Musk puts himself at center stage in Wisconsin court election

Elon Musk looks on as President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, on Monday, March 24, 2025. Voters will soon provide an answer in Wisconsin, where the billionaire has made himself the main character in a consequential court race that is set to shatter spending records. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

By Theodore Schleifer

He brought a billionaire friend, $1 million checks and a Green Bay Packers cheesehead hat. A pastor prayed for him. A superfan begged him for a follow on the social platform X.

Elon Musk was the star of a 2,000-person rally Sunday night in Wisconsin — ostensibly for the conservative candidate in a closely watched state judicial race — just 36 hours before polls open on Election Day. Of course he was.

The billionaire Musk looked very much like a candidate at this rally, putting himself front and center in the final stretch of an election pitting two rivals against each other, neither of them named Elon Musk: Brad Schimel, the conservative in the race, and Susan Crawford, the liberal.

The closing moments of campaigns are highly choreographed. Musk’s visit to support Schimel on the eve of the election was voluntary — Schimel did not even attend the event. Musk appeared comfortable making himself the face of those closing arguments, and living with the results.

No one forced Musk to visit the state, obviously. Despite entreaties from Wisconsin Republicans, President Donald Trump declined to make a similar trip, perhaps sensing that the race is one conservatives are likelier to lose than to win, and that the most prominent booster could get tagged with blame.

Former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, was among those hoping for a Trump visit. He said in an interview that he thought Musk was insulated to some extent from the politics of credit and finger-pointing.

“He doesn’t care,” Walker said. “It’s not like all these consultants on either side who don’t want to be pegged as losers.”

To hear Musk tell it, the stakes call for any and all interventions.

Weeks ago, Musk was only sporadically supportive of Schimel, but his remarks about the race have turned existential. Musk and allied groups have spent over $20 million to support him, and he framed Tuesday’s election in nothing less than apocalyptic terms.

“What’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives — that is why it is so significant,” Musk said, referring to the key role that the court could play in congressional redistricting. “And whichever party controls the House to a significant degree controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”

Musk is known for his belief in himself, and he plainly enjoys the encounters with voters who believe in him. To those in attendance, he is a hero even more so than the last time Musk was on a similar rock-star tour, in Pennsylvania all of five months ago.

This is the flip side to the blame game. Should Schimel win, Musk’s activity will surely be given a tremendous amount of credit.

Other Republican groups that might be expected to spend money to support the conservative candidate kept to the sidelines. Musk’s super political action committee has waged an ambitious ground game, and a nonprofit previously backed by Musk spent millions of dollars on television ads that it claims helped Schimel close the gap. Musk’s defenders like Walker believe that this race was made a winnable race only thanks to Musk’s spending.

Musk has also brought publicity. A million-dollar sweepstakes for signing a petition — and, for 12 hours, a questionable plan to open the sweepstakes only to Wisconsin residents who had already voted — broke through the saturation of the news cycle in this state. (Just before the rally began, the state’s Supreme Court declined to halt the sweepstakes.)

And so, as he did in Pennsylvania during the general election last year, Musk on Sunday brought out oversize checks to hand out to winners. He trotted out one of his closest friends, Antonio Gracias, to deliver a presentation on what Gracias called “outrageous” fraud in Social Security. And that was all after he took the stage donning a foam cheesehead hat before signing it and tossing it into the crowd.

The showman does all this even as he concedes that Schimel may very well lose. As Musk wrapped up his remarks before beginning an extensive question-and-answer session, headgear was once again top of mind.

“We’ve got to pull a rabbit out of the hat — next level,” he said, retelling Schimel’s standing in betting prediction markets. “We actually have to have a steady stream of rabbits out of the hat, like it’s an arc of rabbits flying through the air, and then landing in a voting booth.”