Elon Musk’s $20 Million Play In Wisconsin Might’ve Bought His Own Pink Slip

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Elon Musk wanted Tuesday night’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin to be a very big deal. He spent at least $20 million of his own money on the race, paying for both an extensive ground game aimed at low-propensity conservative voters and for television ads. He personally cut two $1 million checks for supporters. Appearing at a town hall in Green Bay a few nights before the election, he said the race would “affect the entire destiny of humanity” by possibly altering control of the House of Representatives.

But by 1:15 a.m. ET on Wednesday morning, just hours after polls had closed in the Badger State, he changed his tune about what really mattered.

“This was the most important thing,” Musk wrote, referring to the passage of a constitutional amendment requiring voter ID in Wisconsin. (Wisconsin already has voter ID laws.)

In the interim, Wisconsinites had disagreed with Musk in the way that really matters. They agreed the election was important: 49% of the state’s registered voters cast a ballot ― an absurdly high turnout for an election held in the spring of an off-year. They did not, however, agree with his choice of candidate. Liberal Susan Crawford trounced Republican Brad Schimel, 55% to 45%.

The election was already important for the people of Wisconsin: It could’ve changed whether the state protects abortion rights and whether the vote gerrymandered congressional districts. But Musk, in a lot of ways, turned the election into a referendum on himself. And he lost badly.

Couple the Wisconsin results with massive swings against Republicans in two deep red congressional districts in Florida, and you suddenly have a political party looking for a scapegoat. And Musk makes a pretty good one.

Democrats loathe him almost as much as they loathe Trump, a combination which drove massive Democrat turnout in Wisconsin. And polling indicates a small but substantial group of Trump supporters dislike Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, which has spent the past two months occupied with taking a chainsaw to government institutions and services.

A Marquette Law School poll released this week found Trump’s approval at 46%, with 54% disapproval. Musk was substantially less popular: Just 41% approved of his work leading DOGE, with 58% strongly disapproving.

It’s an increasingly troubling problem for Republicans, who have been screamed at by constituents at town halls over the DOGE cuts, and have been visibly anxious at the likelihood some of the cuts will hit hardest in the states they represent. Musk has positioned himself and DOGE as the face of the cuts, and despite his unpopularity (and Trump’s famously capricious approach to staff turnover), the president has largely stood by him so far. In late February, a White House spokesperson told Politico that there was no end date foreseen for Musk’s tenure in the administration.

“No one here at the White House is tired of winning,” the spokesperson said.

But that was before his $20 million-plus investment couldn’t win the Wisconsin seat for conservatives. And it was definitely before a massive swing toward Democrats since November in Tuesday’s special elections in two separate Florida districts, both of which President Donald Trump handily won in 2024. While Republicans ultimately won both those races, the new margins are rattling.

But reporting from Politico on Wednesday ― later strongly denied by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt ― that Trump is prepared for Musk to take on a less prominent role when his time as a special government employee ends at the end of next month, may be music to the ears of vulnerable Republicans, some of whom are working with margins much tighter than 14 points.

And despite the denial, Leavitt didn’t say Musk would never leave — in fact, just the opposite.

“Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete,” she wrote on social media.

But Musk’s allies have said he’s not going anywhere as a force in Trump’s orbit. He’s already signaled plans to spend $100 million supporting Republican candidates and Trump’s agenda. DOGE continues to request access to sensitive government databases, and it’s not clear if the staff he’s assembled there will follow him out the door. And it’s not clear Republicans can truly afford to have Musk leave. His money is incredibly valuable, with multiple Wisconsin Republicans noting it was the only way Schimel had a chance of matching Crawford in terms of resources.

Democrats, high off their first major election win, are very eager to troll Musk. On X — the social media website Musk himself owns — the Democratic Party’s official account posted on Tuesday night a screenshot of Musk campaigning for the election, wearing a hat shaped like a wedge of cheese. It was captioned simply, “loser.”

And House Majority PAC, a super PAC controlled by allies of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, invited Musk to go on a nationwide tour.

“HMP greatly encourages one of the most unpopular men in America to campaign with Republicans across the country,” spokeswoman Katarina Flicker said. “His efforts will be crucial to Democrats taking back the House in 2026.”

But liberals and Democrats eager to show Musk the door can overstate the extent to which the results revolved around Musk’s popularity. While Democrats did run television ads suggesting Musk’s donations would be a corrupting influence on Schimel, they were just as likely to attack the Republican for opposing abortion rights as everything else.

The Florida elections, however, do provide some evidence Musk’s work slashing the federal government could have a particularly deleterious impact. In Florida’s 1st District, which covers the western half of the state’s panhandle near the border with Alabama, Democrat Gay Valimont lost to Republican Jimmy Patronis by just 15 percentage points, a massive swing compared to Trump’s 33-point win there in November.

In particular, this election saw Valimont become the first Democrat to win Escambia County, the home of Naval Air Station Pensacola and a number of other military facilities, in nearly two decades — a notable flip in a county Trump won by 19 points in 2024. Voters in the area could be more sensitive to Musk’s campaign of slashing the government, including the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

For now, it’s clear Musk is an issue in almost every election imaginable. A week before the Wisconsin and Florida races, there was a close state Senate race in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, best known for its Amish population. Trump had won the seat by 15 percentage points in November.

Democrat James Malone, the mayor of the small borough of East Petersburg, won the race. His campaign manager, Stella Sexton, told HuffPost that Musk and DOGE came up constantly while they were knocking on doors to encourage turnout. Malone started campaigning against DOGE, linking it to a message he was already using about his Republican opponent, County Councilmember Josh Parson, attacking public education and taking cash from billionaires.

“He was funded by billionaires trying to destroy public education in Pennsylvania and and so then when the billionaire who’s trying to destroy public education at a federal level tweeted about us, that dovetailed,” Sexton said. “It was pretty easy to draw the line.”

While Musk didn’t spend any money there, he did send several of his signature “!!!” missives on X about news about the contest the weekend before election day ― and Malone’s campaign was able to turn those missives into text messages to supporters encouraging them to vote. And that might have made the difference.

“If that cost Parsons another 500 votes, which I think is plausible, or helped our turnout by 500 votes, which I also think is plausible,” Sexton said, “that could have cost him the election.”