Crawford Beats Schimel in Wisconsin Supreme Court Race

Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, left, and former Attorney General Brad Schimel, right, are running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April 2025. Photos courtesy of the Crawford and Schimel campaigns

More than $100 million spent and the election was over less than an hour after polls closed.

Susan Crawford has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The Dane County judge defeated Waukesha County judge and former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel in the race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court that galvanized the nation and got tremendous media coverage.

With 97% of ballots counted counted, Crawford carried 55.1% of the vote. Schimel finished with 44.9% of the vote.

Crawford will succeed liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who is retiring, which means the court will retain its 4-3 liberal majority and hold that majority until at least the spring of 2028, when the next liberal member, Rebecca Dallet, will face an election.

The outcome of the election was clear even as tens of thousands votes remain outstanding, including almost 50,000 absentee ballots in Milwaukee.

The election pitted Crawford, backed by the Democratic Party, against Schimel, a conservative backed by the Republican Party, in what was supposed to be a nonpartisan election, but seemed nearly as partisan as the November presidential election.

During her victory speech Tuesday night, Crawford said, “I will be a fair, impartial and common sense justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”

While delivering her victory speech, Crawford was flanked by the state Supreme Court’s liberal Justices Jill Karofsky, Janet Protasawiecz, Dallet and Bradley. She also thanked Schimel for a “gracious” phone call conceding the race.

At his election night party in Waukesha, Schimel told the crowd gathered that he had just conceded to Crawford. This drew boos from the audience. Schimel pushed back: “You gotta accept the results.”

“We will rise again, we will get up to fight another day, but this wasn’t our day,” Schimel said.

It was in many ways a referendum on the administration of President Donald Trump and his budget-slashing, employee-firing lieutenant, billionaire Elon Musk. Both endorsed Schimel and Musk spent an extraordinary $25 million or more to defeat Crawford, declaring of the election: “it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity.”

With the help of Musk’s unprecedented spending, the election obliterated the record for the most expensive judicial race in the nation, of some $100 million spent, with a quarter of that from Musk, though the total figures are likely to rise when a final accounting is done. That compares to what had been the national record, of $56 million, also set in Wisconsin for its 2023 Supreme Court race.

“As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin,” Crawford said during her victory speech Tuesday night. “And we won.”

The race began as a more Wisconsin-focused, if classic liberal vs. conservative election. Crawford is pro-choice and as a private attorney represented groups the fought for abortion rights, opposed the state’s voter ID law and sought to overturn the Act 10 law that decimated public worker unions. Schimel is strongly anti-abortion and supported Act 10 and the voter ID law.

Crawford served as chief legal counsel to Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, while Schimel was a loyal ally of Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Both judicial candidates also pummeled each other as soft on crime in a repetitive blitzkrieg of ads, though the high court rarely rules on criminal law.

But those issues were overshadowed in the last month or so of the campaign by the dramatic entrance of Musk as a controversial surrogate for Schimel, who welcomed the billionaire’s backing. Musk appeared at Wisconsin rallies, wore a cheesehead hat and most powerfully, dangled checks for those Wisconsin voters he hoped would back Schimel. He offered $100 checks for anyone who signed a petition opposing activist judges — a label Schimel and Republicans used against Crawford — and upped the ante by offering $1 million to two voters.

Just days before the election, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul sued to block Musk from handing out $1 million checks, arguing it was an illegal and “blatant attempt” to violate the state’s ban on election bribery. But the state Supreme Court declined to block the giveaway, after an appeals court had made a similar decision.

“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court.” Crawford said. “And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale.”

Musk’s outsized presence and Republicans ads suggesting Crawford would impede the changes going on under the Trump administration were intended to drive the turnout of Trump supporters and undoubtedly succeeded.

But the huge presence of Musk and Trump in the race also helped drive Democrats who opposed them to the polls. The Wisconsin Democratic Party countered with a “People Against Musk” campaign to turn out liberals and independents who opposed him. Schimel had predicted that his campaign needed to turn out 60% of the voters who supported Trump in November, which would have been about 1.01 million voters. The results suggest they fell short, while also driving up the anti-Trump voters.

Jeramey Jannene and Graham Kilmer contributed to this report.