Indeed, the 53-year-old billionaire gave $20m to the Republican-backed conservative candidate, and attended a rally with him over the weekend where he handed out one million dollar cheques to two supporters – something critics alleged amounted to trying to buy the outcome of the contest.
As it was, despite all of that money, and despite the backing of both Musk and Donald Trump, their candidate, Brad Schimel, was handily beaten by Democrat-backed Susan Crawford, a county judge from Chippewa Falls, a town with a population of less than 15,000 people.
Musk wears a cheese hat – a symbol of Wisconsin – as he holds a rally in support of the conservative state supreme court candidate (Photo: Vincent Alban/Reuters)
Races such as the one for the state supreme court in Wisconsin, where Democrats were seeking to maintain a 4-3 advantage after the retirement of one of the justices, rarely get national or international attention.
Yet this election was different in several ways. First, it was one of the few opportunities since Trump began his second term for any angry voters to send a message that they were not happy. (The next opportunity will be in November when a number of “off season” elections are set to be held.)
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The case is likely to end up before the very court Musk was trying to determine the political make up of. Yet in the current era of American politics, some people appear able to do whatever they want.
“Wisconsin beat the billionaire,” tweeted Tim Walz, the governor of neighbouring Minnesota, and who had been Kamala Harris’s running mate.
Democrats should be wary of reading too much into Tuesday’s outcome, where turnout will likely have been lighter than in the 2024 showdown between Trump and Harris.
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And in Florida, where Democrats were hoping to flip two congressional seats, both were easily won by Republicans.
At the same time, Democrats don’t have much to cheer about at the moment, and they find with themselves with few levers of power given Republicans control the White House, and both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
“Today Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” Crawford, who had spearheaded legal fights to protect union power and abortion rights, said as she addressed the crowd.
“And Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price, our courts are not for sale.”
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