Musk May Target Other State Elections
It all depends if the billionaire's backing of Brad Schimel for Wisconsin Supreme Court succeeds.
Elon Musk speaking at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore. (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A story today in the New Yorker on the Wisconsin Supreme Court election pitting liberal Susan Crawford against conservative Brad Schimel offered much that we in Wisconsin already know, but some interesting stuff (by writer Dan Kaufman) that’s new:
-Billionaire Elon Musk‘s total spending to elect Schimel has surpassed $20 million and is likely still rising.
-For voters in heavily Republican Waukesha County, the race is all about Musk. “Eighty per cent of our canvassing interactions are about Musk,” said Matt Mareno, the chair of the Waukesha County Democratic Party.
-Out of state canvassers for Musk’s America PAC often know little about the race. One came to Mareno’s door where Mareno had a large Crawford campaign sign in his yard. “‘He had no idea who Susan Crawford was,'” Mareno noted. “‘So, like, you don’t know who’s running against your boy Brad?’ Mareno asked. The canvasser didn’t. He had been flown in from Texas and was being put up at a hotel and paid twenty-five dollars an hour.”
-The conservative group Turning Point USA is paying canvassers for Schimel much more— $250 a day.
-“Musk is planning to expand his state-based efforts by getting involved in local elections in Nevada, where he has clashed with a county commission over a tunneling project,” the story noted. The Wall Street Journal reported that other battleground states, including Arizona and Georgia, “are clamoring for him to get involved in their races, too.”
Both parties have agreed on one thing: the race has become nationalized, and is about Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. If Schimel wins, there will be more efforts by Musk and Trump to nationalize state races.
As for the writer, Dan Kaufman is a Wisconsin native who lives in Brooklyn and has written for the New Yorker and New York Times, and is author of the 2018 book, The Fall of Wisconsin, subtitled “The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics.”
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Back in the News
-
Schimel Gets Terrible Grades from Bar Association
Mar 27th, 2025 by Bruce Murphy
-
How Musk Was Recruited to Back Schimel
Mar 24th, 2025 by Bruce Murphy
-
Democrats Launch Anti-Musk Ad
Mar 5th, 2025 by Bruce Murphy
It is alarming that the Supreme Court does not put a stop to this. Musk is already doing this in multiple states around the country. It is outrageous what lengths someone will go to without a shred of integrity to ensure people who are a danger to our democracy are put into office. Those of you accepting these checks should be ashamed. God knows we are ashamed of you.
The man is a cancer on our country.
Democracy requires a citizenry willing to participate and protect it. Maybe our nation doesn’t have the critical mass needed to maintain it. Maybe we truly are consumers, not citizens.
Besides me, who else would love to smack some common sense into Leon, while at the same time separating his Dark MAGA hat (or cheesehead) and those effing sunglasses from this animatronic head?
I would gladly do some jail time for that.
Gramps, it could be the opposite of a kissing booth. Bet that would pay off the federal debt in no time.
fightingbob-
LOL!!! Fantastic idea! Someone needs to sneak this into Frump’s pile of executive orders. As we’ve seen, he will scrawl his signature (that ironically resembles a liar’s polygraph printout) on anything put in front of him!
Gramps, it also looks like his EKG after stuffing down Big Macs.
Third term? His arteries would like to have a word.
There is a series of quotes that reinforce the messages in Bruce’s important column and also add useful historic context.
First, from George Orwell: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” What is in front of our nose is that we are now living in a corrupt plutocracy with a Nazi sympathizer/richest man on earth as Co-President of the United States.
Second, from Tolstoy: “There are no conditions to which a person cannot become accustomed, especially if they see everyone around them living in the same way.” It is useful to think about what is becoming normal, what everyone is “getting used to,” that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, and, as they say, how “life goes on.”
Third, from Hannah Arendt: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” Some 40+% of the electorate supports the cruelty that is now the hallmark of American policy. As long as those cruelties are being inflicted on “the others.” And the “otherization” of whole groups continues to be used as the “shiny object” to deflect attention from our plutocratic extreme inequality.
Fourth, from historian F.W. Maitland: “We should always beware that what now lies in the past once lay in the future.” In an age now dominated by narcissists, there is little or no concern about what they will leave behind. But, in a very short time, this period will be in the “rear view mirror.”
Fifth, from George Costanza of Seinfeld: “It’s not a lie if I believe it.” This one captures the importance of each of the other four. It is no accident that a pathological liar received half of the vote in two presidential elections. Or that these votes, from some 20% of the nation’s population, are considered a “mandate” by the believers. Or that Fox News and a range of other far-right outlets produce a daily stream of lies that people want to believe.
Finally, two books that address our reality. Dan Kaufman’s “The Fall of Wisconsin” should be must reading in these times, especially Chapter Four, “The Model For The Country. That is, Wisconsin as the source and model for far-right, plutocratic triumph in America.
Then, there is “The Great Leveler” by Walter Scheidel, which contains the following sobering message: “Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Schedule shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return.”