You Will Never Guess Who Wants to Buy Another Election (It’s Elon Musk)
Over the next few years, the Wisconsin Supreme Court could rule on several key issues relevant to Elon Musk’s wealth. He is investing accordingly.
Fresh off a quarter-billion-dollar investment in President Donald Trump’s campaign that earned him a literal and figurative seat in the White House, Elon Musk has settled on his next big purchase: the election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which will take place about six weeks from now on April 1.
As The New York Times reported this week, a Musk-affiliated group called Building America’s Future recently began running TV ads to promote Brad Schimel, the state Republican Party-endorsed candidate for an open seat on the seven-member court. Now, the even more generically-named America PAC, which Musk funds almost entirely himself, has entered the fray with a separate $1 million spend on canvassing and field operations in support of Schimel, according to a report filed with state regulators on Wednesday.
Wisconsin judicial elections are nominally nonpartisan, but in a purple state where power is split between a Democratic governor and Republican lawmakers who are among the nation’s most ruthless gerrymanderers, its supreme court elections are always partisan dogfights that attract tens of millions of dollars in spending. Democrats on the court hold a 4-3 majority, but the seat that Schimel and his Democratic opponent, Susan Crawford, are competing for is held by a retiring liberal justice, which means that her replacement will tip the state’s overall balance of power for at least the next 18 months. As Alex Burness explains at Bolts, even if Wisconsin’s much-litigated electoral maps do not change for the balance of the decade, the winner of this seat will be just halfway through their ten-year term when the 2030 Census rolls around, at which point the fight over maps will begin all over again.
Musk’s interest in the race, however, is more easily explained by some of the other, slightly lower-profile questions that the Wisconsin Supreme Court will (or might) answer soon. For example, currently pending before the high court is a challenge to a Republican-backed state law that limits the rights of Wisconsin workers to organize, which Musk is generally opposed to whenever and wherever it takes place. Tesla is the largest U.S. car manufacturer whose workers are not represented by a union, and Musk has featured prominently in the company’s efforts to preserve the status quo every time a union drive takes place.
Perhaps most conspicuously, Tesla is fighting in state court for an exemption to a Wisconsin law that bars vehicle manufacturers from selling directly to consumers, as Tesla does. As a result, Wisconsinites can check out Tesla vehicles in “galleries” in Milwaukee and Madison, but have to go to a state that allows direct-to-consumer sales in order to drive one home.
The case is a long way from the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but as Musk looks to boost slumping global Tesla sales by any means necessary, there are real stakes here: In 2023, Tesla says it sold between 3,000 and 4,000 vehicles to Wisconsin residents, and believes it could improve on that number if prospective buyers didn’t have to jump through the hoop of schlepping to a dealership in Illinois or Minnesota in order to make a purchase.
No one who is not a revanchist billionaire thinks it is good that revanchist billionaires are free to airdrop suitcases full of cash on democratic elections in order to maintain or improve their positions on next year’s Forbes list. But as Madiba Dennie wrote in Balls & Strikes this week, the conservative legal movement has spent decades working to remove pesky constraints on their corporate donors’ ability to participate in politics in ways that everyday voters simply cannot. Relative to presidential elections, the modest price tags attached to state and local elections make them pretty attractive targets for people as wealthy as Musk. If you were in his shoes, throwing a million dollars at a court that could someday allow you to open dealerships in a state home to 6 million people is, if you think about it, a pretty savvy investment.
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Any candidate or party taking 1 cent from Musk & Co is a fellow travelling fascist and needs to be exposed and trounced by its/his/her competitors continuously, loudly, and bluntly.
Why hasn't Canada revoked Musks citizenship? He's clearly criminal.