Andy Manis/AP Photo
Candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court former Republican state attorney general Brad Schimel (left) and trial court judge Susan Crawford
On April 1, Wisconsin voters will decide the ideological bent of their state’s Supreme Court in an election that has drawn the attention and cash of Elon Musk. The two candidates vying for a ten-year term are liberal trial court judge Susan Crawford and former Republican attorney general and current trial court judge Brad Schimel.
The election is technically apolitical—the candidates don’t run as Democrats or Republicans—but in reality it’s anything but. The election comes after the retirement of liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley last year. Since a 2023 Supreme Court election, the court has had a liberal majority for the first time in over a decade. Now, Justice Bradley’s retirement and the upcoming election threaten to throw that balance back to conservatives.
The consequences of a conservative majority on the court would be wide-ranging, potentially handing conservatives victories on abortion, elections, and organized labor. That’s why the election is being flooded with cash by the world’s richest man. All in all, the election has seen more than $66 million in spending, with $13 million of that coming from groups associated with Musk. The majority of the cash, $36 million, is benefiting Schimel. Some campaign finance experts have anticipated as much as $100 million will be spent, on an off-year state Supreme Court election.
With the massive flow of national money into a state race, it’s clear that this election has consequences that will likely reverberate across the country. Political observers are also looking at the election as a referendum on the Trump administration, Elon Musk, and the Democratic Party’s ability to hold onto power in a critical swing state.
“This will be a referendum on the Trump administration thus far,” said Thomas Nelson, a Democratic county executive in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, and former majority leader of the State Assembly. “This will have a lingering effect on policymaking in the state because, just like the U.S. Supreme Court, the state Supreme Courts, particularly Wisconsin, they’re just legislative bodies. The actions that they take on legislation, on so-called questions of constitutionality, [are] similar to deliberation that occurs in legislatures. There really isn’t a lot of daylight between the two.”
AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE STAKES, two high-profile abortion cases are set to be decided before the state’s high court in coming months. One case concerns the right to abortion, with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin arguing that the state constitution enshrines the right. The second case seeks to strike down an 1849 law that arguably bans abortion in the state. For more than a year after Dobbs, the 176-year-old law came into effect, and Wisconsin abortion providers stopped providing abortion care. In 2023, abortion care in the state was allowed to resume, but that could change depending on who wins this election.
Schimel is trying to frame himself as neutral on abortion to win over moderate Wisconsin voters who support abortion rights. A 2024 poll found that a majority of Wisconsin voters, regardless of party affiliation, oppose criminalizing abortion at any stage of pregnancy. During a March 12 debate between the two candidates, Schimel tried to appeal to that majority, saying that the 1849 law was valid legislation, but also noting: “I don’t believe that it reflects the will of the people of Wisconsin today.”
When pushed to state whether he is pro- or anti-choice, Schimel continued to walk a tightrope, punting the question back to Wisconsin voters. “No judge or justice should be deciding this issue for the voters of Wisconsin,” he said. “This issue belongs in their hands.”
This pivot comes after years of Schimel’s explicitly anti-abortion statements, including in this campaign. At an event in Chilton, Wisconsin, Schimel weighed in on one of the abortion cases before the court, declaring: “There is not a constitutional right to abortion in our State Constitution. That will be a sham if they find that.”
With the massive flow of national money into a state race, it’s clear that this election has consequences that will likely reverberate across the country.
When running for state attorney general in 2014, Schimel said: “I believe that life begins at conception.” His legal work in the role backed up that view. He appealed a 2013 federal appeals court ruling on abortion to the U.S. Supreme Court, trying to overturn the blockage of a targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) law. The law would have required abortion providers to have hospital admitting privileges, a medically unnecessary administrative barrier that would have forced half of the state’s abortion clinics to close. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up the appeal.
Meanwhile, extreme anti-abortion groups like Pro-Life Wisconsin and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s Women Speak Out PAC are working against Schimel’s strategy by endorsing him and mobilizing money and canvassers to get him elected.
During the debate, the candidates also sparred over the state’s controversial Act 10 law, which severely weakens union power among public-sector employees. The bill was signed in 2011 by then-Gov. Scott Walker despite massive public opposition. In the 14 years since then, the law has cropped up in numerous court challenges.
For public-sector employees covered under the law, like teachers, nurses, and prison guards, Act 10 stripped their unions of the power to negotiate over anything but wages and limited any raises to the rate of inflation. The law also banned unions from directly deducting dues from their members’ paychecks, adding an administrative barrier to union membership. Unsurprisingly, the law squashed union power in the state. Since Act 10 was signed, Wisconsin saw the largest decline in union membership of any state.
Over the decades, Act 10 has been upheld in both state and federal courts. In 2014, a conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the law, saying that public-sector collective-bargaining power is “a creation of legislative grace and not constitutional obligation.”
Now, the law will likely be back in the hands of the state’s high court, though it’s unclear which justices will hear the case. Two of the court’s current justices have past experience that might prompt them to recuse themselves from any Act 10 cases. Liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz said during her 2023 campaign that she believes Act 10 is unconstitutional, and also that she would consider recusing herself from cases challenging the law due to her participation in protests against the law. Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn was Gov. Walker’s chief legal counsel and helped draft Act 10. When he ran in 2015, though, he declined to make any promises that he would recuse himself.
Recusals also came up during the debate between Crawford and Schimel. Tesla is currently suing Wisconsin over a decision blocking the electric-car company from opening dealerships in the state. Wisconsin has a law that prohibits manufacturers from owning dealerships, so Tesla itself cannot open its own without a different owner.
If that challenge comes to the state Supreme Court and Schimel is on the bench, he may be tempted to rule in favor of his election benefactor, Musk. During the debate, Schimel dodged a question about whether he would recuse himself.
Crawford made clear that “Elon Schimel,” as she called him, appears to be in Musk’s pocket. After Schimel visited Washington, D.C., for Trump’s inauguration, she said, “All of a sudden Elon Musk is tweeting about the race and Brad Schimel is bragging about being on his knees, wearing out his kneepads, asking for contributions.”
Musk is the biggest outside donor in the race. Part of the $13 million given to various organizations has gone to sending text messages to moderate and conservative voters, ostensibly from a Democratic group called “Progress 2028,” praising how reliably liberal Crawford is on hot-button issues. Musk-aligned groups used similar tactics in the 2024 election against Kamala Harris.
Ads in the race have focused on both candidates’ records on crimes like rape, assault, and domestic violence. The ads appeal to fears about public safety, often focusing on the most heinous crimes against children and vulnerable women. In one Schimel-sponsored ad, a voice-over says: “It’s terrifying that Susan Crawford would consider a four-year sentence appropriate for raping a child.” Crawford put out an ad in a similar vein: “That was just one time Brad Schimel let a sex predator loose on our kids.” Another Crawford ad tells the story of a “serial rapist” who could have been arrested had Schimel not waited to process a backlog of rape kits. As state Supreme Court justices, it’s likely that neither Schimel nor Crawford would see cases related to sex crimes. Despite that, ads about assault and rape are flooding the Wisconsin airwaves to appeal to voters’ fears.
Schimel wasn’t the only candidate fending off allegations of being too political. During the debate, Crawford argued that she would decide cases concerning the state’s legislative lines impartially, without handing Democrats an electoral edge.
Redistricting has been a contentious issue in the court. In 2023, the newly liberal court saw a case about the state’s legislative maps and ordered the legislature to draw up new ones, arguing that the Republican-drawn maps were unconstitutional. The Republican-controlled legislature bowed to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, passing his maps instead of attempting to draw their own. These changes have put state Democrats in a position to possibly win back the state legislature in 2026.
On the campaign trail, Crawford attended a virtual call with Democratic donors who framed the meeting around putting two more House seats in play in 2026 by altering the state’s congressional maps. The court declined to hear a case about redrawing the state’s congressional maps in 2024. Schimel and the debate moderators chastised Crawford for attending a call with an overtly political aim, though she argues that she spoke briefly and was not on the call long enough to hear discussion of congressional map-drawing.
In a statement to the Prospect, Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said that Crawford’s personal politics and beliefs won’t get in the way of her judgments on the court. “Judge Susan Crawford has spent her career focused on upholding our laws and Constitution, and fighting to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of all Wisconsinites. She understands that a judge’s duty is to set aside personal beliefs and apply the law fairly and impartially. Voters know they can trust Judge Crawford to be an independent, common-sense voice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Honeyman added.
Polling shows a close race ahead of the April 1 Election Day. Among registered voters surveyed, 38 percent say they have no opinion on Schimel, while 58 percent say the same for Crawford. Otherwise, the candidates seem mostly aligned, with similar net favorability ratings and predictable levels of support from partisan voters.
If Schimel wins, it will be a reminder that Trump and Musk’s agenda doesn’t stop in Washington, D.C. Instead, it threatens to reshape political life on the state and local levels, too.
“I think that Democrats and progressives across the board are in a defensive posture at all levels. The sky is falling. The federal bureaucracy is being destroyed,” Nelson said about the race’s national consequences. “And it’s only a matter of time [until] we’re going to sustain direct hits on the ground in local government.”
