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'Trump is on the ballot': Wisconsin race could signal 'game over' if rural voters revolt
An election this week in Wisconsin should serve as a bellwether for next year's midterms and gauge whether President Donald Trump's policies have cost him support among rural voters, a report claimed Monday.Spending in the state's Supreme Court election between conservative Brad Schimel and liberal ...
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U.S. President Donald Trump's adviser Elon Musk wears a cheese hat as he holds a rally in support of a conservative state Supreme Court candidate of an April 1 election in Green Bay, Wisconsin, U.S. March 30, 2025. REUTERS/Vincent Alban
An election this week in Wisconsin should serve as a bellwether for next year's midterms and gauge whether President Donald Trump's policies have cost him support among rural voters, a report claimed Monday.
Spending in the state's Supreme Court election between conservative Brad Schimel and liberal Susan Crawford is expected to reach $100 million, making it the most expensive state judicial race in history.
And Republicans have been campaigning heavily in deep-red rural areas where voters have been threatened by tariffs on agricultural goods and affected by the Agriculture Departmentâs funding freeze, reported Politico.
âIf [Schimel] doesnât have the kind of support that President Trump had in rural Wisconsin, ball game over,â said Wisconsin-based former GOP adviser Brian Reisinger, who specializes in rural policy. âThe strength of the rural vote, and whether it is going to be there for the conservative candidate in the Supreme Court race like it was for conservative candidates in 2024, is going to be the biggest, most determinative factor in this race.â
â[It's] the biggest signal that weâre going to get headed in the midterms," Reisinger added.
Elon Musk has invested heavily in the race â publicly handing out $1 million checks to two voters â and Trump appeared Thursday at a tele-town hall to boost Schimel. While the president remains plus-nine in favorability in the state's rural areas, his government-slashing billionaire adviser is minus-17.
âWhat weâre seeing here is kind of a replay of the last election cycle involving Trump,â said Republican strategist Craig Peterson. âTrump is on the ballot here, so is Elon Musk.â
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The Supreme Court race could have a major impact on the ability of farmers to access clean water with a pending case that could limit the Department of Natural Resourcesâ authority to enforce a spills law. Farmers have been rattled by some of the Trump administration's early policies.
âThe biggest thing that I hear is the true uncertainty that weâre in,â said Darin Von Rude, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, whose PAC endorsed Schimel. âNot knowing what tomorrow is going to look like, (or) whatâs going to come out of the White House or the USDA.â
Republicans have been hearing from worried farmers, but they remain confident that Schimel can beat the Democratic-backed Crawford.
âIâm not hearing people talk about abortion at all, and Iâm not hearing them talk about the tariff issue,â said Peter Church, the GOP chair in rural Adams County. âThese people are by and large red voters, and though the Supreme Court race is nonpartisan, they see that the red side is Brad Schimel.â
 has broken the record for the longest speech ever delivered on the floor of the U.S. Senate, surpassing a 1957 filibuster by Strom Thurmond that had stood for nearly seven decades. Booker began speaking at 7 p.m. on Monday and continued into Tuesday evening, reaching 24 hours and 19 minutes at [âŚ] %23corybooker)
 â Cory Booker ends a more than 25-hour floor speech against Trump's actions, the longest in Senate history. %23corybooker){kind=logo}
