Spending by candidates and outside groups combined will break records again in this year's Wisconsin Supreme Court race. (Getty Images)

Spending in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race could be two times as high as the record-breaking $51 million spent in the last election for a seat on the state’s highest court, and outside spending is dwarfing what the candidates themselves have raised so far this year.

The race, between Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, will determine whether the Court maintains a 4-3 liberal majority that flipped two years ago or reverts to a conservative majority that was in place for more than a decade previously.

“We’re watching money just flood from out of state into Wisconsin,” said Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, in a briefing Monday about campaign finance trends with two weeks to go before Election Day April 1. “It would not be crazy to say that this race could be double what the last Supreme Court race was, especially with the trends and especially with the track that we’re on.”

Crawford is ahead in fundraising by the campaigns themselves, raising $7.36 million. Among her donors, 35 have given the maximum Wisconsin allows an individual to donate to a single candidate, $20,000.

Schimel’s campaign has raised $4.93 million. There are 47 donors who have given him the maximum allowed under Wisconsin law.

The Court race is officially nonpartisan, but over the last couple of decades candidates have divided along partisan as well as ideological lines. Crawford’s campaign has received $3 million from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s Political Action Committee (PAC), and the Wisconsin Republican Party PAC has given $1.68 million to Schimel’s campaign.

Independent expenditures, however, have so far favored Schimel over Crawford by roughly 3 to 1. Independent expenditures, which explicitly favor or oppose a candidate, are spent by groups outside the campaigns.

Independent groups supporting Crawford have spent $7.79 million on pro-Crawford or anti-Schimel advertising — as much as her campaign has raised so far. But independent groups’ spending on Schimel’s behalf is almost three times that: $21.45 million.

With 15 days until Election Day, the independent expenditure total in the 2025 race is more than twice what it was at the same point in the 2023 state Supreme Court contest: $29.24 million compared with $14.4 million.

“Credit” for the trend goes to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case that unleashed corporate and union spending on campaigns and to a 2015 rewrite of state law that brought on “this wild west of campaign spending here in Wisconsin,” Ramos said.

The data also shows the outsized influence of billionaires on state politics, he said. Among the biggest spenders in the race are groups funded by Elon Musk and Richard Uihlein, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign reports. 

The top two biggest-spending independent groups favoring Schimel are linked to billionaire Musk: America PAC, spending $6.53 million so far, and Building America’s Future, spending $4.54 million, according to the Democracy Campaign.

Three other pro-Schimel organizations have been funded by Uihlein, owner of the office supplies company Uline: Fair Courts America, Americas PAC IEO, and American Principles Project PAC. Another Uihlein organization, Restoration PAC has also contributed to the American Principles Project PAC, according to the Democracy Campaign.

Launched 30 years ago, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign tracks political spending in the state. The nonpartisan organization also promotes campaign finance reform as well as voting rights and access, along with other pro-democracy policies.

Ramos said voters shouldn’t let the immense sums that a few are plowing into the race discourage them from going to the polls or to believe their vote won’t matter. “At the end of the day, money does not vote, people do, and your power and your voice is that vote,” he said. 

Early voting starts Tuesday in Wisconsin, and the Democracy Campaign is taking part in campaigns to encourage people to vote early and “for folks to just continue to be civically engaged,” Ramos added. 

The Democracy Campaign also tracks spending on issue ads — advertising that does not include direct messages to vote for or against a candidate, but highlights information that paints candidates in a favorable or unfavorable light.

Issue ad spending is more difficult to track, and donors behind issue ad spending aren’t required to be disclosed under Wisconsin law. Total issue ad spending data will probably not be available until the summer, said Molly Carmichael, the Democracy Campaign’s communications director.

“Phony issue ads flood our airwaves with disinformation and, somehow, have even less reporting requirements than other forms of spending,” said Ramos. “It’s another part of our unregulated, unruly money in politics problems we’re going to need to clean up.”

One set of issue ads in the Court race has come under scrutiny for masquerading as a pro-Crawford campaign while it’s funded by a conservative group with ties to Musk.

The Facebook and Instagram ads as well as related text messages “are labeled as coming from a group called Progress 2028 and are made to look like authentic messages of support” for Crawford, the Associated Press reported March 5. But records for the ads showed they were underwritten by a conservative PAC for which Musk is a major contributor, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The ads describe Crawford as a “progressive champion,” the AP reported, while they focus “on hot-button issues” and use language “that potentially diminishes her standing with moderate or conservative voters.”

High court spending dwarfs superintendent race

Spending in the hotly contested race for the office of state superintendent is just a fraction of the money being spent on the state Supreme Court race. That election will choose the person to head the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

Incumbent Jill Underly has raised $139,495 as of Monday, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Kinser, a former charter school leader and school choice lobbyist, has raised more than double that, $316,316.

As with the high court race, the DPI contest is officially nonpartisan, but each candidate has been favored by one particular political party. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has given Underly $56,118 from its PAC. The Republican Party has given Kinser $2,500.

Kinser has also benefited more from independent expenditures, with $40,518 spent to promote her or oppose Underly. Independent spending in favor of Underly or opposing Kinser has been about half as much, $23,177.

Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, speaks Tuesday at a press conference about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. With him are, from left, Sam Liebert of All Voting is Local and Nick Ramos of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

A former U.S. Capitol Police officer who survived the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack said Tuesday the insurrection must not be forgotten four years later — and candidates running for election now should face up to what happened then.

“This attempt to whitewash, downplay, normalize what happened on Jan. 6 is ongoing and shows no signs of letting up,” said Harry Dunn during a meeting with reporters in Madison.

Criticizing Republicans who have urged Democrats and the public “to move on from Jan. 6,” Dunn said the attack met the definition of an insurrection — “a violent uprising against the government. Full stop.”

“That’s what Jan. 6 was,” he added. “The police officers just happened to be in the way. But anybody that fails to accept that, acknowledge that for what that was, deserves to be called out, condemned.”

Pro-democracy advocates arranged for Dunn to speak to the press in the state Capitol building and deliberately chose one particular meeting room on the third floor — 300 South, the same room used by Republican fake electors in December 2020 who filled out false electoral votes choosing Donald Trump as the Wisconsin winner of an election that he lost.

The fake elector scheme “was hatched in Wisconsin and launched from here to the rest of the United States,” said Scott Thompson, a staff attorney for Law Forward, at Tuesday’s press conference.

The nonprofit law firm sued Wisconsin’s fake electors and won a settlement in which they acknowledged in writing they had tried “to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential elections results.” The scheme culminated in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, Thompson said.  

“The events of Jan. 6, 2021, were not just an attack on a building or a single moment in time, but they were an attack on our collective voice as voters,” said Sam Liebert, Wisconsin director of the voting rights group All Voting is Local Action. “The insurrection was a brazen and egregious attempt to silence millions of Americans nationwide to overturn the results of a free and fair election through violence and intimidation.”

Four years later in 2024 Trump won the U.S. popular vote, including a 30,000-vote majority in Wisconsin, returning him to the White House effective Jan. 20. There one of his first acts was to pardon more than 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6 attack.

Dunn’s visit to Wisconsin focused on Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel’s comments about the Jan. 6 defendants, including during a recent radio interview. Schimel is a Waukesha County circuit court judge and former Wisconsin attorney general.

In a Jan. 2 appearance on the Vicki McKenna show, Schimel said that Jan. 6 defendants didn’t have “a fair shot” when they were tried and blamed “lawfare manipulation” for the conviction of defendants in the attack.

Schimel suggested they would have been acquitted had they not been put on trial in “overwhelmingly liberal” Washington, D.C., and that the prosecutors appointed under the Democratic administration “would never take their prosecution in a district where you had a fair shot as a defendant.”

The federal government prosecuted the rioters in Washington because the city is where the U.S. Capitol is located.

Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, mentioned Schimel’s radio interview before introducing Dunn.

“Four years ago, far-right mobs swarmed the Capitol, assaulted officers and tried to overturn the will of voters,” said Ramos. “It’s pretty straightforward, and yet Schimel, our former attorney general, still thinks these people weren’t given a fair shot and their trials were political gamesmanship.”

Dunn said he’s taken an interest in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race because of Schimel’s comments.

“I’ve been fighting for accountability from day one,” Dunn said. He holds Donald Trump primarily responsible for the riot.

“That accountability won’t happen,” he said. But he added that he also wants to hold accountable “public officials who believe that Donald Trump’s pardoning of these individuals was OK” — including Schimel.

“I don’t know Brad Schimel’s positions on policy on anything else, except for that he is OK with supporting the rioters who attacked me and my coworkers, period,” Dunn said. “And that is not OK — and that’s what’s bringing me here.”

During a news conference Monday featuring his endorsement by Wisconsin Republican members of Congress, Schimel accused prosecutors of overcharging some Jan. 6 defendants until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law under which they were charged didn’t apply to them.

He also said that “anyone who engaged in violence and Jan. 6, assaulted a police officer, resisted arrest, those people should have been prosecuted … and judges should impose sentences that are just under the circumstances.”

Schimel also defended the president’s power to issue pardons: “It’s a power they have. I don’t object to them utilizing that.”

Dunn was asked Tuesday about Schimel’s comments.

“If you believe that the individuals who attacked police officers should serve their sentence, then the only response to Donald Trump’s pardons should be that they’re wrong,” Dunn replied. “He should not pardon them — and those words did not come out of [Schimel’s] mouth. So he’s attempting to play both sides.”

In an interview, Dunn said he’s kept going despite disappointment at Trump’s 2024 victory because “I believe in doing what’s right.”

That’s what led him to become a police officer, he said, and after the Capitol attack, to mount an unsuccessful campaign for Congress. He also has a political action committee, raising funds to support political candidates who are pro-democracy, he said.

Dunn acknowledged that some who opposed the president have given up in despair while others have become embittered toward Trump voters.

“I’ve seen people say, ‘You know what? This is what you all voted for. You get what you deserve,’” he said. “There are a lot of people who did not vote for this, that are going to be impacted by the things that Donald Trump and this administration are going to do, and I believe they deserve somebody that’s going to fight for them.”

There will be elections this year, in 2026 and 2028, all opportunities for change, “so I encourage people,” Dunn said. “And I think part of my work is to make sure people are educated before Election Day and not outraged after Election Day.”