Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Elon Musk will visit Wisconsin on Sunday ahead of the state\u2019s high-profile Supreme Court election.<\/p>\n
Musk initially announced the plan in a post shortly after midnight on Friday, promising a $1 million giveaway to two attendees who had voted. That post was deleted after legal experts raised concerns it would violate state law. Musk clarified on Friday afternoon that the giveaways would be limited to people who signed his super PAC\u2019s petition.<\/p>\n
The visit marks an escalation of Musk\u2019s campaigning in Wisconsin, where the Republican-backed Brad Schimel faces Democratic-backed Susan Crawford in an election that will determine control of the state\u2019s highest court. Musk\u2019s political organization, America PAC, has spent more than $12 million on the race, according to campaign finance disclosures, and he personally gave $3 million to the Wisconsin Republican Party.<\/p>\n
In a Friday afternoon post<\/a>, Musk said the event would be held Sunday night and would be reserved for those who had signed a petition circulated by America PAC. He will hand out two $1 million checks at the event, he said.<\/p>\n He had previously posted, and then deleted, about the event and the checks, but the earlier post said the event would be \u201climited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election.\u201d<\/p>\n Legal experts immediately raised concerns that offering the Sunday giveaway for only those who have already voted could violate Wisconsin\u2019s election bribery law, which makes it a crime<\/a> to offer \u201canything of value\u201d to \u201cinduce\u201d potential voters to vote or not vote in an election. Early voting is underway in Wisconsin and runs through Sunday.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m actually surprised that Musk is being so explicit about tying eligibility for this million dollar payout to having voted in the election,\u201d said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer and deputy executive director of the watchdog organization Documented, about Musk\u2019s earlier post. \u201cHis tweet makes it very clear that you can only enter this event, and you can only be eligible for the million dollar payout, if you voted, and it’s hard to read that as anything other than providing a thing of value to induce a person to vote, or to reward them for having voted.\u201d<\/p>\n The giveaway tactic is not new for Musk. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, America PAC made signees of a petition supporting the First Amendment eligible for a $1 million giveaway. The plan faced legal challenges but judges ruled in Musk\u2019s favor<\/a>.<\/p>\n The group has replicated a similar strategy in Wisconsin, promising voters $100 to sign a petition \u201cIn Opposition To Activist Judges,\u201d and it announced on Wednesday it had cut a $1 million check<\/a> for a Green Bay resident who signed on.<\/p>\n \u201cElon, thank you,\u201d recipient Scott Ainsworth said in a video posted by America PAC<\/a>, where he urged MAGA voters to go to the polls and support Schimel.<\/p>\n Musk is quickly becoming an enormous player in Republican politics. He launched America PAC in the spring of 2024, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money into the group, primarily to finance canvassing operations supporting President Donald Trump\u2019s election campaign. He promised the group would stay active in the coming years, with the Wisconsin Supreme Court race becoming its first major investment since Trump’s victory.<\/p>\n The Wisconsin election is already the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, surpassing the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where the Democratic-aligned candidate ultimately prevailed. Liberals currently hold the majority on the state’s highest court, which has say over everything from abortion rights to the state’s legislative maps.<\/p>\n Democrats have spent big in Wisconsin’s race, too. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker of the Hyatt hotel family gave $1.5 million to back Crawford, and longtime megadonor George Soros pitched in $2 million.<\/p>\n But no single figure has invested as much as Musk. Democrats in Wisconsin have sought to turn the race into a referendum on him<\/a> and his outsized political influence. A plane flying over Milwaukee on Thursday carried a banner<\/a> reading “Go Home Elon. Vote Susan.\u201d<\/p>\n