Susan Crawford, a liberal judge backed by Democrats, won the election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court Tuesday, comfortably defeating conservative judge Brad Schimel, who had the backing of President Donald Trump, billionaire Elon Musk and the full weight of the GOP.
Crawford’s win means Wisconsin’s highest court will remain a 4-3 liberal majority — likely ensuring the state’s new, fair Democratic-drawn legislative maps passed in 2024 remain in place. Democrats also hope the court could redraw the state’s congressional map, potentially handing them two more seats in the U.S. House and giving Wisconsinites fairer representation.
“Today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court,” Crawford said at a campaign event after the race was called. “And Wisconsin stood up and said, loudly, that justice does not have a price. Our courts are not for sale.”
The contentious election was the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history, with over $90 million spent supporting the two candidates. More than $50 million was spent to help Schimel, mostly from billionaire right-wing megadonors like Musk and Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein.
A Musk-backed PAC even launched a campaign to pay voters who signed a petition opposing “activist judges” and took photos of Wisconsin residents posing with a Schimel picture outside of polling places. The weekend before the election, Musk traveled to Wisconsin and awarded several $1 million prizes to voters who signed the anti-Crawford petition — a move that Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul charged violated state campaign finance laws. Wisconsin’s courts refused to take up the case.
But it wasn’t all good news in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin voters also approved a ballot measure to enshrine the state’s restrictive voter ID requirement into the state constitution. Wisconsin lawmakers passed a voter ID requirement in 2011, which only allows certain types of IDs to be used for voting — limiting common forms like student IDs. The law faced a litany of legal challenges that were mostly unsuccessfu, and went into effect in 2016.
With voters enshrining the voter ID law into the state constitution, it will be a lot harder for lawmakers to reverse it — they could do so only by passing another constitutional amendment. And the measure’s passage could embolden other states to advance restrictive ID rules.
“Enshrining a voter ID mandate into the Wisconsin Constitution will guarantee the continued exclusion of many voters from the ballot box in future elections,” All Voting is Local Wisconsin State Director Sam Liebert said in a statement. “Seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, and people from low-income households are among the Wisconsinites who have difficulties obtaining an active form of ID and will be effectively disenfranchised by this mandate.” Read more about Wisconsin’s election results and what they mean for democracy here.
