As 2024 got underway, Elon Musk’s electoral perspective was hardly a mystery. The billionaire was not only using the social media platform he owns to condemn Democrats and praise Republicans, he was also cozying up to Donald Trump in unsubtle ways.
But in early March, Musk nevertheless made a public declaration that didn’t appear to offer any wiggle room: In the 2024 elections, the world’s wealthiest individual wrote online, he wouldn’t be “donating money to either candidate” for president.
That was a promise he did not keep. The Washington Post recently published a final tally, based on Federal Election Commission filings, which concluded that Musk spent “at least $288 million to help elect President Donald Trump and other Republican candidates” in last year’s election cycle. Despite his public vow 11 months ago, Musk became the president’s single biggest donor.
The investments, however, did not mark the end of the contributor’s interest in campaign spending. On the contrary, it appears Musk was just getting started writing checks to advance his electoral preferences.
About a month after Election Day 2024, for example, Trump’s most generous megadonor said he was prepared to start financing primary campaigns against Democratic incumbents in Congress whom he didn’t like.
Now, as The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, a Musk-backed effort is also starting to invest in a closely watched state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.
Conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel said just recently he was hoping conservative third-party groups would start buying up TV time in the state ‘very soon.’ Ask and you shall receive. Federal records show Building America’s Future, an Elon Musk-backed dark money group, began buying TV time in Wisconsin on Monday.
According to the local report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, the Musk-backed organization “has already purchased more than $670,000 of air time for the next two weeks on TV stations throughout the state.”
That might not sound like a lot of money, especially given the sums spent in 2024, but in an off-year state Supreme Court race, that’s a significant expenditure, and there’s no reason to assume it’ll be the last.
“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,” a Crawford campaign spokesperson told the Journal Sentinel. “It’s not surprising that Schimel is groveling for the support of shady special interests — he’s already been caught begging on his knees for far-right donors to give him cash, and now Elon seems to be answering his pleas.”
The election in Wisconsin is scheduled for April 1, and it will pit Susan Crawford, generally supported by the left, and Schimel, who’s backed by the right. (The contest is technically non-partisan, which is why there are no labels related to party affiliation.) The outcome will dictate the majority on the state Supreme Court. Watch this space.
