Who is Susan Crawford? Liberal judge wins Wisconsin Supreme Court election - beating Elon Musk-backed candidate Brad Schimel

Crawford, a liberal judge from Dane county, defeated Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general and conservative judge from Waukesha county. Musk and groups associated with the tech billionaire had spent millions to boost his candidacy in what became the most expensive judicial contest in American history.

A combined more than $80m was spent on the race, topping the previous record of some $51m that was spent in the 2023 Wisconsin state supreme court race. Elon Musk and affiliated groups spent more than $20m alone.

With more than 84% of the vote tallied, Crawford led Schimel by nearly 10 percentage points winning the election on Tuesday (1 April). In remarks on Tuesday night, Schimel said he and his team “didn’t leave anything on the field” and announced that he had conceded the race in a call to his opponent before taking the stage. When his supporters began to boo, Schimel stopped them. “No, you gotta accept the results,” he said, adding: “The numbers aren’t gonna turn around. They’re too bad, and we’re not gonna pull this off.”

Musk said hours after the result that “The long con of the left is corruption of the judiciary” and that the most important thing was that a vote on the addition of voter ID requirements passed. The result means that liberals will keep a 4-3 ideological majority on the state supreme court.

Crawford, 60, has served as a Dane County Circuit Court judge since 2018. She won election to the seat that year and again in 2022 in the county, which is home to the liberal state capital, Madison.

Crawford previously worked as an assistant attorney general for both the Iowa and Wisconsin departments of justice and as an attorney in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. In 2009, she joined Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle’s staff as his legal counsel. After Doyle left office in 2011, Crawford joined a liberal Madison law firm that filed numerous lawsuits challenging Republican-enacted laws.

In that role she represented Planned Parenthood in a pair of cases challenging limitations to abortion. She also spoke against the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Two cases challenging an 1849 Wisconsin abortion ban law are pending before the state Supreme Court.

Crawford represented public teacher unions in a case challenging a GOP law that effectively ended collective bargaining for teachers and most other public workers. That law, known as Act 10, was the centerpiece of Republican former Gov. Scott Walker’s tenure and made Wisconsin the center of the national debate over union rights.

She grew up in Chippewa Falls and graduated from Lawrence University in Appleton in 1987 and the University of Iowa College of Law in 1994. Crawford lives in Madison and is married with two children.