Liberals will maintain their narrow majority on the court after Crawford’s victory in the first battleground state election of Trump’s second term.
Susan Crawford has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, NBC News projects, allowing liberals to maintain their narrow majority on the battleground state’s highest court — and defying Elon Musk after he spent millions of dollars to oppose her.
Crawford, a Dane County circuit judge who was backed by Democrats, secured a 10-year term on the court over Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit judge and a former Republican attorney general. As the first major battleground state election of President Donald Trump’s second term, the technically nonpartisan contest drew national attention and became the most expensive state Supreme Court race in U.S. history.
The outcome is a setback for Trump and his billionaire adviser, Musk. Trump endorsed Schimel in the final stretch of the race, while Musk injected himself into the center of it, spending huge sums of money, visiting Wisconsin days out from Election Day and frequently posting about the race on his X feed. In turn, Democrats and progressive groups made Musk their primary villain, attacking his influence on the race and his efforts to slash federal jobs and the government through the Department of Government Efficiency.
“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 told supporters Tuesday night. “And we won.”
In a brief concession speech, Schimel said, “I knew I had to put my all in,” but that “you gotta accept the results.”
Crawford’s victory also means liberals will maintain a 4-3 advantage on the court for at least another year heading into a term when it could decide cases about abortion rights, unions and collective bargaining rights, and congressional maps and redistricting.
Despite the more than $15 million that Musk and groups affiliated with him dropped into the race, Democrats overall held a narrow ad spending advantage, according to AdImpact.
Democratic-aligned groups spent millions of dollars blasting Musk as “trying to buy” Schimel and the election, while Crawford herself repeatedly used Musk as a foil at her campaign events. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin launched a town-hall tour dubbed “People v. Musk,” on which surrogates including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz further bashed Musk and DOGE.
Some also pointed out that Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, sued in Wisconsin this year challenging a state law banning carmakers from owning dealerships. The case could end up before the state Supreme Court.
Democrats also attacked Musk’s offer of $100 to Wisconsin voters to sign a petition to oppose “activist judges.” The Democratic state attorney general, Josh Kaul, also unsuccessfully tried to block Musk from giving $1 million to people to be “spokesmen” for the petition at a rally Sunday.
Conversely, groups on the left largely stayed away from making the race about Trump, who narrowly carried the state in two of the past three presidential elections.
The anti-Musk playbook is one that Democrats could seek to replicate in other elections this year and in the 2026 midterms.
Schimel embraced Trump in the closing days of the race, a move strategists said was intended to try to juice conservative turnout.
In addition to running ads touting Trump’s endorsement, Schimel appeared at a campaign town hall event in March with Donald Trump Jr. and told a group of canvassers from the conservative group Turning Point USA that Trump needs a “support network” around him to help him fight the myriad suits his administration has faced.
Each side tried to paint its opponent as soft on crime — even though the state Supreme Court rarely hears cases about sentencing — while Crawford also attacked Schimel in ads that focused on allegations that the state Justice Department mishandled the maintenance of thousands of rape kits under his watch as attorney general.
