Final four days: WI Supreme Court race state of play

Musk is in for $26m. Early voting is up 54%. Sprinting to April 1.

Here’s the state of play as we roar into the final four days of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

• Musk, who is hugely unpopular in Wisconsin, is coming to Green Bay tomorrow to campaign for Brad Schimel, holding an event where he’ll give out two million-dollar checks.

• Musk’s first post about the visit was a criminal act, because it promised entry (and checks) only to people who’d voted. Unlike his other posts this year or in 2024, this was not about signing a petition—it was conditional on voting itself. It is illegal in Wisconsin to offer something of value to induce someone to vote. He later deleted the post and put up a new post 12 hours later saying people who signed his petition could attend, which doesn’t erase the earlier felony—especially given that, during the hours of early voting before he retracted his tweet, it’s likely that there were voters induced to vote by it.

• Attorney General Kaul filed suit, noting “neither Musk nor America PAC have announced that the plan to make two $1 million payments to Wisconsin electors who have voted in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election has been cancelled.” He is asking the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals for an emergency injunction barring Musk’s event from going forward.

• Musk is in for at least $26 million: the $2m he’s promised to distribute on Sunday, one $1m check already delivered, the $3m he’s given to the WI GOP, and the $20+ million spent by his groups (America PAC and Building America’s Future). Plus, potentially, millions more from his pledge to pay $100 each for petition signatures and referrals.

• Brad Schimel has put his campaign up for sale to Elon Musk, which is unsurprising given history of selling out to campaign donors. He gave a sweetheart plea deal to a man caught with thousands of files of child pornography after taking over $5,000 in campaign cash from the man’s lawyer. While the opioid epidemic raged, Schimel refused to join a bipartisan lawsuit against opioid manufacturers—after pulling in $17,000 in pharmaceutical industry donations and becoming the only Wisconsin politician to accept money from Purdue Pharmaceutical.

• Susan Crawford is barnstorming the state, finding roaring crowds across Wisconsin. One line in her stump speech: “Never did I imagine, as a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, that one day I’d be up against the richest man in the world.”

• Early voting is way up, by about 50%, from 2023, which itself had record-breaking turnout. It’s up in both red and blue areas. This weekend, WisDems has thousands of volunteers knocking on doors. You can join here.

• This is our door hanger:

Sprinting through the tape,

Ben