Musk Accused of 'Bribing Wisconsin Voters' Ahead of State Supreme Court Election
Groups linked to world's richest man are spending big on a state-level race that has been called the "first referendum on Musk-ism" since Trump's return to White House.
The world's richest man, billionaire Elon Musk, has been accused of bribing Wisconsin voters into aligning with him politically ahead of a charged election to select a new Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, a race that Musk-backed groups have contributed millions of dollars toward.
Musk's super political action committee, America PAC, is currently circulating a petition opposing "activist judges" and offering registered Wisconsin voters $100 if they sign the petition. Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump recently pushed for a federal judge to be impeached after he ruled against the Trump administration—part of their broader attack on the federal judiciary.
Writer and commentator Dean Obeidallah reposted reporting about the petition and wrote: "Elon Musk now bribing Wisconsin voters as he seeks to BUY a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. The election is April 1. We need to win this. If you have friends in Wisconsin please urge them to vote for Judge Susan Crawford. Say NO to OLIGARCHY!"
"This is what a broken campaign finance system looks like," added former Secretary of Labor and professor at the the University of California, Berkeley Robert Reich on X.
On April 1—the final day to participate in Musk's petition—voters in Wisconsin will decide a contest between Crawford, a liberal Dane County judge, and former Republican attorney general and current Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel. The election will determine the ideological swing of the state's highest court, which since 2023 has had a liberal majority for the first time in over a decade.
According to the The New York Times, the petition from Musk serves to "drive attention from the news media, increase awareness and voter registration among conservative voters, and help America PAC collect data on the most energized Wisconsinites who are likely to turn out for the conservative candidate, Brad Schimel."
While Wisconsin Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan, meaning candidates do not run as Democrats and Republicans, the battle lines are clearly demarcated. Schimel is running "an unapologetically MAGA campaign," according to Mother Jones.
Building America's Future, a group linked to Musk, and America PAC, "have spent more than $11 million attacking progressive Judge Susan Crawford and supporting the Trump-aligned candidate Brad Schimel," Mother Jones reported on March 12. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler put the figure higher. At a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on Tuesday he told attendees that groups backed by Musk have spent $13.2 million on ads attacking Crawford, per Wisconsin Public Radio.
In addition to the stakes around the ideological bent of the court, the election also has national implications. "The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is the first referendum on Musk-ism," Wikler recently told Mother Jones. Similarly, The American Prospect reported Friday that "if Schimel wins, it will be a reminder that Trump and Musk's agenda doesn't stop in Washington, D.C."
"I think that Democrats and progressives across the board are in a defensive posture at all levels. The sky is falling. The federal bureaucracy is being destroyed," Thomas Nelson, a Democratic county executive in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, told the Prospect, speaking of the race's national consequences. "And it's only a matter of time [until] we're going to sustain direct hits on the ground in local government."
The tactic of the petition also echoes a controversial maneuver used by Musk during the 2024 presidential race, when he offered a million-dollar gift each day to a registered voter from a battleground state who has signed America PAC's petition in support of the First and Second Amendments.
