A political action committee linked to billionaire Elon Musk has scheduled a television advertising blitz in Wisconsin ahead of the April 1 state Supreme Court election.
The ads, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, are expected to aid conservative candidate, Wisconsin Attorney General and Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel against Democrat Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, who previously represented left-wing groups like Planned Parenthood as an attorney.
The ads are from Building America’s Future, which was linked to Musk ahead of the 2024 presidential election, and will begin running on stations around the state on Thursday through early March, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
“Available contracts posted by the Federal Communications Commission show more than $400,000 worth of ads will run in the Madison, Eau Claire, Wausau and Green Bay areas. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports more than $255,000 more will also be running in and around Milwaukee,” according to the outlet.
The report notes that while FCC data does not discuss the content of the ads, they are expected to back Schimel. On Jan. 27, Musk notably called on Wisconsinites to “vote Republican to prevent voting fraud” in a post to X, the platform he owns.
Crawford’s campaign blasted the ad buy and accused Musk of trying to “buy off Brad Schimel.”
“In D.C., Elon Musk has taken control of Americans’ private financial information and cut funding for hungry kids,”Crawford spokesperson Derrick Honeyman told the outlet. “Now, Musk is trying to buy off Brad Schimel and take over control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court so that Schimel can rubber-stamp an extreme agenda of banning abortion and cozying up to corporations.”
Schimel’s spokesperson, Jacob Fischer, slammed the attack in a statement to Breitbart News.
“Susan Crawford was caught offering two congressional seats to out-of-state Democrat billionaires and has received the backing of George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and J.B. Pritzker. Susan Crawford nationalized this race on her own,” Fischer said.
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In Wisconsin, state Supreme Court justices serve ten-year terms. While the race is nonpartisan, Republicans and Democrats in state and nationally are invested in the high-stakes race.
The election could determine not only the fate of the state, but the entire nation if Democrats have their way. The race follows a blowout Wisconsin Supreme Court election in 2023, in which liberal-leaning Janet Protasiewicz beat conservative candidate Dan Kelly and flipped the balance of the court 4-3 majority liberal. While conservatives have the chance to take back the majority once more with the retirement of liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, Democrats view the battle as a chance to push policy and redraw legislative maps that could ultimately lose Republicans two U.S. House seats and help them close in on the Republican’s slim majority.
“It could literally mean the success of President Trump’s term. It could literally mean them having the votes to bring impeachment articles against him,” Wisconsin GOP Chairman Brian Schimming told Breitbart News in an exclusive phone interview. “The implications of what happens in Wisconsin would be a political earthquake for the House of Representatives.”
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Democrats’ view of the race as a pathway to power in D.C. is not mere speculation and has been touted openly. An email invitation obtained by Breitbart News to a briefing on Jan.13 with Democrat donors, Crawford, and Wisconsin Democrat Chairman Ben Wikler has a subject line that reads: “Chance to put two more House seats in play for 2026.” Aides of Reid Hoffman notably helped to organize the event, the The New York Times reported.
“But winning 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 email reads.
The two seats are currently held by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) in the 1st Congressional District in southeast Wisconsin and Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) in the 3rd Congressional District in the western part of the battleground state.
On the state level, the court is expected to hear several high-profile cases, including a challenge to an 1849 abortion restriction (which is currently on hold by the courts), and a lawsuit against Wisconsin Act 10, a law limiting collective bargaining for public sector employees passed in 2011 by Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The April ballot also includes a proposed amendment seeking to enshrine voter ID requirements into the state constitution.
Election integrity is also of concern among conservatives. Soon after the election of Protasiewicz in 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court liberal majority notably undid a prohibition on ballot drop boxes in the state and prompted the Republican-controlled state legislature to redraw State Assembly and State Senate maps.
The race is expected to be even more expensive than the 2023 election, which shattered national spending records for a judicial contest at $56 million and brought in massive out-of-state spending.
Recent campaign filings show that left-wing billionaires are dumping larges sums of cash into the race.
Money from left-wing billionaire George Soros, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), and Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman accounted for more than 40 percent of the $4.2 million in individual contributions the Democratic Party of Wisconsin received over the past month. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin then promptly transferred $2 million to the campaign of Democrat Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford, records show.
Hoffman, a past visitor to Epstein Island, contributed $250,000, while Pritzker, a rabid supporter of abortions and transgenderism, contributed $500,000. Soros — who has backed dozens of soft-on-crime prosecutors and has been linked to defund-the-police groups, contributed $1 million to the party, the report reveals.
As for Republicans, the Wisconsin GOP reported a fundraising haul 40 times larger than what they raised for the 2023 spring election.
“We have made a conscious decision here to keep our foot on the gas, and it costs money to do that,” Schimming said.
Campaign finance reports show the Wisconsin GOP brought in $2.3 million over the past month and disbursed $1.7 million to Schimel’s campaign.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Twitter @thekat_hamilton.
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