Daniel BiceAlison Dirr
Billionaire Elon Musk has thrown another $1 million into next week's Wisconsin Supreme Court race — but unlike his most recent spending on attack ads and canvassers, he said this sum went to just one voter.
Musk took to X, the social media platform he owns, to announce Wednesday evening that "Scott A." from Green Bay had won the sum for signing Musk's "Petition In Opposition To Activist Judges."
The petition was announced late last week on the X account of Musk's super PAC, America PAC. It offers $100 in cash to people who sign the election petition but does not mention a $1 million giveaway.
The PAC would then use the demographic information from the petition to make sure people vote in the high-stakes Wisconsin election on Tuesday.
The $1 million giveaway was initially announced by America PAC, though the super PAC's spending records make no mention of that payment. More than $2 million in independent expenditures in recent days have been for texting, field operations and canvassing.
In offering the large payout, Musk is resurfacing a mechanism he used in the November presidential election, when he offered $1 million sweepstakes payments to registered pro-Donald Trump voters in seven swing states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — who signed a petition.
The U.S. Department of Justice in October warned him that the actions might be illegal and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a Democrat, also sued to try to block the contest in Pennsylvania.
A Pennsylvania state judge in November allowed the giveaway to proceed.
Musk wrote that the next award would be announced Friday.
He has spent about $20 million backing conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel in Tuesday's election, when Schimel will go head-to-head against liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford.
Musk's spending has made him the single largest spender in the race that an election watchdog group has predicted could top a record-breaking $100 million in spending.
Crawford's campaign spokesman slammed Musk and Schimel over the payouts.
"It turns out that Schimel is such a bad candidate that Elon Musk will spend whatever it takes to prop up Schimel’s failing campaign in a corrupt attempt to buy influence on the Supreme Court for his company's lawsuit," spokesman Derrick Honeyman said in a statement, referencing the lawsuit by another Musk company, Tesla, against the State of Wisconsin. "It's corrupt, it's extreme, and it's disgraceful to our state and judiciary."
Schimel's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though he has said he does not control Musk's spending.
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on X at @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.
Alison Dirr can be reached at adirr@jrn.com.
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