Elon Musk is downplaying the results of a Wisconsin state Supreme Court race that he had previously said could “determine the fate of Western civilization” after his candidate lost.
Musk poured a record $21 million into a normally low-profile and non-partisan judicial race to try to get conservative Brad Schimel elected. Despite his high-profile antics—including handing out $1 million checks to voters and wearing a cheesehead hat at a rally—liberal appellate Judge Susan Crawford prevailed in Tuesday’s race.
In a last-ditch effort to turn out the right-wing vote, Musk had told supporters that the election mattered “for the future of the world,” the AP reported. Crawford managed, however, to win districts that Donald Trump had carried in November.
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In an apparent attempt to downplay the results, Musk highlighted a Wisconsin ballot measure that enshrined voter ID laws in the state constitution.
“This was the most important thing,” he wrote in a post on X.
President Trump—who had endorsed Schimel as a “Conservative, Strong and, above all, SANE” candidate who “perfectly represented” Wisconsin values—also tried to spin the race as all coming down to the voter ID law.
“This is a BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS, MAYBE THE BIGGEST WIN OF THE NIGHT. IT SHOULD ALLOW US TO WIN WISCONSIN, LIKE I JUST DID IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, FOR MANY YEARS TO COME!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Wisconsin, however, already requires voters to show photo identification, The New York Times reported. The new amendment just makes it harder for courts or the state legislature to remove that requirement in the future.
In an interview this week with Fox News, Musk had sort-of correctly laid out what was at stake in the Wisconsin judicial election.
“The judge race will decide whether the Wisconsin [congressional] districts get redrawn,” he said. “They’re going to try to gerrymander Wisconsin to remove two Republican seats.”
In fact, the state is already so heavily gerrymandered that even though voters in Wisconsin voted about 50-50 for the two parties in November, Republicans held 75 percent of the state’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
But it’s true that after the 2030 census, the court will draw new districts that will be valid through 2041. With Crawford on the bench, liberals will have a slight majority in redrawing those districts.
“Losing this judge race has a good chance of causing Republicans to lose control of the House. If you lose the House, there will be nonstop impeachment hearings, and subpoenas,” Musk told Fox. “They’re going to do everything possible to stop the president’s agenda.”
Which would maybe be true if the census weren’t five years away—or if Trump still hasn’t left the White House by 2030.
In her victory speech, Crawford took aim at Musk.
“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. And we won,” she said.
