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This Progressive Judge Is Democrats' Best Hope to Take Down Elon Musk (Ari Berman of Mother Jones on Susan Crawford)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/03/susan-crawford-elon-musk-wisconsin-supreme-court-schimel-ttrump/-snip-
The spring election will decide the ideological majority on the court. When she entered the race, Crawford, a circuit court judge in Madison’s Dane County, expected to discuss the hot button issues that the court often decides, such as abortion, gerrymandering, voting rights, crime, and public safety. And indeed, the court could soon decide the fate of the state’s 1849 abortion ban, a law restricting collective bargaining for public sector unions, and the legality of Wisconsin’s congressional maps.
But Musk’s involvement—he has spent more money in Wisconsin than any donor to a judicial election in US history—and the controversial, possibly illegal, tactics he’s employed, has dramatically raised the stakes, giving the election huge national significance. “Musk has made this a referendum on the idea of an American oligarchy,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler tells me in Kenosha, a lakefront city forty miles south of Milwaukee.
“It’s probably something of a test case for him to see if this works,” Crawford says when we speak after her event, in a former bank built in 1928, with an ornate ceiling and towering chandelier. “And if it works here, I think that we can look forward to seeing Elon Musk trying to buy not just judges, but other elected officials in other states with the same tactics.” She calls Musk’s scheme to pay voters for signing his pac’s petition against “activist judges” and giving million dollar checks to those who’ve voted, “very concerning to me. Because it certainly seems like an effort to buy votes in this election.”
“Elon Musk would really like to buy himself a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Crawford adds. “He wants to put somebody there that he thinks he can have some influence over and access to. And I think in part, that’s because he’s got business interests here,” she says, referencing a lawsuit Tesla has filed against Wisconsin.
-snip-
The spring election will decide the ideological majority on the court. When she entered the race, Crawford, a circuit court judge in Madison’s Dane County, expected to discuss the hot button issues that the court often decides, such as abortion, gerrymandering, voting rights, crime, and public safety. And indeed, the court could soon decide the fate of the state’s 1849 abortion ban, a law restricting collective bargaining for public sector unions, and the legality of Wisconsin’s congressional maps.
But Musk’s involvement—he has spent more money in Wisconsin than any donor to a judicial election in US history—and the controversial, possibly illegal, tactics he’s employed, has dramatically raised the stakes, giving the election huge national significance. “Musk has made this a referendum on the idea of an American oligarchy,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler tells me in Kenosha, a lakefront city forty miles south of Milwaukee.
“It’s probably something of a test case for him to see if this works,” Crawford says when we speak after her event, in a former bank built in 1928, with an ornate ceiling and towering chandelier. “And if it works here, I think that we can look forward to seeing Elon Musk trying to buy not just judges, but other elected officials in other states with the same tactics.” She calls Musk’s scheme to pay voters for signing his pac’s petition against “activist judges” and giving million dollar checks to those who’ve voted, “very concerning to me. Because it certainly seems like an effort to buy votes in this election.”
“Elon Musk would really like to buy himself a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Crawford adds. “He wants to put somebody there that he thinks he can have some influence over and access to. And I think in part, that’s because he’s got business interests here,” she says, referencing a lawsuit Tesla has filed against Wisconsin.
-snip-
Much more at the link.
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