Wisconsin’s Supreme Court will stay in the hands of liberals for the foreseeable future after far-left Dane County Judge Susan Crawford handily beat conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel in Tuesday’s nationally watched election.
With about 92 percent of the votes tallied, Crawford was leading Schimel by more than 8 percentage points — 54.2 percent to 45.8 percent — and was projected to have won the $100 million-plus contest, according to the Washington Post.
It felt like a cruel April Fool’s Day joke to pro-life conservatives, big-government reformers, and election-integrity advocates, among others on the right. And Crawford’s win has deep ramifications for next year’s midterm elections and the Democrats’ chances of taking back the U.S. House of Representatives and hobbling President Trump’s agenda.
Much at Stake
The Supreme Court race is estimated to top $100 million in spending, making it by far the most expensive state judicial race in U.S. history. The totals could double the $56 million spent on the previous record holder: the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
There was, of course, much at stake — in Wisconsin and nationally. Democrats have salivated over the likelihood that a liberal-led court could approve redrawn congressional maps with a significant Democrat tilt, giving the left an enhanced shot at taking back the House in next year’s midterms. The Crawford campaign was hit with an ethics complaint after the liberal judge was the featured speaker on a big-donor advisory Zoom call that dangled the tantalizing possibility.
“[W]inning this race could also result in Democrats being able to win two additional US House seats, half the seats needed to win control of the House in 2026,” the call’s email invitation enticed.
But the continued 4-3 liberal majority is also expected to bring some devastating blows to hard-fought conservative policies put in place over the past decade and a half in Wisconsin. The state law dramatically limiting abortion and checking the left’s push for abortion-on-demand will be gone. So, too, perhaps, the state’s Act 10 law, which curtailed public sector collective bargaining and big public sector labor unions from devouring tax dollars.
Proxy War
The Wisconsin race in many ways represented the first real electoral test of Trump’s support in the opening months of an ambitious second administration. Democrats certainly are painting it as much — with a very broad brush. The election also became a proxy war between supporters of Trump 2.0 and a Trump-hating left that has shown it will literally stop at nothing to stop the Republican president.
And one of Trump’s top advisers, tech titan Elon Musk.
Once the darling of the climate change cult for his innovative electric vehicles, the multibillionaire Tesla founder has been vilified by liberals for working with Trump to right-size a bloated federal government. In the wake of his advisory role with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has been hit with an all-out attack on his Tesla stock and Tesla dealerships and EVs.
The X owner and SpaceX creator has personally donated at least $3 million to the cause of backing Schimel, while his political action committees have spent some $17 million supporting the conservative candidate, according to reports.
Democrats have attacked the record expenditures, insisting that the billionaire was trying to “buy the election.” They have had no problems with their billionaires — Democrat Party and leftist cause sugar daddies like George Soros and Reid Hoffman — dropping millions of dollars in support of Crawford.
“Growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I would be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin,” Crawford said in her victory speech, referring to Musk, according to the Associated Press. “And we won.”
Conservatives say the loss will be deeply felt.
“Tonight’s results are disappointing and a blow for human rights and the rule of law. We mourn the lives that will be lost and the women and girls who will be harmed under a Wisconsin Supreme Court with an activist liberal majority,” Kelsey Pritchard, political communications director of Women Speak Out PAC, a partner of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement.
“Republican voters should heed this race as a warning on becoming complacent following the wins last November,” Pritchard added. “We must be engaged as we enter the mid-terms and show up to the polls next year so that the Trump Administration’s progress is not reversed, and Democrats cannot fulfill the abortion lobby’s agenda for the elimination of parental rights and all-trimester abortion funded by the taxpayer.”
In Wisconsin’s other pivotal statewide race, Jill Underly, the far-left superintendent presiding over the state’s failed public education system, defeated Brittany Kinser, supported by the GOP, Decision Desk HQ projected.
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.
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