Elon Musk is avidly attempting to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat which is coming up for election next week. He’s doing this in his usual clueless and classless way and so of course it stands to reason that a lawsuit got filed. This is happening against the background of “A Shock To MAGA Country,” which is the Wall Street Journal headline describing how a Pennsylvania county that went for Trump by 16 points voted to put the state senate seat in Democratic hands. Unless I miss my guess, this special election is the proximate cause that got Trump to wreck Elise Stefanik’s upward political path and put her on the back bench. (Psst: she’s not being “restored to leadership,” as Trump promised on social media. She resigned that and now she’s just a congress member, not a conference leader. We coulda told ya….)
With about 150 provisional and overseas ballots outstanding, the Democratic nominee, East Petersburg Mayor James Malone, is leading by 482 votes. The GOP candidate, county commission Chairman Josh Parsons, conceded Wednesday. Most of the district’s voters are Republicans, and Mr. Parsons raised more money, the local press says. So what happened?
Democrats are crowing that the outcome is a reaction to what’s happening down the road in Washington. “Tonight in Lancaster County, Pennsylvanians rejected a candidate who embraced the extremism and division coming out of DC,” wrote Gov. Josh Shapiro.
The party’s new national chair, Ken Martin, said Democrats “continue to overperform as voters join us in fighting back against the Trump-Musk agenda.” Left unsaid is what Democrats think their new Pennsylvania state Senator is supposed to do about Elon Musk, exactly.
Yet nationalizing relatively sleepy local races can be politically effective, and Democrats hope to do the same thing next week in Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election, and in two special elections for open U.S. House seats in Florida.
That is the lay of the land and clearly Donald is freaked out. So what is Musk doing in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election? A lot of show-bizzy activity which happens to be illegal as hell. At least at first blush.
That $10 million figure has since been doubled. Musk has paid $20 million at the time of this article by Charlie Sykes, who lives in Wisconsin and knows its politics like the back of his hand.
Christian Schneider observes: “if Democrats successfully paint the conservative candidate as a Musk puppet, this strategy will undoubtedly spread nationwide. If liberals succeed in defeating Schimel based on DOGE’s handiwork, it might actually be Democrats who keep Musk in the news to use his influence as a talking point in the 2026 midterms.”
On the other hand, a Schimel victory will supercharge Musk’s position as the MAGA kingmaker and enforcer.
And Musk is set to make sure that that happens. He’s got his checkbook in hand. But along comes Wisconsin’s attorney general and boy is he being a buzz-kill.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general asked a court on Friday to block billionaire Elon Musk from handing out $1 million checks to voters this weekend, just days before the state’s hotly contested Supreme Court race was to be decided.
Attorney General Josh Kaul filed the lawsuit in county circuit court to stop Musk from making the payments, which he said he would make Sunday in Wisconsin. Musk initially said in a post on his social media platform, X, that he planned to “personally hand over” $2 million to a pair of voters who have already cast their ballots in the race.
Musk later posted a clarification, saying the money will go to people who will be “spokesmen” for an online petition against “activist” judges. After first saying the event would only be open to people who had voted in the Supreme Court race, he said attendance would be limited to those who have signed the petition.
Also on Friday, Musk’s political action committee identified the recipient of its first $1 million giveaway — a Green Bay man who had donated to the Wisconsin GOP and the conservative candidate in the court race, and who has a history of posting support for President Donald Trump and his agenda.
Musk deleted the post about the Sunday giveaway from his social media platform, X, about 12 hours after he initially posted it late Thursday night. He issued the clarification about an hour later.
He had posted that he planned to give $1 million each to two voters at the event on Sunday in Green Bay, just two days before the election that will determine ideological control of the court in the battleground state.
“I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote,” Musk’s now deleted post said. “This is super important.”
Kaul asked the court to order that Musk stop promoting the Sunday giveaway and not make any future payments to Wisconsin voters. Kaul referenced the changing plans for the Sunday event in arguing that any payment to voters was a violation of state law. […]
Musk promised $100 to any registered Wisconsin voter who signed the petition or forwarded it to someone who did.
That raised questions about whether the petition violated Wisconsin law, which makes it a felony to offer, give, lend, or promise to lend or give anything of value to induce a voter to cast a ballot or not vote.
Musk changing the terms of his offer may mitigate the circumstances, but it doesn’t necessarily resolve the legal issue, said Bryna Godar, staff attorney with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“The question is whether the offers are ‘in order to induce’ people to vote or go to the polls, and there can be arguments made on either side of that question,” she said in an email.
Any legal challenge to Musk’s payments could end up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Schimel, a former attorney general, was asked about the petition on Thursday by WISN-TV.
“I, frankly, thought, ‘Should I sign that petition? I’m against activist judges, but I don’t think I should do that,’” Schimel said.
When asked about the $1 million award, Schimel said, “I don’t know what the criteria to get it was.”
Crawford’s campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman, called Musk’s announced visit to Wisconsin a “last-minute desperate distraction.”
“Wisconsinites don’t want a billionaire like Musk telling them who to vote for, and, on Tuesday, voters should reject Musk’s lackey Brad Schimel,” he said.
Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the White House election last year, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments.
A judge in Pennsylvania said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.
But that doesn’t mean that this tactic of Musk’s will be allowed to continue indefinitely. In fact, it is being challenged right now. The truth is that Elon Musk could give every voting age person in this country, about 260,000,000 people, a million dollars and still have more than enough left over for himself. Maybe that will be his next tactic? And let’s face it, we do not know and probably never will know, if Musk bought ballots in swing states. Who wouldn’t sell their ballot, especially in an impoverished home, for a few thousand or even a few hundred? Times are tough.
We have a stoned sociopath and a game show host running the country and you see the results they are generating. Sometimes I wonder if America will survive. But take heart in the wonderful election result in Pennsylvania. Take heart in the townhalls where Republicans are raked over the coals and rightfully so. Take heart in the fact that the Democrat running in Florida for Mike Waltz’s old seat is four points ahead. And most of all, take heart in the fact that Trump is freaking. He would not have clipped Elise Stefanik’s wings if he wasn’t in a panic.
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From the first block-quote: “Left unsaid is what Democrats think their new Pennsylvania state Senator is supposed to do about Elon Musk, exactly.”
I have to wonder if the Journal’s op/ed board would’ve been asking the same question *IF* the situation were reversed? I mean, let’s presume that a Democratic administration had “hired” George Soros to lead up some kind of DOGE-style operation that was wildly unpopular with the right-wing noise machine and they ginned up outrage (completely unsubstantiated by anything remotely close to real events) to lead to “TEA party”-level protests and there were some special elections in areas that had been overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic President but the voters turned out and voted for the GOP candidates. Does ANYONE think the WSJ would be asking “Left unsaid is what Republicans think their new Pennsylvania state Senator is supposed to do about George Soros, exactly?” Of course not. The WSJ’s op/ed folks would be leading the call–with this election as a kind of “warning shot”–against the administration, demanding that Soros be removed immediately (possibly even with calls for deportation and a deep investigation into his entire business operations) unless the administration is prepared to face even more losses in state and federal races.
It’s nice to see the Journal stepping up–unfortunately, they don’t really care about what’s going on; all they care about is the fact that seeing Dems in control of a state legislative body makes it all the tougher for the business community’s preferred economic agenda (undoing all of labor’s gains made since the early 1900s) to succeed. It’s not for nothing that letting 16 year-olds run heavy machinery with NO supervision is getting through red state legislatures like Arkansas and Florida not to mention “relaxing” rules regarding the number of hours a teenager can work during school months, especially on school nights–good states tend to prohibit students from working more than 4 or so hours on a school night as well as limiting 8-hour workdays to Saturdays and Sundays with very limited overtime being allowed; GOPers across the country are advocating to let kids determine how much they should be allowed to work on a school night. Of course, these are usually the same GOPers who say that “kids” shouldn’t be allowed to determine their own gender identities and have access to medical treatments that would allow them to better fit those identities–and do I really have to mention the abortion and birth control issues? (Apparently, for the GOP, a 16-year old is mentally capable of determining whether he should be able to work 12 hours after getting out of school, getting a couple of hours of sleep, then going to school and then going back to work another 12-hour shift after school that day BUT the same 16-year old boy is not mentally capable of determining that he is trans or that a 16-year old girl carrying an unwanted pregnancy should be able to get an abortion without her parents knowledge or being forced to go to a judge to be emancipated.)
Shorter Joseph : If a PA county that went for Trump by 16 points has just elected a Democrat, then the same thing could happen in ANY election from here on.
What their new PA senator is supposed to about Elon Musk he has just done: won an unexpected victory. This is making the Republicans very nervous. The more nervous they are, the better. They are more likely to make mistakes — especially these bozos.
What he’s doing in WI is illegal as f-ck and I think that wioll soon be confirmed by the court.
About this: “The truth is that Elon Musk could give every voting age person in this country, about 260,000,000 people, a million dollars and still have more than enough left over for himself.”
Um, unless the Muskrat has far more money than we’ve previously been told, I don’t think he could do any such thing and still have any money at all.
260,000,000 times 1,000,000 comes to a whopping 260,000,000,000,000 or, in regular words 260 TRILLION. Forbes reports his current worth at 348.5 (or 358.3*) billion dollars which means for him to come up with a million for every US voter would leave him deeply in debt (to the tune of more than 259 trillion dollars). Now, he could give away 1000 to every voter–that would cost him some 260 BILLION dollars (drop him out of the latest list of the Top 10 wealthiest people in the world but still far more comfortable than any of the people that his DOGE caused to be fired from their government jobs and, most likely, far more than any of the people who actually work at his own companies–which enable his fortune–would see if they *never* touched a single dime of their incomes in their entire lifetimes).
*A Forbes article (online through Forbes.lu–from Luxembourg–from an article by Forbes Belgium) notes the $358.5 billion while a Google search for “Elon Musk net worth” lists the $348.5 billion on the search page results. Either way, he still couldn’t afford $1 million to every American voter.