Wisconsin residents voted on Tuesday to elect Susan Crawford as the next member of their state supreme court, according to the Associated Press, which declared Crawford the winner.
The vote will put the liberals in charge of the state’s highest court during a time when the court’s decisions on congressional redistricting in the state could very well lead to more House seats for Democrats.
While Wisconsin judicial races are nominally nonpartisan, the official backing of political parties for both candidates left little doubt about how they would be making their rulings if seated on the court.
In addition to the issue of congressional redistricting, the candidates were also sharply divided on abortion. Schimel is known to be a practicing Catholic with involvement in the right-to-life cause. Crawford, on the other hand, has represented Planned Parenthood in court as a lawyer in prior private practice.
The election is seen as a bellwether for the GOP’s future prospects during the 2026 midterms, when the party in power historically has a tough time maintaining control of the legislature. Republicans currently have a razor-thin majority in the House, which prompted President Donald Trump to pull the nomination of Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for her to remain a member of Congress.
Known for being the most competitive of swing states, Wisconsin was won by Trump in 2024 by fewer than 30,000 votes. The pivotal nature of the Wisconsin race prompted an unprecedented amount of outside money to flood the state from both Republicans and Democrats.
Groups affiliated with tech industrialist Elon Musk spent at least $18.2 million, whereas liberal billionaire George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, doled out millions of their own. In total, spending on the race has exceeded $90 million and could very well top $100 million when the dust settles.
Despite the plethora of money from liberal billionaires, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, portrayed the election as a rebuke of Musk, posting on X, “Wisconsin beat the billionaire.”
Taking a page out of his 2024 presidential playbook, Musk visited Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Sunday, for a rally, at which he gave out two $1 million checks to Wisconsin voters and donned a cheesehead hat.
President Donald Trump also weighed in on the race on Tuesday. Posting on Truth Social, the president endorsed Schimel and voiced his support for a state referendum to amend the state constitution to require voter ID. The referendum passed, and it was celebrated by Elon Musk on X.
Wisconsin already required voters to show voter identification in the form of photo ID when requesting a ballot or at the polls. Acceptable forms of ID include a Wisconsin’s driver’s license or a passport. Enshrining the requirement into the state constitution would prevent a liberal state Supreme Court from ruling the voter ID law unconstitutional.
