With a week and a day to go before what has been billed as “the most important election of 2025,” President Trump is weighing in on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
In a post on Truth Social, the president has endorsed conservative candidate Brad Schimel and the voting strategy that helped Trump re-take critical swing state Wisconsin in November’s sea-change election.
“WISCONSIN: There is a very important Election for State Supreme Court on April 1st, and Early Voting is now underway,” Trump first wrote Friday on his social media platform.
Next Tuesday’s election will decide whether conservatives or leftists control Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. Policy in politically-divided Wisconsin isn’t merely on the line. A left-led court could prove pivotal in delivering the U.S. House of Representatives back to Democrats in 2026 via a court-approved redrawing of the Badger State’s congressional maps, as fat cat lib donors have pledged.
More so, Trump’s America First agenda is at stake, including his campaign to drain the swamp and clean out government corruption — efforts stymied by activist leftist judges like those on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Make no mistake: the Democratic Party is painting the race as a national referendum on Trump’s first 100 days in office, everything from taking on the administrative state to taking out the trash by deporting violent illegal immigrants.
‘Hand-Picked Voice of the Leftists’
Schimel, a Waukesha County judge who previously served as the Badger State’s attorney general, is going up against Susan Crawford, a far-left Dane County judge who is backed by record-breaking contributions from some of the most well-heeled liberal/socialists in American politics. In his Truth Social post, Trump takes aim at Crawford’s well-documented soft-on-crime record.
“Brad Schimel is running against Radical Left Liberal Susan Crawford, who has repeatedly given child molesters, rapists, women beaters, and domestic abusers ‘light’ sentences,” the president wrote. “She is the handpicked voice of the Leftists who are out to destroy your State, and our Country — And if she wins, the Movement to restore our Nation will bypass Wisconsin.”
Democratic Party sugar daddies such as George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker have dumped millions of dollars into the race thus far, as the left cries foul over political action committees tied to Trump adviser Elon Musk also spending millions on the Supreme Court race.
“This is a battle that everybody understands will determine perhaps the future for Wisconsin politics in the next — certainly for the next several years,” Pritzker said at an event Friday in Peoria, Ill., according to the Chicago Tribune. Interestingly, Pritzker has given at least a half million dollars to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, money used in the Supreme Court race, despite signing into law a 2021 bill prohibiting out-of-state campaign donations to Illinois judicial candidates.
As of late last week, spending on the race had surpassed $76 million, “with liberal candidate Susan Crawford’s TV spending accounting for nearly a third of that,” according to a WisPolitics.com review. The Crawford camp had booked nearly $23 million in ad spending, based on the publication’s tally, including about $8.3 million over the campaign’s final two weeks. Schimel’s campaign had reserved $9.5 million in ad spending, including about $1.5 million in the final two weeks.
All told, outside groups included, spending in support of Schimel hit $40.9 million compared to $35.8 million to boost Crawford, according to the news outlet’s review.
Early Voting Surges
Pushing an early-voting campaign that proved wildly successful for Trump and fellow Republicans in November’s election, the GOP is urging Wisconsin conservatives to “Swamp the Vote.” So is Trump.
“All Voters who believe in Common Sense should GET OUT TO VOTE EARLY for Brad Schimel,” the president advised.
Wisconsin voters are turning out early in heavy numbers for a spring election that traditionally elicits relatively low voter participation numbers. Local election clerks reported a surge in early, in-person voting last week, the first week of the allowance.
“More than twice as many Wisconsinites cast in-person absentee ballots on the first day of early voting for Wisconsin’s April Supreme Court election compared to the same period two years ago,” leftist, taxpayer-subsidized Wisconsin Public Radio reported on Wednesday.
The 2023 election had been the most expensive state judicial race in U.S. history.
“When combining early, in-person ballots and mail-in absentee ballots, clerks had received 85,612 absentee votes, or 28,793 more than in 2023. That works out to nearly a 51 percent increase,” WPR added.
The early-voting numbers continued to climb throughout the week, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. As of Friday, county clerks had reported that 86,641 in-person ballots had been cast. Local elections officials had received a combined 193,143 absentee ballots, according to the Elections Commission.
Early votes were much heavier in liberal bastions Dane and Milwaukee counties than at the same point in 2023. But they were up significantly in conservative suburban Milwaukee “WOW counties” — Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington — as well. Waukesha County reported nearly 15,000 in-person early votes cast as of Friday, with smaller Ozaukee and Washington reporting a combined tally of more than 9,200 early ballots.
‘In a Better Position’
American Majority Action (AMA) picked up where it left off in the 2024 election cycle, when it was part of a successful ballot-chasing campaign that helped push Trump over the top in Wisconsin and other critical swing states. As of Sunday, AMA had logged more than 50,000 door conversations with voters, made 100,000 phone calls, and sent out about 100,000 text messages, American Majority executive director Matt Batzel told The Federalist. As the conservative group did last year, AMA is looking to turn out lower-propensity voters (those who infrequently or rarely vote).
Batzel said the comparisons to 2023 are difficult because a lot of conservative voters — having lived through the rigged 2020 elections — were loathe to vote early. Many Republicans, including Trump, have changed their tune on the subject, particularly after the success of “banking votes” in the presidential election.
“We didn’t have on our side an embrace of that early-voting mentality that we saw in 2024,” Batzel said, adding that the early numbers in this year’s Supreme Court race are “pretty good for a spring election.”
“We don’t want to overestimate anything, but we do know it’s close. We’re in a better position objectively than we were in 2023 with the early-voting numbers,” he said.
The quest to sell candidates, particularly to voters who often skip low-turnout spring elections, becomes all the more challenging in a “nonpartisan” race. While the endorsements, the records and the money make the case on where Crawford and Schimel stand ideologically, there’s no “R” or “D” next to their names. And a Marquette University Law School poll earlier this month found many Wisconsin voters surveyed didn’t have an opinion on the Supreme Court candidates because they didn’t know enough about them.
Batzel says the Trump endorsement helps solidify where Schimel stands ideologically among conservative voters.
‘The Biggest Race’
Schimel understands the importance of the Trump endorsement. He told WISN 12 that he needs to get the Trump voters out to win the election.
“He won the popular vote in Wisconsin and in America, and him adding his voice to this will help me get my message out to voters in Wisconsin about restoring objectivity to the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” the conservative judge told Milwaukee’s ABC affiliate.
The Crawford campaign hasn’t had the courage to answer The Federalist’s multiple requests for comment, but it released a statement to corporate media outlets claiming, “We assumed [Schimel] had this endorsement locked up months ago.”
“Wisconsinites will reject Brad Schimel once again on April 1,” the campaign added.
Wisconsin GOP chairman Brian Schimming acknowledges the race is “very close” but the contrast between candidates couldn’t be wider.
“We’re excited. We see it all over the state,” Schimming said during a joint appearance with his state Democratic Party counterpart Ben Wikler on WISN’s Upfront, produced in partnership with WisPolitics.com. “It certainly seems to be a pretty good off-year turnout.”
“No doubt about it, it’s the biggest race in the country,” Schimming said.
Trump knows there’s a lot more than a state Supreme Court race on the line. The MAGA revolution in many ways hangs in the balance.
“By turning out and VOTING EARLY, you will be helping to Uphold the Rule of Law, Protect our Incredible Police, Secure our Beloved Constitution, Safeguard our Inalienable Rights, and PRESERVE LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL,” the president wrote in his post.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Jesus Christ is King
Comments are closed.