The Daily - Is Elon Musk Buying Today’s Election in Wisconsin?

Episode Date: April 1, 2025

On paper, the election in Wisconsin on Tuesday is about who should control the state’s highest court. In reality, it has become a referendum on Elon Musk, his agenda in Washington and his willingness to flood American politics with his money.Reid J. Epstein, who has been covering this campaign for The Times, explains why it has become the local election that everyone is watching.Guest: Reid J. Epstein, a New York Times reporter covering politics.Background reading: Tuesday’s election will reveal what’s more powerful: Elon Musk’s millions, or liberal anger at him.Mr. Musk and Tesla have a legal bone to pick with Wisconsin.The billionaire has returned to his Trump playbook in the race.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Photo: Jim Vondruska for The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily. On paper, today's election in Wisconsin is about whether Democrats or Republicans should control the state's highest court. In reality, it's become a referendum on Elon Musk, his agenda in Washington, and his willingness to flood American politics with his money. Today, my colleague Reed Epstein on the local election that everyone is watching. It's Tuesday, April 1st. You ready, Reed? I'm ready.

My phone is on do not disturb. Get that last sip of Spindrift in. I have a backup here too. We have more water. Perfect. Reid, as we know, after every presidential election, the political cognizant-y. Is that how you say that word? I think that's how you say it. I think that's an only in journalism word.

Okay. The political class, the political world, turns its attention to the first batch of special elections, these off-season races that happen when somebody retires or gets chosen to be in the president's cabinet and they leave a vacant seat. And we study these, as you know, for signs of how the voting public feels about the new president, direction of the country, and both parties. And it's a temperature-taking exercise. And we've had a few of them, even though this presidency is just a couple months old. Yeah, this really began about a week after Trump was inaugurated in a state Senate election

in Eastern Iowa in a rural Republican part of the state where the Republican who had held the seat before had won by 22 points the last time the seat was up. Safe Republican seat. A safe Republican seat. And the Democrat prevailed by four points in an election that hadn't gotten a lot of attention or investment from the parties. Wow. But it was a sign that there was some grassroots, organic enthusiasm for Democratic candidates in this new Trump era.

And fast forward to a week ago, there was another special election in Pennsylvania for another state Senate seat. This one got a little bit more attention, but not really any money. And it was a district that Donald Trump had won by 15 points last fall. And again, the Democratic candidate won. In a district where Trump won by 15 points last fall. And again, the Democratic candidate won. In a district where Trump won by 15 points. By 15 points, yeah. And the people in the party took it as evidence that there was some real anger

bubbling up about what Trump was doing in the White House that was reaching all the way down to some of these local races. Right, because what you're describing are not swing seats, which could go either way, but what sound like pretty reliable Republican red seats, so Democrats flipping them even in the context of a special election, which as you said is somewhat unusual by definition, seems meaningful. Right, and that brings us to Florida, where we have a pair of special congressional elections today to fill seats held by former congressmen who were Trump loyalists in districts where

Republicans win by 25 or 30 or 35 points typically. So these are not districts that even in 35 points typically. So these are not districts that even in a Democratic wave that the party would expect to be terribly competitive, but their candidates have out-raised the Republican favorites in these races and put a bit of a spook into House Republicans. We saw last week, Elise Stefanik, the nominee to be the ambassador to the United Nations, have her

nomination be pulled back in part because Republicans couldn't afford to have another seat vacant in case one of these special elections goes haywire. So even more evidence of what a galvanizing moment this is for Democrats, so much so that the president has asked a member of Congress who's supposed to be in his cabinet to stay in Congress for fear that one or both of these Republican held House seats in Florida might fall to Democrats. Right. There is a lot of concern on the Republican side about these House seats. I should say the concern on the Republican side is not shared by optimism on the Democratic side They do not think that they're going to win these seats, but they are enjoying Watching Republicans fret about them. And then there's the race that I've been focused on Which isn't one of these Florida elections but the contest for the deciding seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court

these Florida elections, but the contest for the deciding seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. So tell us more about that race and why it is that you have become so focused on it. Well, you may remember the court in Wisconsin has an outsized role in the state's politics. It was the place where Donald Trump just by one vote on the court in 2020 failed to reopen the state's election count in his effort to overturn the results of the election. It's a court that in upcoming months will determine the fate of abortion rights in the state. It's also likely to have a case seeking to redraw congressional district lines in Wisconsin.

Right. It punches above its weight as far as state supreme courts go in the United States. It does. These are basically super legislators on the court who will have a lot of authority for making policy that impacts Wisconsin and eventually the rest of the country. So tell us about the candidates for this race today, for that judgeship. So you have to remember this is formally a nonpartisan election, but nobody's

really fooled about which side the candidates belong to. I work as a statewide prosecutor at the Wisconsin Department of Justice. The liberal candidate is a local to. The liberal candidate is a local judge in Dane County, which includes Madison, named Susan Crawford. And she was a private practice lawyer who represented liberal causes like Planned Parenthood and the local teachers unions before she became a judge.

She is about as milk toast and bland as a political candidate gets in 2025. I'm going to ask you for your vote and thank you so much for your attention. Judge Schimel. I spent 35 years representing the people of Wisconsin. The conservative candidate is a local judge in Waukesha County named Brad Schimel. I know that Donald Trump has said some things that are bad, and I don't like hearing anyone talk that way about women.

He was the Republican attorney general of the state a couple cycles ago. But Donald Trump will appoint judges who will defend our constitution and respect our constitution. Thank you. He has spent much of his career in politics and the judiciary demonstrating his loyalty to Trump and Republicans. And he's hoping that that pays off by energizing Trump's base

to come out and vote for him today. Right. Not particularly nonpartisan this race, it seems. It is the most partisan nonpartisan race that we've had in quite a while. And Democrats really expected that this race would act like a lot of these races beforehand, where there's a reaction to the party in power, and that their voters would be more energized to come out and make a statement against the Trump administration than

Republican voters would be in confirming what was happening in Washington. Right, which is exactly what just happened in Iowa and Pennsylvania. Right, in a similar pattern to these other special elections. But then Elon Musk got involved, and we saw something in Wisconsin that we've never seen in any race anywhere else in the country, where a single donor who also happens to be the chief policy director of the White House, with his own checkbook, basically built an entire campaign for one of the president's allies. And he, so far, has spent more than $20 million.

And he's also the largest single donor to the Wisconsin Republican Party, which can then give money directly to Schimel's campaign. He has given more than 25% of all of the money spent on this race from both sides combined. And that's made this election in Wisconsin the first real test of whether Elon Musk and the millions of dollars he can direct toward an election can snuff out democratic anger that for a lot of the country is directed at him.

Right. Or whether the democratic enthusiasm to push back against what's happening in Washington can overcome Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and all of the money that Musk has directed toward them. We'll be right back. So Reid, why did Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, choose this race of all races to pour his money into right now? Well, Michael, there's a lot of theories. First, it's the biggest, most important race on the calendar until November.

So if he's gonna get involved in something, it would be this. He has a non-trivial personal financial stake in the outcome. Tesla, the car company that he is the chief executive of, is suing the state of Wisconsin over a state law that forbids Tesla from opening its own car dealerships in the state without going through a franchisee.

A lot of states have laws like this. Tesla has sued or maneuvered around them in many states where it operates, but Wisconsin had said no, and in January, Tesla filed a lawsuit, and about a week later, Musk started tweeting about the Supreme Court race. Is the thinking that this lawsuit would eventually go to the Wisconsin Supreme Court?

It would, presuming that if Musk lost at the lower courts, he would appeal, and eventually those appeals would get to the Supreme Court where a justice that he bankrolled would be in position to cast a deciding vote. Hmm. That is probably not his biggest motivation. Musk has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in his Tesla investment since Trump took over as president. He would be in position to sell more cars than he does

now in Wisconsin, but probably not enough to make up a $20 million investment in the Supreme Court race. What's more likely is that Musk is doing this to place himself as the central banker of the MAGA movement, that he is the cash behind candidates that are loyal to Donald Trump. And by doing this, if he wins, he sets a template for all of the future Republican candidates running later this year and in the midterms next year. That if you're loyal to Trump and Musk, that you can expect him to come in and finance a television and ground

game operation for your campaign. And so far, what has Musk's money gone toward exactly in Wisconsin for this race? Well, he has spent an unheard of amount of money in the state, even just on a canvassing operation for Brad Schimel. He has hired people to go door to door to pretty much hit every Trump voter in the state to remind them that if they want to see Trump's agenda enacted in Wisconsin, that they need to vote for Brad Schimel. And he is paying these people $25 an hour,

which is really an unheard of amount in politics. It's more than three times the minimum wage in Wisconsin. It is a sum that frankly, nobody else is able to match on the other side. He is also sending an unending stream of mail to Trump voters, reminding them to vote for Brad Schimel to help President Trump. And he, with a separate organization,

is bankrolling television ads that hammer Susan Crawford as soft on crime. Susan Crawford's record, disturbing and dangerous. And saying that during her time as a judge. A seven-year-old girl sexually assaulted. The attacker faced 100 years. Crawford let him off with only four. I don't regret that sentence.

A five-year-old. That she was too lenient in sentencing violent criminals. While his victim lives with the scars forever, she even let the predator live across the street from an elementary school. And again, he's also given money directly to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which can then

turn around and give it, all of it, to Brad Schimel's campaign. And all of this is just a precursor to Musk giving money directly to Wisconsin voters. To voters. To voters. He has engineered a plan where anybody who signs a petition saying that they oppose activist judges, which is the language that Republicans use to refer to judges who do anything that they don't like, gets $100 for signing the petition. Wait, wait, wait. I just want to slow you down here.

He's giving voters who sign a petition, not about this race, but about the generic idea that some judges go too far. He's paying them $100. Why? And he is paying other people money to refer people to sign this petition. I talked to a Republican mayor of a small town who said his own brother called him

and asked him to sign the petition because his brother would get $45 for it. It is a perhaps extra legal plan to get voters engaged in the race because it's against the law to pay people to vote, but it's not against the law to pay people to sign a petition in favor of a particular policy. And so that is what Musk is doing. And And to top it off among those who have signed this petition for which they receive a hundred dollars, Musk has chosen winners who he has said

will receive a million dollars. Wow. Uh, a real sort of publicity stunt to draw attention to his efforts to juice support for his candidate in this race. Hmm, it's kind of a back door, I mean, I'm gonna use this word carefully, a back door bribe to a voter?

I mean, how else to think about that? Is it legal? It's not clear if it's legal. The attorney general of Wisconsin, who's a Democrat, suggested that it's not, and he asked the state's courts to intervene to stop Elon Musk from handing out these million dollar checks. And a bit of irony that's kind of perfect for this election, the judge the case was

assigned to was Susan Crawford in Dane County, who probably set a land speed record in recusing herself from this whole episode. Eventually the state Supreme Court declined to intervene. They allowed the event to go forward without making a ruling on whether it was legal or not. This whole scheme is the sort of thing that Musk can do because he has virtually unlimited money. Hmm. I mean, that is truly astonishing. Yeah. Musk had done a test run of this proposition during the presidential campaign in Pennsylvania, but we really haven't seen anything quite to the same scale as what we're witnessing

in Wisconsin. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Elon Musk. On Sunday night, Elon Musk went to Green Bay, where he held a rally for Brad Schimmel. Hi, everybody. He walked out wearing one of those big, yellow, oversized cheeseheads. What do you think of my hat? Like you see people wearing at Green Bay Packer Games and other Wisconsin sporting events. We're obviously seeing like some crazy stuff in in in DC where uh you know it seems like the it's like any any federal judge can stop any action by the president the you know the of the United

States. This is insane like we this this has got to stop it It's got to stop at the federal level and at the state level. But let me first hand out two $1 million checks in appreciation. So... Musk went on to hand out oversized novelty checks to two winners for a million dollars each. Okay, so the first check goes to Nicholas Jacobs. One of those just happened to be the chairman of the Wisconsin College Republicans. Huh. Brings a total to three million dollar checks that he's given out just in the last week

to Wisconsinites who share his support for Brad Schimel. So Reid, how are the Democrats in Wisconsin responding to this onslaught? Because from what you have said here, it very much seems like this could potentially tip the race in the direction of Schiml, despite whatever organic democratic anger is out there. It just seems like a whole lot to counter. Well, they have pretty much turned their entire campaign into one against Elon Musk. They branded a statewide tour, The People vs. Elon Musk. Susan Crawford, the candidate, is going around the state telling people that when she was

a little girl in Chippewa Falls, she never imagined. I never could have dreamed that I'd be running against the richest man in the world. Being up against the richest man in the world, their TV ads are trained on Brad Schimel and his genuflecting toward Musk and Trump. There's one ad that's in heavy circulation. Brad Schimel is corrupt and will do anything to get on the Supreme Court. I have to invest in knee pads. I have to crawl around begging people. Please, please, please.

And who did he beg? Where they call him Knee Pad Brad because of a quote that he gave where he said he was on his knees begging donors for money. So how much does it cost to buy off a corrupt politician? Just ask Knee Pad Brad. They are working on a theory that is borne out somewhat by polling that democratic voters hate Elon Musk so much that running against him is even more effective than running against Donald Trump, which is saying something given how much democratic voters hate Trump these days. And there is, I mean, there is a real slice of voters in Wisconsin who voted for Trump, who are not a fan of Musk. There's some evidence in the polling that bears that out, that there are voters who didn't like

the way the country was going last fall and didn't like Joe Biden, and so they voted for Trump. But there's some evidence that they aren't thrilled with Elon Musk tearing the government apart or pouring $20 million into the state. And so the Democratic game plan is to find those people and get them to vote for Judge Crawford while Republicans have been pretty transparent about their plan. Schimel has said this, the state Republican party chairman has said this, that their goal is to get 60% of Trump's voters from November to come out and vote for him in this election.

And if they do that, they think they'll win that that'll be enough of enough of the voters to win. They think that no matter how angry Democrats are at Elon Musk, 60% of Trump's voters will be enough to carry the day. Reed, it seems like no matter which candidate wins this race today in Wisconsin, this is going to be a template for the next chapter of American politics, right? It's hard to imagine a world where Elon Musk doesn't apply these kinds of tactics to the midterm elections across the country in House and Senate races

to try to preserve Republican majorities and defend Trump and Trumpism. And it's hard to imagine Democrats not trying to make these races about Musk and the oligarchy and the idea that a very small number of people, really Elon Musk, have just outsized power over everything. The government, who is fired in that government, what agencies live or die, and how elections are conducted. I mean, we've seen some of that already. We've seen Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out on tour. —— Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out on tour, drawing crowds of tens of thousands of people a couple weeks ago.

No, we will not accept an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires run the government. I saw them in Las Vegas with a pretty sizable crowd that was energized and really buying into the argument about billionaires controlling the country. I think the Democrats in Washington who have gotten the most traction in opposition to Trump have adopted a message that hits that point that billionaires are controlling the country for themselves at the expense of people who rely on government programs like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.

And that is really going to be the democratic playbook for the foreseeable future, especially as Musk and other billionaires seek to influence these other races elsewhere in the country. And if Musk is able to snuff that out in Wisconsin and then elsewhere in the midterms, there's going to be a lot of hard questions for Democrats to answer about how they can be a majority party in the country. Reed, you could make the argument that all of this may end up being very clarifying for Democrats, despite all the branding problems the party has, which is if they end up running over

and over again against a billionaire who's bankrolling the other side, that the Democrats will have the makings of their own populist campaign message that the 99% of Americans who aren't billionaires need a voice against the 1% or so who are, and that there could be real long-term potency there. Well, they may have no choice but to start sounding like Bernie Sanders and making the case that they are the party in opposition to the billionaire oligarchs running the country.

You know, the question is how do they finance a party like that, that itself has been very dependent on wealthy donors that have, many of which have tried to steer the party back toward the center. It's hard for them to have it both ways, to both be the party of the masses of working people in the country and be the party that has to be financed by its own billionaires. And there may be a point in the near future where Democrats have to make a choice about which of those lanes that they want to travel on. Mm-hmm.

And Musk may be decisive in that decision-making. Musk may be making that choice for them, where they decide they have no tolerance for billionaires, even those that are friendly to them. Well, Reed, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The stock market keeps rejecting President Trump's tariffs.

On Monday, two of America's most closely watched stock indexes, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, ended the first quarter of the year with their worst declines in nearly three years. Economists say much of the blame lies with Trump's haphazard rollout of tariffs against many major trading partners and the threat of even more tariffs in the days to come. And Marine Le Pen, the current frontrunner to become France's next leader, was found guilty of embezzlement on Monday and borrowed from running for office for the next five years. The verdict effectively blocks Le Pen, an anti-immigrant nationalist politician, from

seeking the presidency in 2027, when French President Emmanuel Macron leaves office because of term limits. At the moment, polls show, Le Pen leads her nearest rival by about 10 points. Le Pen has vowed to appeal the ruling. Today's episode was produced by Muge Zadie, Michael Simon Johnson, and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Michael Benoit and Liz O'Balin, contains original music by Diane Wong, Dan Powell, and Rowan Emisto, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lanford of Wondrong. That's it for the daily.

I'm Michael Boborio. See you tomorrow.