Although just one seat will be decided in Wisconsin's Supreme Court election this spring, the race is already forming into one of the most expensive and divisive contests of the year, with control of the seven-member court and the future of a 19th-century abortion ban on the line.

In the early months of Donald Trump's presidency, the contest between conservative candidate Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel and liberal candidate Susan Crawford of Dane County serves as a litmus test for how voters in a pivotal swing state perceive Republican and Democratic politics. And it emphasizes how the judiciary plays a crucial role in resolving the contentious issues that sharply divide Americans, from union protections for public sector employees to the future of abortion in the post-Dobbs era.

According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, the election is anticipated to cost more than the $51 million spent on the previous Badger State Supreme Court contest. National spending records for a judicial election were broken in the 2023 contest.

Despite being ostensibly nonpartisan, political players from both parties are vying for influence in the Wisconsin judicial election scheduled on April 1. Billionaires like Republican-leaning roofing tycoon Diane Hendricks and liberal financier George Soros have sent large checks to the state Democratic and Republican parties, respectively, which have sent campaign funds to the candidates' committees.

A group connected to Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, is set to launch a fresh batch of advertisements on Thursday. According to ad tracking company AdImpact, the organization, Building America's Future, has spent $1.6 million on advertising thus far in the contest.

Musk, the driving force behind the current administration's efforts to reduce spending and restructure the federal workforce, previously stated support for Schimel's election. Musk spent over a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump last year.

Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, predicted that it would be a huge success. The state Supreme Court "is the center of the action" in a state where Republicans control the legislative majority and Democrats control the governor's palace, he said. "It has evolved into a venue where many contentious issues that people care about are decided."

According to a person familiar with the situation, former attorney general Eric Holder, who is also the head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, is planning to run for Crawford next month. The investments made by the Musk-affiliated nonprofit were seized upon by former Vice President Kamala Harris' team in an email sent on Wednesday, urging supporters to contribute to the Democratic National Committee because "Wisconsin Democrats need our help to fight back."

The email said, "Elon Musk is not here, but there are a ton of people who care and are willing to contribute a little money where and when they can."

Schimel has embraced the prospect of a Trump endorsement in a state he won in 2024, but it is unclear whether the president will choose to become involved in the politics of the state's judicial election, even as Trump buddy Musk has expressed his preference candidate in the campaign.

"Who wouldn't want the current president, who is currently very popular, to endorse them?" Schimel recently stated on "UPFRONT," a political program on WISN-TV.

Democrats are using the election as a gauge of whether voters in a purple state are interested in judicial restraints on the policies that Trump and his supporters advocate. The court effort coincides with requests by organizations impacted by Trump and Musk's far-reaching actions for federal courts to stop the actions of the new administration.

Additionally, Democrats have attempted to paint Schimel, who promoted conservative policies while serving as state attorney general from 2015 to 2019, as a jurist who would likely support Trump and his Make America Great Again agenda.

In an interview with CNN, Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman Ben Wikler stated that courts are one of the only balances on the Trump administration's authority. "It would be disastrous for a state like Wisconsin to have a MAGA state Supreme Court."

Republicans counter that a liberal court majority jeopardizes legislative choices, such as a 2011 bill that denied government employees the right to collective bargaining.

In an interview with CNN, state Representative Tyler August, the majority leader of Wisconsin's State Assembly, stated that the outcome of this open seat would "determine whether we're going to have a court that is run by activist liberal idealogues or if we're going to have a court that's going to have a majority of constitutional conservatives who interpret the law as it's written and not how they wish it was written."

Less than three weeks before election day, on March 12, WISN-TV will conduct the first debate between the two judicial candidates.

Closely split court in a state with close divisions
Being one of the few swing states that influences the outcome of US elections, Wisconsin plays a crucial role in deciding the winner of the presidency. In the past seven Badger State presidential elections, five have been decided by less than one percentage point. Four years ago, the state narrowly supported Democrat Joe Biden, but last year, it flipped to Trump by about 29,300 votes out of over 3.3 million cast.

Even though Wisconsin voters voted Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin to a third term, the state delivered Trump his smallest winning margin to date last year.

Both parties in the state will be put to the test of their passion in the Wisconsin Supreme Court contest. After suffering crushing defeats in the 2024 election, Democrats across are in the midst of rebuilding as they attempt to strengthen party operations and modify message.

According to Wikler, the results of the election in April "will show everyone in American politics whether Democrats have found their fighting spirit."

Over the weekend, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin, who was elected by party members to head the committee this month, will travel to Wisconsin for the first time to campaign.

According to DNC deputy communications director Abhi Rahman, "the DNC is all hands on deck to turbocharge the coordinated campaign on the ground." "Elon Musk is not wanted in the White House by voters, and they most definitely do not want him to rig our elections. In order to prevent out-of-touch billionaires from buying and paying for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, we will do everything in our power to ensure that it continues to represent all Wisconsinites.

Republicans may see the contest as a test of whether Trump's popularity among voters can be transferred to other conservative candidates outside of the presidential election year, particularly in crucial battleground states like Wisconsin.

Brian Schimming, the chair of the Wisconsin Republican Party, declared, "We just won the state for Trump." "Our people are quite excited and jacked up." This race has been affected by it. Our grassroots, I believe, are aware of the stakes in this contest.

One right-leaning justice sided with liberals to dismiss a Trump case, while the Wisconsin high court, which was then heavily influenced by conservatives, was instrumental in rejecting Trump's challenge to Biden's victory following the 2020 presidential election.

Two years ago, a liberal named Janet Protasiewicz defeated a Republican named Dan Kelly to win an open seat on the high court, giving liberals a one-seat advantage. This year, a Schimel victory would return the court to conservatives, while a Crawford victory would keep the liberal majority.

The winner will be in office for ten years.

The court has handed Democrats significant wins since the liberal takeover two years ago, including overturning a 2022 high court decision that had declared vote drop boxes virtually outlawed and invalidating Republican-drawn state legislature designs.

Additionally, despite the extremely narrow margins of victory for Republicans and Democrats in statewide elections, the court may review congressional maps that have allowed the GOP to maintain a disproportionate majority of six out of eight US House seats. Crawford's participation in a briefing with Democratic donors, which was characterized on the invitation as a "chance to put two more House seats in play in 2026," has drawn criticism from her detractors.

Republicans claim it demonstrated her willingness to support redrawing the state's congressional maps in a way that would benefit Democrats. Crawford's campaign countered that she hasn't commented on the congressional maps, didn't see the invitation, and only briefly joined the call to discuss her background and reasons for running.

The judges could also comment on a 2011 state law that deprives thousands of teachers, nurses, and other public employees of their collective bargaining rights and provokes widespread demonstrations against lawmakers and the state's then-Republican governor, Scott Walker. A lower court is currently considering a challenge to that law.

However, abortion is arguably the most significant problem that the court is facing. The judges will rule whether the state's 1849 abortion prohibition, which makes no allowances for rape or incest, may still be enforced.

Crawford refused to offer her opinion on the 19th-century law in an interview with CNN, stating that doing so would be against the state's judicial code.

However, Crawford, a private lawyer for Planned Parenthood, suggested that the government should have a limited involvement in abortion. "I always wanted to be able to make my own decisions about my health and my family, along with my doctors, as a woman who has gone through pregnancy and delivery," she stated.

Schimel's abortion record has been criticized by Crawford's campaign, which has cited an audio recording of him saying to a local Republican organization last year that "our state constitution does not provide a constitutional right to abortion."

"I can't imagine making the deep and personal decision that a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy has to make," Schimel said in a statement to CNN. I value all life.

He went on to say, "But a judge's job is to apply the law, not make the law." "The abortion issue should be decided by the people of Wisconsin, either through a referendum or their elected officials. I shall honor the people's will as the next justice of the Supreme Court.

An advertisement for Schimel's campaign also features his two adopted daughters. As Schimel puts it, "I'm personally thankful for the decision their mothers made."

Crawford's campaign has launched advertisements accusing him of neglecting survivors of sexual assault by linking him to restrictions on abortion and citing a two-year backlog of testing rape kits while he was the state attorney general. Schimel claimed in an advertisement that during his tenure, he cleared a backlog of 4,000 exams.

The Schimel campaign, for its part, has questioned Crawford's bond and sentencing judgments in two child sexual assault cases in an effort to paint her as a soft-on-crime figure. Crawford claimed in an interview that Schimel's advertisements are "full of inaccuracies."

A deluge of early funds
At this stage of the 2023 campaign, Schimel and Crawford have already outpaced the pace at which candidates raise money, with the liberal contender raising the most. However, according to AdImpact's count, by Wednesday afternoon, conservative interests had surpassed Crawford and her supporters on the airwaves thanks to ads bought by organizations that supported Schimel.

The conservative-leaning nonprofit organization Building America's Future, which does not reveal its donors but has previously received funding from Musk in part, is one of the organizations that have just entered the campaign, according to Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.

Musk did not reply to a CNN question, and a Building America's Future representative declined to comment.

Musk has been keeping an eye on the contest for weeks. He urged his followers "to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!" on social media last month, highlighting the court's 2024 ruling that reinstated the use of ballot boxes in elections.

Rich Republicans like Hendricks, the roofing tycoon; Elizabeth Uihlein, whose family runs a packaging company; and J. Joe Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs, are also major contributors to the political party committees involved in the contest.

Together, they gave the Wisconsin Republican Party almost $2 million, which last month gave Schimel's campaign close to $1.7 million. Additionally, prospective purchase monitored by AdImpact indicate that Fair Courts America, an organization previously supported by the conservative Uihlein family, will start advertising next week.

On the Democratic side, Soros and fellow Democratic billionaire J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, recently gave the Wisconsin Democratic Party $1 million and $500,000, respectively. Crawford's campaign has received $2 million from the party.

The chair of the GOP state party, Schimming, praised the backing of Republicans nationwide and contended that the court election might have significant ramifications outside of Wisconsin.

"What transpires in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin could literally lead to control of the House of Representatives," Schimming emphasized. "For those who believe that I'm raising too many red flags, I'm not."

According to Wikler, Democrats worldwide are working together because of the high stakes of the Wisconsin race.

"As people watch in horror as Trump and Elon Musk rip apart the federal government, so many Democrats are asking themselves, 'What do we do now?'" he remarked. "Investing in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race is one obvious red flag solution. We are attempting to shout that message from the rooftops.