MW As Musk's $25 million Wisconsin election bet flops, why he may soon step down from DOGE

By Chris Matthews

The Tesla CEO will reportedly shift to a 'supporting role' in the Trump administration in the coming weeks

Money talks in American elections - but it doesn't always get the last word.

Billionaire Elon Musk dumped a staggering $25 million into Wisconsin's Supreme Court election, backing conservative candidate Brad Schimel over the liberal Susan Crawford in a race that could have reshaped the court's ideological balance.

That's after the Tesla $(TSLA)$ Chief Executive doled out $291 billion on Trump and other Republican causes in the 2024 election.

Schimel's decisive loss and the eye-popping sum given by Musk underscores a simple truth about American democracy: Money matters, but it can't buy everything.

President Trump may be taking this into account as a report in Politico Wednesday indicated that Musk "will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader and Washington hatchet man."

The result left many Democrats jubilant and convinced that Musk is more of a liability to the Trump administration than an asset, given his plummeting approval ratings and the public's general skepticism of billionaires' influence on the federal government.

As former Barack Obama speechwriter and Democrat Jon Favreau put in an X post Tuesday night: "Please send Elon Musk to all the close races!"

Musk's contributions - a mix of spending through his political action committee and direct donations - helped to supercharge interest in an already expensive and nationalized election.

The billionaire even went so far as to hand out checks for a million dollars each to two Wisconsin voters Sunday night as he sought to drum up support for Schimel.

Wisconsin's high court, nominally nonpartisan, has become a proxy battlefield for hot-button issues ranging from abortion rights to congressional redistricting. High interest in the race led its price tag to balloon to a record $50 million, shattering state records.

But Musk's loss underscores a key fact borne out in political-science literature: That the more high profile a political contest becomes, the less money is able to affect its outcome.

That dynamic has been illustrated best by Donald Trump's three campaigns for president, where his fame and ability to attract free media attention drowned out the effects of billions in advertising spent by both sides.

It's also been a factor in a slew of other presidential runs that cost fortunes but made little headway with the public.

Those include former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spending $1.1 billion on a failed bid in 2020 to win the Democratic presidential nomination, and billionaire Tom Steyer spending $345.2 million on the same contest. Former Vice President Kamala Harris laid down nearly $2 billion in her failed White House bid last year, when accounting for outside spending by political action committees.

Erika Franklin Fowler, a political scientist and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, explained these dynamics in an interview with MarketWatch during the 2024 campaign.

She said that when candidates in a race are already well known, "there's very little that advertising will probably do to change very many people's minds."

-Chris Matthews

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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April 02, 2025 13:03 ET (17:03 GMT)

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