Elon Musk Eats Shit in Wisconsin

All the money in the world couldn't make voters like him.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Over the past several months, the richest man in the world spent approximately $25 million dollars attempting to directly influence a state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin. The race, between the liberal Susan Crawford and the conservative Brad Schimel, attracted nationwide attention and a cascade of funding, but Elon Musk was the race’s single largest donor by a long shot. He went to Wisconsin. He work a cheesehead. At one point, he gave voters cartoonishly sized used car dealership novelty checks in exchange for signing a petition to stop “activist” judges. He did his memes and spent his money and was weird and awkward in so many interviews. And none of it—none of it—worked.

Last night, Crawford was elected by a comfortable margin, with Wisconsin voters clearly indicating that they wanted little to do with Musk’s efforts attempts to outright buy an election. The final tally isn’t in yet, but it looks like Crawford won by about nine points.

Musk and his cronies have now firmly entered the “cope and seethe” phase of this admittedly rare electoral defeat. Former Wisconsin Gov.. Scott Walker tried to claim on CNN that George Soros and a list of other supposedly liberal billionaires outspent Musk in the election, which, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is unequivocally false.