Campaigning continues Monday for Brad Schimel and Susan Crawford — the two candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court — ahead of Tuesday’s election.
Billionaire business executive Elon Musk held a town hall meeting in Green Bay on Sunday night to help his favorite in the court contest — Schimel.
Musk has already spent $20 million on TV ads and get-out-the-vote efforts supporting Waukesha County Judge Schimel in the contest with Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford. If Schimel wins, control of the state court would flip to conservatives this summer.
On Sunday night, after the current state Supreme Court failed to block Musk from doing so, he gave $1 million checks to two people who have signed his petition opposing “activist” judges.
Musk told the crowd, “I should say the reason for the checks is really just to get attention. It’s like, we need to get attention and, somewhat inevitably, when I do these things, it causes the legacy media to lose their minds.”
It’s not just journalists paying attention to Musk’s spending on voters. State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, claimed in a lawsuit filed Friday — which the Supreme Court declined on Sunday to act on right now — that Musk was illegally making payments to Wisconsin electors to vote.
On Sunday night, Musk also announced a program in which citizens going into neighborhoods to recruit voters for Schimel would be paid $20. Musk said the new effort is needed because his candidate may be trailing in the race.
"We gotta pull a rabbit out of the hat, next level. Actually, we need a steady stream of rabbits out of the hat, like it’s an arc of rabbits flying through the air, and landing in a voting booth,” Musk said, laughing.
Charlotte Rasmussen said she’s already voted for Schimel, saying, “Well, he’s just a very decent person, and I knew him when he was attorney general with Walker. So, he’s done a great job.”
In late 2018, after Tony Evers, a Democrat, defeated Scott Walker, a Republican, in the governor’s race, and Kaul had unseated Schimel as attorney general, Walker appointed Schimel to a Waukesha County judgeship.
Rasmussen says she hasn’t paid much attention to the controversy over Musk paying voters but says she’s OK with it: “He wouldn’t be doing something that was illegal.”
A few hundred people who protested outside the Musk town hall have a different view of the billionaire, who is also helping President Trump lay off, or fire, many federal workers and cut spending for numerous programs.
One of the protesters, newly elected state Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner, says cutting the federal budget is being felt in his community of Green Bay, with a $46 million hole in the city budget and layoffs for local National Weather Service employees.
Rivera-Wagner's message for Musk: “Come here, make the case, try to get voters. We’re not telling people they can’t campaign in Green Bay. But the idea that you have to buy a Supreme Court seat by bribing voters while you’re cutting their jobs in our city is unacceptable.”
Also at the protest was Milwaukee college student Ana Wilson, a member of the College Democrats of Wisconsin.
Wilson said, “I’m a big-time Crawford supporter. We need someone who is a common-sense judge and puts the community first, before any political gain or political agenda.”
A Crawford spokesperson says if elected, Schimel would guarantee Musk’s companies have favorable rulings. Musk has filed a lawsuit that would allow the sale of his Tesla cars in Wisconsin, instead of buyers having to go to Illinois or Minnesota to pick up the electric vehicles.
Polling places open Tuesday at 7 a.m. for the Supreme Court contest and other elections on the ballot.
