Elon Musk and other Republican billionaires are already funneling millions into Wisconsin in hopes of flipping its majority-liberal Supreme Court. And after a disastrous result for conservatives in 2023, observers expect the cash to keep flowing.
“The Republican millionaires and billionaires had their ass handed to them on a plate last time. So they got the memo,” said Brandon Scholz, former executive director of the Republican Party of Wisconsin.
Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, has spent $1 million in canvassing for conservative candidate Brad Schimel. Building America’s Future, a conservative nonprofit that Musk has previously funded, is spending more than $3 million on television ads against liberal candidate Susan Crawford. Midwest billionaires and significant GOP donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein have forked over $1.3 million to the state Republican Party and another $2.4 million in TV ads via their super PAC.
The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race garnered national interest and became the most expensive state judicial contest in American history. The 2025 race is expected to be even more expensive, with some observers predicting more than $70 million could be spent on it.
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The stakes are high: The race will decide the court’s ideological bent, which in turn could reshape district maps and rules on abortion.
“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, right? So you decide, do you want to be at the table? Then you got to open up the checkbook and put money in this race,” Scholz said.
In 2023, liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz won her seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by nearly 11 percentage points, about as decisive a margin as a statewide candidate can get in the purple state. It cemented a liberal ideological majority on the court, which proceeded to rule on gerrymandering and drop boxes.
The decision on gerrymandering resulted in new state-legislative district boundaries. It has been credited with making state-level races more competitive for Democrats, allowing them to win various races last year and potentially a majority in a state-legislative chamber this fall.
In 2023, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s chair, Ben Wikler, fundraised heavily across the country. Wisconsin campaign finance law doesn’t limit how much donors can give to state parties, which can then give unlimited amounts to candidates. Wikler and the party transferred millions to Protasiewicz’s campaign. Meanwhile, conservative candidate Daniel Kelly was adamant about not taking state party money. The Republican Party of Wisconsin spent less than $1 million on “in-kind” expenses for him, and while outside groups spent plenty, it wasn’t quite enough.
“One of the lessons that Republicans learned in 2023 is that if you lose the money game, you lose the race,” said Haley McCoy, a spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “The story of this election is they learned from not fundraising enough in 2023, and they’re seeing more big dollar donations come in on their end that they are then turning around and supporting Brad Schimel with.”
Democrats have seen some benefits to Musk’s name recognition. McCoy said small-donor fundraising increased after Musk started talking about the race.
“It’s a blessing and a curse. It’s scary because he has so much money, and so we don’t really know the full weight of what he’s willing to put into this race, but it also increases enthusiasm on our side,” McCoy said.
While Democrats have been able to fundraise from wealthy donors and out-of-staters, they say Musk is different from other partisan billionaires because “he’s demonstrated that there’s no bottom to the amount of money he’s willing to put in,” one Democratic strategist who requested anonymity to speak frankly on the matter told NOTUS.
“Some of these other donors aren’t going to write a blank check for politics,” the strategist said. “Elon will.”
America PAC did not respond to a request for comment.
Liberal-backed Crawford has so far received at least $3 million from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. That includes plenty from billionaires: $1 million from liberal funder George Soros, $500,000 from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and $250,000 from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
But some of those billionaire donors aren’t giving the same as they did before. In 2023, Hoffman had donated $2 million to the state Democratic Party by late January. In late March, another $500,000 came through. Pritzker, meanwhile, had donated $20,000 directly to Janet for Justice by late February 2023 and sent along another $1 million to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin in mid-March of that year.
Nobody NOTUS spoke to was happy about how these races have become so reliant on billionaire funding or so partisan. But nobody wants to lose.
“It’d be nice if there wasn’t the need for so many billionaires to be funding elections, but that’s not the world we live in,” the Democratic strategist said. “We can’t win elections that way. And so I don’t think anyone’s feeling good about it, but I don’t know what else to do.”
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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