Democrats saw signs of life in their party on Tuesday, even if they didn’t clinch the night’s biggest prize.
Off-year elections are typically a referendum on the party in power — in this case, especially so, given the unified control of both houses of Congress, the White House, and even the Supreme Court by conservatives.
But Tuesday’s elections took on an even greater significance. The races in Wisconsin and Florida were the first to go to voters since Kamala Harris’s devastating defeat in November, a swing-state sweep which saw the Democrats lose ground in every battleground state and even reliable blue strongholds.
Despite being an “off year,” many voters (especially on the left) have remained active and engaged over the first three months of Donald Trump’s presidency. For weeks, Americans have been bombarded with headlines about the staggering scope and effects of Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts in a relatively short time frame. Reports of seniors unable to reach human beings when contacting the Social Security Administration and similar issues faced by veterans have left Republicans in a politically vulnerable spot. Many in Congress have chosen to avoid in-person events in response.
Elon Musk presents a voter with a $1,000,000 check as he campaigned for Brad Schimel, the conservative defeated on Tuesday in Wisconsin’s supreme court election.
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Elon Musk presents a voter with a $1,000,000 check as he campaigned for Brad Schimel, the conservative defeated on Tuesday in Wisconsin’s supreme court election. (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
But there’s one man tied to DOGE who didn’t get that memo: Musk himself. The Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX and now DOGE baron flew out to campaign personally for Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate in Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court race, and pulled out all the stops. In a move that was criticized by Democrats as a blatant effort at vote-buying, Musk handed out cash prizes to supporters of his thinly-veiled petition against “activist” judges. Just hours before polls closed, Musk quite literally insisted the Wisconsin race was about “the future of the world.”
If that’s the case, voters weren’t keen on Musk’s specific vision for the future of civilisation. Democrats celebrated with glee when Susan Crawford clinched a decisive victory in the key swing state of Wisconsin, where a pair of Elon Musk-backed PACs poured millions into electing her opponent. Schimel was an avowed opponent of abortion rights and a vocal supporter of Donald Trump. Crawford’s margin of victory over him was 10 percentage points and represented a clear rejection of Trump and, more likely, the world’s richest man — who was accused of trying to buy the election.
This all spells bad news for Trump — and the Republicans’ midterm odds.
Wisconsin’s highest court is poised to hear key issues in the coming term, including a case that could determine the collective bargaining rights of tens of thousands of state employees. The court may also end up hearing a challenge to a state law requiring voter ID. Abortion rights in Wisconsin would have been vulnerable after a Schimel victory, given his support for a law which had temporarily rolled back abortion access in Wisconsin after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2023.
But the race had more than just local policy implications.
It was a repudiation of the assumption that the Democratic Party is in full retreat, and proof the GOP has yet to make good on the goal of demoralizing left-leaning voters and activists. It was also a warning shot aimed squarely across the bow of the White House. Musk, Trump, and DOGE were central to the pro-Crawford effort supported by national Democratic household names including Bernie Sanders.
Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate, won easily on Tuesday night in her race against Brad Schimel.
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Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate, won easily on Tuesday night in her race against Brad Schimel. (AP)
After Tuesday, Trump and Musk will be forced to confront an uncomfortable question: How much support do they really have in battleground states? Or, more accurately: How much of the Democrats’ “weakness” was really Joe Biden’s?
The president may already have been asking that question; a Politico report on Wednesday revealed that the two had (supposedly in mutual agreement) decided that Musk would shift his role back to that of an outside adviser in the coming weeks.
“Elon Musk made this a referendum on himself. [Brad] Schimel tried to make it a referendum on Donald Trump,” declared a triumphant Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, after the results came in.
“The voters’ verdict sends a resounding message: Wisconsin’s supreme court election demonstrates Musk and Trump have gone too far, and any politician allied with them could swiftly face the end of their political career,” he added.
In Florida, Democrats failed to win either special election for two congressional seats once held by Republicans. Even in defeat, Democrats can take a silver lining from the Florida special elections: their party’s candidates overperformed past election cycles in both races, halving the Trump-Harris margin in the first and sixth congressional districts. Gay Valimont, running against Jimmy Patronis, flipped one Florida county which had supported Trump by nearly 20 points in November. Josh Weil came within two points of state Senator Randy Fine, the victorious Republican candidate, in Volusia County where Harris suffered a blowout 21-point defeat to Trump in November.
The impact of Tuesday night’s results were immediate in Trumpworld, where Musk quickly began spinning a new narrative: “I expected to lose, but there is value to losing a piece for a positional gain.”
Elon Musk wears a cheese head as he campaigns for Brad Schimel in Wisconsin.
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Elon Musk wears a cheese head as he campaigns for Brad Schimel in Wisconsin. (REUTERS)
With the majority on the state Supreme Court now firmly in the left’s hands for at least a year, it’s hard to see what “positional gain” Musk is talking about in Wisconsin, where a Democrat also flipped a key county executive seat.
In a subsequent Twitter post, Musk pointed to a ballot initiative victory as the real prize of the night, though it merely enshrined an existing state law into the state’s constitution.
Given Trump’s tendency to dump those who become political liabilities for him and the broader GOP, Elon Musk’s own position as a White House insider is at risk. It’s possible that the DOGE chief will hang around in some capacity thanks largely to the financial support he and his PACs are able to lend the party. But the president has already publicly hinted that DOGE’s role could diminish in the days ahead as Cabinet secretaries assert control over their departments.
Democrats, emboldened by Tuesday night, will likely continue to make Musk a boogeyman ahead of 2026’s midterm season. If the Tesla chief is still a force in the White House by that time, the president could be facing more than just Democrats demanding he show Musk the door.