The New Yorker:

Tuesday’s election, as the only statewide race in the country before November, is a crucial test for the growing backlash against the Trump Administration’s agenda.

By Dan Kaufman

In mid-January, Brad Schimel, a Wisconsin circuit-court judge running for an open seat on the state Supreme Court, flew to Washington to attend Donald Trump’s Inauguration. Schimel, a former attorney general under Republican Governor Scott Walker, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he wanted to spend “quality time with a ton of Wisconsin voters.” Three days later, Elon Musk wrote on X that, because the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court had reversed a ban on absentee-ballot drop boxes last year, it was “very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud.” (There is no evidence that drop boxes lead to voter fraud.) Schimel, who, if elected, would give conservatives a majority on the court, began dropping hints that he could use more of Musk’s help. “Elon Musk noticed this race a week and a half ago or so,” he said during a G.O.P. event in early February. “I don’t know if he’s found his checkbook, though.”

Since then, Musk has given more than twenty million dollars to organizations supporting Schimel’s election. The race, already the most expensive judicial election in American history, is likely to cost a hundred million dollars, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a nonpartisan campaign-finance watchdog. The previous record—fifty-one million dollars—was set in 2023, when Janet Protasiewicz won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, giving liberals a majority for the first time in living memory. Schimel’s opponent is Susan Crawford, a Dane County circuit judge who served as the chief legal counsel for Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, Walker’s predecessor. After Doyle left office, Crawford entered private practice, taking on a variety of progressive clients, including Planned Parenthood and the Madison teachers’ union. Both candidates are taking money from prominent billionaires, including George Soros (who has donated two million dollars to groups supporting Crawford) and Richard Uihlein, the right-wing shipping magnate (who has given nearly six million dollars to groups trying to elect Schimel). Musk’s contributions, however, have exceeded those of all the other billionaire contributors combined.

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