An excerpt from, “Democrats trounced Trump with their Musk-focused playbook in Wisconsin” by Liz Crampton, Elena Schneider, Alice Miranda Ollstein and Brampton Booker at Politico:
Democrats just won their biggest electoral victory of the second Trump era. And Elon Musk lost big.
Democratic voters came out in force on Tuesday in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, a sign that the once-latent resistance is raring to go. Musk put in a ton of money — but so did Democrats, amping turnout to midterm-level performance and showing the party’s strength outside of low turnout specials elections. And Democrats now have a legal bulwark to defend their positions on abortion rights and congressional maps in the closely divided state.
By defeating Republican-aligned candidate Brad Schimel, Susan Crawford secured a seat on the state’s highest court — and rejuvenated Democrats nationwide as they cast Musk as the No.1 villain of the second Trump era. Democrats framed the result as an explicit rejection of President Donald Trump, who endorsed Schimel.
Republicans, meanwhile, still haven’t cracked the code for how to turn out Trump voters without the president on the ballot.
“Donald Trump does two things wonderfully: He gets people to turn out to vote for him and he gets liberals to turn out and vote against anyone he supports,” said Rohn W. Bishop, the Republican mayor of Waupun, Wisconsin and former chair of the Fond du Lac County GOP. “The problem is that he can never turn out conservatives to vote for his candidate when he’s not on the ballot.”
Here’s what we learned about this moment in U.S. politics from the results in Wisconsin, which were called late Tuesday evening.
What does this mean for Musk?
The GOP losing a statewide race in a crucial battleground where Trump and Musk loomed large is a warning sign for the White House. Democrats hammered away at how DOGE’s cost-cutting could hurt Wisconsinites as Musk and his allies expel thousands of federal workers and curtail government services.
Republicans — who have broadly defended DOGE’s mission — could become wary of standing by Musk now that his move-fast-and-break-things ethos clearly poses an electoral risk.
Musk’s time in government may be limited — Trump indicated this week that the Tesla founder eventually will return to the private sector. But his efforts to downsize government will live on: Agencies across government are preparing wide scale reductions in force that will result in the layoffs of even more federal employees.
Musk injected a pay-to-play element to the race by initially dangling a million dollar reward to Wisconsinites who voted in the election. He quickly backtracked, in the face of legal opposition in part from Wisconsin’s Democratic Attorney General, instead choosing to give six-figure checks to two Republicans who signed a pledge saying they oppose judicial activism.
But in the end, all his millions proved insufficient to win the contest for Republicans.
Where do Democrats go from here?
Democrats are all-but-guaranteed to continue with their anti-Musk messaging. The biggest opportunity to test that strategy ahead of the midterms comes in November, when voters in Virginia and New Jersey will elect new governors and state lawmakers.
Wisconsin’s result builds on a string of successes Democrats have enjoyed in special elections so far this cycle by racking up wins in Iowa and Pennsylvania in heavy GOP areas. On Tuesday night, Democrats also over-performed in a pair of Florida House special elections, improving their margins by double-digits in deeply conservative districts.
The DOGE factor is likely to prove especially potent in Virginia’s gubernatorial and state legislative races, where thousands of federal workers live. Likely Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger, a former member of Congress and CIA officer, has seized on the economic repercussions of DOGE as a key theme of her gubernatorial campaign.
Musk is “becoming electoral poison,” said Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic pollster. “The Democratic Party is going to make Elon a central issue in its messaging, as it should, and Democrats are getting better at focusing on what matters to voters, which is the threat he poses to entitlements.”
The hope, however, is that Democrats won’t delude themselves that Musk’s tone-deaf tactics alone will power them to victory in the 2026 midterm elections. For one thing, Musk may soon be relegated to a diminished public role. For another, Republicans held their congressional seats in the Florida congressional contests yesterday, albeit by half their 2024 margins in percentage terms, even though their well-funded Democratic opponents did better than expected.
Democrats are still tasked with no-nonsense demographic and poll analysis in each district and state they contest, and above all, they must run the best possible midterm candidates to win. Going forward, we are not likely to see as many grotesque theatrics from Musk. From now on, the safe assumption is that Musk’s money will power elections in a more effective behind-the-scenes way. Now, more than ever, wealthy and not-so-wealthy Democrats need to step up and contribute to Democratic midterm candidates, not only for the future of a political party, but for the future of America and Democracy itself.
For now, great credit is due to Justice Susan Crawford for running such a smart campaign. May her success provide a template for future Democratic victories. Next up are Virginia and New Jersey.
