunday evening to two Wisconsin voters who had already cast ballots in the contest and had signed a petition to stop “activist judges.”
Wisconsin’s Democrat state attorney general sued to block the…
