On Tuesday, Brad Schimel, the Trump-backed candidate in the race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, lost in decisive fashion to his liberal opponent, Susan Crawford. Other than the candidate himself, the election’s biggest loser is Elon Musk, who spent $25 million on Schimel’s blowout loss, and whose future in bankrolling the Make America Great Again movement is suddenly up in the air. Musk is not used to this sort of uncertainty. He spent more than a quarter-billion dollars on the 2024 presidential election, a savvy investment that bought him both a de facto Cabinet seat and the obedient silence of Republican politicians who fear that Musk will use his astronomical fortune to finance primary challenges against them the moment they step out of line. Musk saw the Wisconsin Supreme Court as his next conquest—a chance to prove his kingmaker bona fides in an important election for the Republican Party, which he framed in startlingly apocalyptic terms, especially for an off-cycle judicial race in a state where he doesn’t live: The result, Musk warned on March 30, could “decide the future of America and Western Civilization.” Wisconsin voters, however, did not see things Musk’s way. (Or, if they did, they did not share his vision for the future.) Crawford won by 10 points, and Schimel called her to concede a few hours after polls closed. A closer look at the numbers reveals the scale of his defeat: Every county shifted in Democrats’ favor relative to the 2024 election, when Donald Trump won the state by a bit less than one point. Even in deep-red areas where Schimel beat Crawford by margins in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, Crawford still outpaced Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance just four months ago, and sometimes by double digits. Musk has no one to blame but himself. Since November, his antics at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have made him one of the most polarizing political figures in the country: 60% of people have an unfavorable view of Musk, including 46% who say they view him “very” unfavorably, according to a recent Marquette poll. As it turns out, if you are an unelected plutocrat dismantling the federal government and trying to put hundreds of thousands of people out of a job, and then show up in a new state imploring people to do what you say or else, an appreciable number of them are going to use their votes to tell you to go to hell instead. Musk’s carpetbagging in Wisconsin was equal parts confident and cringe. He promoted a Schimel campaign event on X, and tweeted a weird caricature of the candidate dressed as Superman, urging his followers to “vote for Superjudge.” His PAC hosted a pro-Schimel town hall in Green Bay during which Musk spent more time defending DOGE than he did stumping for Schimel, who opted to campaign elsewhere that night. Musk kicked off the event by bounding onto the stage wearing a bright yellow Packers cheesehead hat, which he promptly autographed and then threw out into the crowd in the style of a band lead singer pandering to concertgoers in a city he can barely remember the name of and never intends to visit again. Perhaps most audaciously, Musk dusted off a strategy he employed in Pennsylvania during the closing weeks of the 2024 election, which basically involved turning voter registration into something resembling a sweepstakes. This time, he promised to pay Wisconsin voters who signed an online petition condemning “activist” judges, and to hand out million-dollar checks to a few lucky winners who had cast their ballots early. Musk modified the terms of his offer shortly after making it, perhaps after learning of a state law that makes it illegal to pay people for voting. Instead, he explained, the million-dollar checks would merely go to “spokesmen” who’d agreed to promote his petition.  In a wild coincidence, one recipient, Ekaterina Diestler, works at a company led by well-connected Republicans in the state; the other, Nicholas Jacobs, is the chair of the Wisconsin College Republicans. After Diestler cut a soft-lit promo video in which she explained that she “did exactly what Elon Musk told everyone to do: Sign the petition, refer friends and family, vote, and now I have a million dollars,” Musk’s PAC quickly pulled the clip and replaced it with an edited version that omits the word “vote.” Thanks largely to Musk, overall spending on Tuesday’s election cracked $90 million, which makes it the most expensive state judicial election in U.S. history, roughly doubling the record set in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election two years ago. Musk loomed so large over the race that Crawford was happy to treat it as a referendum on him, earning laughs on the campaign trail by referring to Musk, rather than Schimel, as “my opponent.”  This strategy paid off: Turnout was nearly 40% higher than it was in 2023, and Schimel underperformed the other Republican on this year’s ballot—Brittany Kinser, who lost the statewi