Tuesday’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election received far less attention than a similar contest a year ago, when Elon Musk spent $25 million trying to flip the balance of power on the court. Back then, the world’s richest man—who, at the time, was also a key White House adviser—personally hand-delivered $1 million checks to voters while wearing a cheesehead hat.
This time, majority control of the state’s highest court wasn’t at stake. But the outcome was still hugely significant for politics in Wisconsin and nationally.
The massive 20-point victory by Chris Taylor, a former Democratic state legislator and appellate judge in Madison, expands the progressive majority on the court from 4-to-3 to 5-to-2. That extends a remarkable winning streak for Democratic-backed judicial candidates, who’ve now won five of the last six Supreme Court races in the swing state. It’s a stunning turnaround from a decade ago, when a conservative majority dominated the court and upheld much of then-Gov. Scott Walker’s ® right-wing agenda, such as his efforts to crush unions, make it harder to vote, and gerrymander in the GOP’s favor.
Did Musk handing checks to voters ever result in any investigation? We’ve all just accepted that you can bribe voters in Wisconsin now?
I remember something about the people getting paid not being winners of anything but like, handpicked recipients? So because it was all actually a lie it wasn’t actually illegal in the sense that he was paying voters off. Or something similar to that. No one with money got in trouble for it.
Ah, so just regular fraud then.
Sparkling payoffs
The margin was fantastic, but the turnout sucked. Wisconsin’s population is about 6 million, only 1.5 million voted.
Spring elections always suck for turnout, but with everything going on, I honestly expected better. Hopefully we can get it together for the other stuff this year.



