In Three Weeks, Elon's On the Ballot

Wondering what you can do? Do this!

While I hope you enjoy this entire post, here’s the short version:

On April 1st, there’s an election for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin. That election will matter for people who live in Wisconsin. But more than that, it will be seen as the first referendum on Elon Musk, and the last one until November of this year. The ripple effects are going to be enormous - and they’re going to change the trajectory of the country and even the world.

So from now until April 1, if you find yourself asking, “What can I, a regular person, can I do to stop MAGA?” there’s an answer: give money to the Wisconsin Democratic Party.

To walk the walk, if you donate to the Wisconsin Democrats using this special link for Word Salad readers, I’ll match it dollar for dollar up to $1,250. That’s not oligarch money, but for someone running a free newsletter it’s not bad. And I’m hoping that together, we can go way past that.

The Fall and Rise of Wisconsin

Here’s a story that will sound familiar and (until the very end) make you want to punch a wall. 2010 was a great year for Republicans in Wisconsin. They won the governor’s race, as well as big majorities in both houses of the state legislature. It was reasonable to assume that this was a one-off - Obama had won Wisconsin by a huge margin before, and it was still a pretty progressive place.

But instead of trying to encourage people to vote for them in the next election with helpful policies, Wisconsin Republicans set about making sure voters’ opinions no longer mattered. They did this in a bunch of ways. The main one was gerrymandering the heck out of the state. For as example, as a famously charming and handsome author pointed out in a 2020’s Democracy in One Book or Less, in 2018 Democrats won more than 50 percent of the state’s votes, but Republicans won more than 60 percent of the State Assembly seats.

Wisconsin had become a democracy in name only. So much so that in 2018, when the author Dan Kaufman wrote a book called The Fall of Wisconsin, no one criticized the title for being too dark. Wisconsin used to be a place that had fair elections. Then Republicans put a stop to that. Fin.

But here’s the part where you can un-punch that wall. Because reports of the death of Wisconsin Democracy were premature. Thanks in large part to Ben Wikler, who in my opinion is the best state party in the country (and who’s already inspired a number of other top-notch state party chairs in places like Arizona and North Carolina), Wisconsin Democrats organized everywhere, worked hard year-round, and started to win. Tony Evers, a Democratic, won the governors’ race in 2018. And he won again in 2022.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers proving that not all heroes wear capes, and that some, in fact, wear doofy glasses.

Just as important as the governors’ races were the races for the State Supreme Court. For a bunch of weird historical reasons, these elections are technically non-partisan. But these days the GOP and Democratic Party both endorse candidates, so that’s kind of ridiculous. During the Fall of Wisconsin era, Republicans had a 5-2 majority on the court. But the Democrats began fighting back, and in 2023, for the first time in 15 years and by a single vote, the Wisconsin Supreme Court had a liberal majority.

After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Wisconsin Republicans tried to revive a long-forgotten state law from 1849 to ban abortion statewide. That’s still being challenged in court, but because the state Supreme Court flipped, the opinion of the judges seems to now be, “Yeah, you can’t really do that.”

The biggest deal of all, though, is the unravelling of the gerrymander that Wisconsin Republicans put in place in 2010. The new State Supreme Court ordered fairer state legislative maps - and starting in 2026, they’re requiring fairer maps for congressional districts, too.

Where Elon Musk Comes In

On April 1st, Susan Crawford, one of the four liberal justices, is up for re-election [edit: a reader pointed out that this wasn’t quite right - a seat currently held by a liberal is open, but that Crawford is not an incumbent, she’s running for the seat. Thanks reader!] If she loses, Wisconsinites will those their abortion rights - not to mention the right to vote in an election that hasn’t been pre-decided via gerrymandering.

With the stakes so high for millions of ordinary Americans, Elon Musk naturally decided to make this all about himself.

So far he’s spent at least 3.2 million dollars propping up Crawford’s opponent, but probably a lot more than that in dark money. He’s behind dirty-trick ads that claim to be supporting Crawford and thanking her for taking all kinds of extreme positions she doesn’t actually hold. He’s also paying for a ton of texting and other get-out-the-vote efforts to try to turn out Trump voters who are less likely to show up for a random Supreme Court race in April of a non-election year.

Musk isn’t the first rich person, or even the first billionaire, to pour money into a Wisconsin Supreme Court race. But he’s by far the least shy about it. In a healthy democracy, April’s election would be a referendum on abortion rights, gerrymandering, and a conservative-vs-liberal approach to interpreting the law.

In today’s America, a Wisconsin Supreme Court election has become a referendum on Elon Musk.

Two Forks in Two Roads

One hand, Musk has unlimited money and a relentlessness that, frankly, most billionaires do not. On the other hand, voters don’t like him - and Democrats can’t wait to vote against him. So this election is a tug of war between Elon’s money on one hand and his increasingly agreed-upon loathsomeness on the other.

This April election is particularly high-stakes because there are unlikely to be any other highly contested statewide elections until November. And there are unlikely to be highly contested purple-state elections until 2026. So pundits, donors, and most importantly GOP lawmakers will be drawing their conclusions from a sample size of one.

Which means, to use Musk’s favorite cliche that he thinks is deep for some reason, we’ve reached a fork in the road. But it’s a four-way fork. Which actually makes sense when you think about it, because a fork has four tines, not two, so the expression shouldn’t really refer to having to make a binary choice, but I digress. Here the four possibilities, ranked from worst to best.

1. Huge Republican win

Democrats have done well in special elections over the last few years, so this would really surprise people. And it would mean Musk managed to get a decent number of first-time Trump voters, or Trump voters who historically only voted in presidential elections, to show up for a special. If that happens, Republicans in Washington are going to feel simultaneously invincible and subservient. They’ll tell themselves that Elon’s cracked the code on how to win the 2026 midterms - which means they can do whatever they want, as long as they do whatever Musk wants.

This would be very, very bad.

Elon Musk looking very happy and also dressed like a cowboy for Halloween maybe? Regardless, this would be bad for America.

2. Teensy Republican Win

This would be seismic in Wisconsin, but would probably preserve the status quo in D.C. Elon’s an asset to the GOP because of his money, but an albatross around their neck, and those things more or less cancel each other out, or lean slightly in favor of keeping Elon around.

A lot of Republicans seem interested in letting the Musk experiment “run its course,” whatever that means - and if Republicans score a narrow win in Wisconsin they’ll pat themselves on the back and keep doing nothing. Not ideal.

3. Teensy Democratic Win

If Susan Crawford wins by a narrow margin - and in Wisconsin, Democrats don’t usually win by big margins - the most important thing would probably be that Republicans have to redraw their rigged congressional map for 2026. Which would mean that Democrats suddenly become the favorites to win the House, even if nothing else changes nationwide.

But a narrow Dem win would also poke a hole in Musk’s aura of invincibility. Elon has a ton of critics - inside Trump’s cabinet, in the business community, among Republicans in Congress. But so far these critics tend to be of the spineless and silent variety. Or to put it more charitably, they’re waiting for the right moment. If Musk spends a ton of money only to lose an election because he’s so unpopular, that moment will get a whole lot closer.

4. Huge Democratic Win

Yes, this is totally possible. Voters who typically turn out in special elections tend to be disproportionately college-educated, a group that favors Democrats right now. And the president’s party tends to suffer in special elections anyway. And when abortion is directly on the ballot, Democrats tend to turn out in higher numbers. So if the world’s richest man wasn’t throwing tons of money at Susan Crawford, she’d be the favorite - not just to win but to win big.

Imagine a scenario where Crawford wins big anyway, because Musk’s sheer unpleasantness drives sporadic Democratic voters to the polls. That could be a major moment when the dam breaks for Elon. Lawmakers, cabinet secretaries, and CEOs of non-Musk companies didn’t spend their whole lives striving for their current jobs just to find out that they’ve become Musk employees against their will. If, on top of all that, he’s an electoral liability? The case for keeping him around becomes very weak, very quickly

What Musk will look like after a big loss on April 2nd (artist’s rendering)

Where We Come In

Over the last few weeks, I’ve sometimes heard people say, “What can I do to fight Trump besides giving money to Democrats?”

That’s like asking, “What can I do to get healthy besides exercise.” There’s no guarantee that winning elections will stop Trump from turning the country into an authoritarian dystopia. But it’s the single most important thing we can do. And unfortunately, thanks to a corrupt Supreme Court, winning elections takes a huge amount of money - especially when the oligarchs are lining up on other side.

So I hope that you phone bank for Susan Crawford, and if you feel up for it, that you go to Wisconsin and knock on some doors. But right now, the single most effective thing you can do to fight for democracy, by far, is donate to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

You can also donate Crawford directly, they’re basically equally effective right now. But I prefer the state party because it will build power not just in one election, but over the long term.

So to end back where we started: if you donate through this link for Word Salad readers, I will match any donation up to $1250. And a week from today, I’ll make sure to let all of you know how much money we raised together.

Will we raise as much as Elon is spending? Somehow I doubt it. But we don’t need to. All we need to do is give Wisconsin Democrats the tools they need to make sure voters know that Elon is on the ballot - and hand him the biggest defeat of his short (and hopefully highly temporary) political career.