Elon Musk learned an important lesson on Tuesday: Money isn’t everything.
His $20 million effort to tilt a State Supreme Court race in Wisconsin to Republicans’ preferred candidate — and, as Musk said just hours before voting ended, to determine the fate of “Western civilization” — ended in failure when Democratic voters swamped the polls.
Musk isn’t the first wealthy man to discover that pouring cash into a campaign doesn’t guarantee victory. Just ask Michael Bloomberg. Or Tom Steyer.
But although Musk made the wrong financial bet, he was right that the race carried far larger stakes than simply the balance of Wisconsin’s highest court. The contest will help both parties craft a political strategy for next year’s midterm elections.
Special elections, like the one in Wisconsin, offer early clues about the political environment. For weeks, strategists have been wondering about the political impact of Musk, who has emerged as one of the most indefatigable forces in the new administration.
While polling indicates that Musk is broadly unpopular with Democrats and independents, some strategists wondered if he could drive Republicans to the polls, particularly in races where President Trump is not on the ballot.
Wisconsin offers an early indication that Musk does energize voters. Just not, perhaps, the ones he was aiming for.
The turnout in the State Supreme Court contest was close to levels for a midterm election — a feat for an off-year race. The number of voters who came out was only about 30 percent off the figure for last year’s presidential election, with the highest percentage of voters coming from the state’s Democratic-leaning counties.
Democrats heralded these results as a sign that voters were eager to reject the Trump administration’s agenda and its allies like Musk.
“It was a political warning shot from the American people,” Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said in a speech from the Senate floor on Wednesday.
Democratic strategists were now hopeful that the party might avoid what could be even worse than losing on Tuesday night: Musk replicating his cash dump in congressional races across the country next year.
Democrats aren’t the only ones who are relieved today. Some Republicans in swing districts have quietly hinted that they are eager for Musk to wrap up his work in Washington, hoping to limit the political damage with the independent voters they need to win.
Of course, whether Musk will heed any kind of warning from Wisconsin remains far from clear.
Over the past few months, Americans have learned their own lesson about Musk: He’s anything but predictable.
DOGE UPDATE
Layoffs hit a heating aid program
The Trump administration has abruptly laid off the entire staff running a $4.1 billion program to help low-income households across the United States pay their heating and cooling bills, my colleague Brad Plumer reports. Most of that money has already been distributed to states. But some $378 million that was approved by Congress hasn’t been sent out yet.
“If there’s no staff, how do you allocate the rest of this money?” said Mark Wolfe, the executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, a nonprofit that represents state aid officials in Washington.
The Department of Health and Human Services said it intended to comply with federal law. The department is undergoing a dramatic reorganization in line with the Department of Government Efficiency’s drive to shrink the federal work force.
MEANWHILE on X
Musk goes (relatively) quiet
Musk typically uses his X account as a megaphone for his politics. But his reaction to the Wisconsin election was a little quieter than usual, my colleague Kate Conger writes.
Musk’s analysis of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race could give a follower whiplash.
On Sunday, he declared that the election was poised to determine the “entire destiny of humanity.” By Tuesday night, once it was clear that his candidate had lost, Musk suggested the race wasn’t even the biggest issue on the ballot.
“This was the most important thing,” Musk wrote as he shared a post from his super PAC about a ballot measure adding a requirement for voter ID to the State Constitution. Musk spent little time and money campaigning for the measure.
On the race that consumed most of his attention, Musk said: “I expected to lose. But there is value to losing a piece for a positional gain.”
Musk said little else about the election on Wednesday, pivoting quickly to posting about artificial intelligence, the humanoid robot he’s building at Tesla and his Department of Government Efficiency project. He called reports that he might soon step down from DOGE “fake news.”
— Kate Conger
quote of the Day
Tesla’s numbers a “disaster on every metric”
“It’s a fork-in-the-road moment. The more political he gets with DOGE the more the brand suffers, there is no debate,” wrote Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, who has been one of the most steadfast believers in Tesla on Wall Street. “Musk needs to stop this political firestorm and balance being C.E.O. of Tesla with DOGE. The future is so bright, but this is a full-blown crisis Tesla is navigating now and it’s primarily self-inflicted.”