‘Loser’: Musk endures wave of gloating on X after liberal judge wins Wisconsin race

Democrats were tasting unfamiliar triumphalism on Wednesday after the election for a vacant Wisconsin supreme court seat turned into an emphatic repudiation of Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s richest supporter and key ally.

Musk endured a wave of gloating on Twitter/X, his own social media platform, after Brad Schimel, a Trump-endorsed judge that he spent $25m supporting lost by 10 percentage points to Susan Crawford, whose victory sustained a four-three liberal majority on the court.

On a day that Trump has earmarked as “liberation day” to mark his long-awaited roll out of trade tariffs, Democrats seized on the result as a referendum on Musk – who has spearheaded the president’s slashing of federal government workers and spending programmes – while casting it as a platform for a recovery in next year’s congressional midterm elections.

In a display of schadenfreude, the Democrats official account posted a picture of Musk donning a cheese head and accompanied with the single word “Loser”.

Crawford, a former attorney for Planned Parenthood, presented her success as a triumph over Musk. “As a little girl, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin. And we won,” she told cheering supporters Tuesday night.

The result is politically significant because the court is due to issue abortion rulings while also deciding on electoral redistricting questions which now have the potential to help Democrats in future elections in a state where contests are traditionally close.

Democrats have sought to exploit Musk’s growing unpopularity to tar Trump and the Republican generally. Recent polls show a majority of voters have a negative view of Musk, who was once popular with the US public.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat leader in the House of Representatives, said it was now on Republicans to separate themselves from Musk.

“Time for them to walk away from this unelected, unpopular, unhinged and un-American billionaire puppet master,” he told MSNBC. “He tried to spend his unlimited resources to buy a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin, and it failed spectacularly.”

Chuck Schumer, the party’s leader in the Senate, said the result “sent a decisive message to Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Doge… our democracy is not for sale.”

Other party figures were blunter. Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’s running mate for the Democrats in the 2024 presidential election, was succinct on Musk’s social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

“Wisconsin beat the billionaire,” he posted.

Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat House member from Texas, posted: “Well well well, I guess Wisconsin agreed on the message for old Elon: “F’ off!,” she wrote.

Eric Swalwell, a California representative, called the result an “ass-kicking” for Republicans, adding: “Where else does Elon want to try and buy an election.”

JD Pritzker, the Democrat governor of Illinois and himself a billionaire, wrote: “Elon Musk is not good at this.”

Suspicions that Musk’s profile and conspicuous wealth have become an electoral turnoff also appeared to infect Republicans.

Pam Van Handel, a Republican party chair in Wisconsin’s Outagamie county, told Politico: “I thought [Musk] was gonna be an asset for this race. People love Trump, but maybe they don’t love everybody he supports.”

The site quoted Rohn Bishop, the Republican mayor of the Wisconsin city of Waupun, as saying: “I thought maybe Elon coming could turn these people to go out and vote, [but] I think… he may have turned out more voters against [Schimel].”

Charlie Kirk, a pro-Trump social media influencer and activist, implied – without mentioning Musk by name – that his wealth and profile might have played a role.

“We did a lot in Wisconsin but we fell short,” he wrote. “We must realize and appreciate that we are the LOW PROP party now. We are the party of welders, waiters and plumbers. We are the party of people who work with their hands, who shower before and after work.”

Neither Musk nor Trump mentioned the supreme court result in its immediate aftermath, trumpeting instead another Wisconsin ballot result that amended the state constitution to require photo ID as a condition for voting.

Then on Wednesday afternoon, Politico and ABC News reported that Trump told his inner circle, including some Cabinet secretaries, that Musk will soon leave his role as a top adviser to the president, overseeing federal government job cuts. The reports cited anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

Meanwhile, Republicans won victories on Tuesday in two special House elections in Florida caused by the resignations from the US Congress of Matt Gaetz, Trump’s original attorney general designee but who later withdrew amid sexual misconduct allegations, and Mike Waltz, now the national security adviser.

But the elections were won by margins of around half of what Trump achieved last November. Jimmy Patronis beat Democrat challenger Gay Valimont to win Gaetz’s former seat, while Randy Fine defeated Josh Weil in Florida’s sixth district, once held by Waltz.

The results bolstered the GOP’s wafer thin House majority to 220-213.

Trump hailed the outcomes, which he attributed to his personal endorsement. “THE TRUMP ENDORSEMENT, AS ALWAYS, PROVED FAR GREATER THAN THE DEMOCRATS FORCES OF EVIL. CONGRATULATIONS TO AMERICA!,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

But Jeffries claimed the reduced victory margins augured well for the Democrats in next year’s midterms.

“One point that should have my Republican colleagues quaking in their boots,” he said. “In the Florida sixth race, which was a Trump +30 district, the margin was cut in half. There are 60 Republicans in the House who currently represent districts where Trump did worse than 15 or 16 points.”