With the state Supreme Court election fast approaching, a political action committee has scheduled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of TV ads in Wisconsin this week. The ads are expected to aid conservative Brad Schimel, who is running against liberal Susan Crawford in a race that will determine the court’s ideological balance. The ads from Building America’s Future will start running on stations around Wisconsin on Thursday and will continue through early March.
Available contracts posted by the Federal Communications Commission show more than $400,000 worth of ads will run in various areas. Additionally, more than $255,000 will be spent in and around Milwaukee. The FCC data does not identify the content of Building America’s ads.
However, the ads are expected to support Schimel, the state’s former Republican attorney general. Schimel’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ad buy. A statement from Crawford’s campaign blasted the ad buy, with spokesperson Derrick Honeyman accusing Schimel of being “bought off.”
In D.C., specific individuals have taken control of Americans’ private financial information and cut funding for hungry kids,” Honeyman said.
Now, they are trying to buy off Brad Schimel and take over control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court so that Schimel can rubber-stamp an extreme agenda of banning abortion and cozying up to corporations.
The April election will decide who replaces retiring liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. Liberal justices took a 4-3 majority on the court in August 2023. Before that, conservative justices held the court’s majority for 15 years.
The race is officially nonpartisan, but the state Republican and Democratic parties are heavily invested. Since liberals took control, the court has struck down Republican-drawn state legislative voting districts as unconstitutional and reauthorized absentee ballot drop boxes. The court’s former conservative majority banned drop boxes in 2022 and upheld the Republican legislative maps.
Crawford has raised around $7.7 million since entering the race, while Schimel has raised around $5 million. Of the totals, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin transferred $2 million to Crawford, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin transferred nearly $1.7 million to Schimel. The court has several high-profile cases headed its way, including a challenge to the state’s pre-Civil War abortion law.
It could also hear a lawsuit against Wisconsin Act 10, the landmark law restricting collective bargaining for most public employees.
Court ads aim to shift balance
Just this week, a Musk-backed group purchased $1.5 million of airtime in Wisconsin to support conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel over the next few weeks.
Despite this financial backing, Schimel suggested Tuesday that he is not for sale, noting both he and Crawford are receiving significant outside support in the upcoming April 1 election. “Ultimately, the only answer to the outside spending is that the individual running for office can’t be for sale,” Schimel said at a forum sponsored by Marquette University Law School. “People want to support you because they like what you stand for, not because they’re buying some result.”
Schimel also expressed hope last week that Fair Courts and other conservative groups would join the race to relieve his campaign’s financial pressure.
Both Fair Courts and Building America’s Future responded within days. While addressing the support from the Musk group at the Marquette event, Schimel cautiously thanked the organization. “I appreciate anybody that will help me get my message out there because it’s hard to reach all the voters in Wisconsin,” Schimel said on Tuesday.
He noted that he had been in the race for more than a year and intended to meet voters directly by visiting all 72 counties. Schimel also pointed out that Crawford had similarly benefited from outside support, mentioning significant contributions from Hungarian-American investor George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which were then transferred to Crawford’s campaign.
He acknowledged that external financial support is occurring on both sides. The state Democratic Party has given Crawford a total of $3 million out of the $7.7 million she has received so far. Schimel has received nearly $1.7 million from the state GOP out of the $5.1 million his campaign has garnered.
The only outside group to make independent expenditures on Crawford’s behalf is A Better Wisconsin Together, which reported spending $258,075 on the race. A spokesman for Crawford, Derrick Honeyman, dismissed Schimel’s assertion that he is not for sale. “Brad Schimel has been caught begging for dirty cash before, and now Elon is the latest to answer his pleas,” Honeyman said.
The first significant election of 2025 is set to occur in Wisconsin, where voters will choose a new Supreme Court Justice on April 1. Prominent entrepreneur Elon Musk has invested hundreds of millions in this race, a move that presents both a challenge and an opportunity for Democrats. Musk’s substantial financial involvement in the Wisconsin election underscores the changing dynamics of political contributions and their impact on democratic processes.
As seen with previous elections, significant financial backing can heavily influence outcomes, prompting broader discussions on the role of money in politics.
Image Credits: Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash
Cameron is a highly regarded contributor in the rapidly evolving fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. His articles delve into the theoretical underpinnings of AI, the practical applications of machine learning across industries, ethical considerations of autonomous systems, and the societal impacts of these disruptive technologies.
