Wisconsin Supreme Court race draws national attention, record out-of-state money

After an avalanche of money and campaign ads that have saturated airwaves, Wisconsin voters will head to the polls Tuesday to decide a closely watched state Supreme Court race.

The contest between conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel and liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford brought billionaire Elon Musk to Green Bay on Sunday night for a rally. The Tesla owner and leader of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency handed out million-dollar checks to Republicans — and he’s just one of several big spenders who have invested in the election. Billionaire George Soros is among Crawford’s backers.

Zac Schultz, a reporter with PBS Wisconsin’s “Here & Now” program, has been closely covering the race and joined MPR News host Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition with the highlights.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. Listen in full by clicking the player button above.

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Isn’t this election supposed to be nonpartisan?

Yes, the spring elections in Wisconsin are technically nonpartisan, but I’ve been covering the state’s Supreme Court races for more than 20 years, and there’s been a steady shift over the last 10 to 15 years, as people have realized the stakes of the Supreme Court controlling the end result of all government in Wisconsin.

With divided government between Republicans in the Legislature and a Democratic governor — Tony Evers — it means that the Supreme Court is ultimately the one deciding a lot of things that go into place or happen here.

And as those stakes went up, the parties got heavily involved. There was a switch that occurred about 10 years ago. Republicans passed a law that said you can give as much money as you want to the parties of Wisconsin, and then they can, in turn, donate as much as they want to individual candidates, therefore bypassing the technical laws that limit campaign donations to a candidate at $20,000.

So that’s what’s allowed the billionaires — George Soros and JB Pritzker on the Democratic side, and people like Elon Musk on the Republican side — and some of our traditional billionaire donors in Wisconsin — to come in and just flood this race with money.

What’s the ideological split right now in the Wisconsin Supreme Court?

Currently, it is four to three with a liberal majority. That shifted two years ago in what had been the most expensive state Supreme Court race in United States history. That was the first time that a liberal majority took over the court in nearly 15 years, and they went into action, and they made a number of decisions that Democrats wanted to see and Republicans hated to see.

And that raised the stakes even higher for this race because it is one of those liberal members of that majority that is retiring. It’s an open seat, and so the balance is up again.

Why are both sides so intent on winning?

If you look at a national perspective, it’s clearly about the potential for redistricting our U.S. congressional seats. Two years ago, that new liberal majority came in, and they made a new liberal redistricting decision that required the governor and the Legislature to redraw maps for our state Legislature. But at the time, they didn’t touch the eight congressional seats.

Right now, that’s a six-two Republican majority, and there are two seats: one in western Wisconsin on the border with Minnesota — Derrick Van Orden’s seat, centered around La Crosse and Eau Claire — and another one in the far southeast corner with Bryan Steil.

Those two — Democrats everywhere have had their eyes on flipping those, even in mildly successful years. And if they were redistricted in any way or formed to make them slightly more Democratic, then it is quite likely that those could flip in a good Democratic year at the national level.

What are the polls saying in this state Supreme Court race?

Unfortunately, we don’t have any real solid, publicly available polls. What we’ve seen are a few internals that have been put out by some partisan groups that are supporting one side or the other. The last one that we saw was nearly a month ago, that had Crawford with a four-point lead in this race.

But unfortunately, that was just as this avalanche of advertising was coming out. So we honestly don’t know what it looks like inside, but given the intensity of the spending, it’s got to be close, or else we can't imagine the number of high-profile national figures parachuting into Wisconsin, making it look like last November and another presidential election.