now we've got the candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge Susan Crawford thank you so much for taking the time great to be here Brian thanks for having me so I want to get into the to the financial implications of what we're seeing in Wisconsin already can you speak a little bit about where the money is coming from on the Republican side of the aisle that's being that's that's flooding into this race well you know Elon Musk primarily so uh musk's packs have spent over $5 million now on the race on uh mostly attack ads
against me these kind of ugly false attack ads the first of which one of the ads had a picture of a different Susan Crawford not me so he doesn't really know he's who he's spending money against yet uh print ads um he's paying canvassers to go to door door to door in Wisconsin so kind of an allout assault and trying to buy himself a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court can can I have your reaction to this new trend on the right where we are seeing um billionaires coming and basically try to buy the government
that is supposed to be buy ofen for the people instead to serve a billionaire class that's clearly deriving a lot of benefit from from being in this position yeah well you know Elon musk's company Tesla has a case that's working its way through the court system in Wisconsin uh one that you know so there's maybe a financial stake in this for Elon Musk uh that's that's one explanation U I think it's really undemocratic and really disturbing particularly in a Judicial race that is at least nominally nonpartisan uh so I'm you know I'm running as a
non-partisan candidate I'm just pledging to be fair and impartial and decide cases based on the law and and protect the rights of wisconsinites and my opponent so his name is Brad Shimmel he's the one that Elon Musk is spending all this money on he said the other day that uh he wants to be on the court to be part of the support network for Donald Trump uh the courts are supposed to be check and balance against the executive branch right not not not an extension of it exactly and he's you know he's uh he's certainly
not impartial he's he's shown himself to be extremely partisan and and biased and this is not somebody who belongs on the Wisconsin Supreme Court or any Court what are the implications if Republicans because right now Democrats have control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court obviously we've seen we've seen the the trickle down effects from that are pretty consequent especially with regard to Wisconsin having Fair maps for the first time since I can remember being being involved in politics and so if Elon and the Republican Party are successful uh in this race what would the implications be
more broadly um in the state of Wisconsin yeah well so just to clarify one point uh these races are nonpartisan and the majority on the current Supreme Court generally uh those justices lean more Progressive or liberal so way you know more pro-democratic I would say uh and uh we have uh the other three justices who uh tend to be very conservative and uh sometimes you know very right-wing so uh if Brad Shimmel ends up on the court particularly if he feels like he owes the seat to Elon Musk I think we would see a lot
of pressure uh to make over the court as a a farri uh majority similar to what we see on the US Supreme court and you know this wouldn't be the only instance by the way to your earlier point about how Elon has derived some Financial or professional benefit for himself I mean the first things that he did when he came into the US government on on the federal level is is to start gutting agencies that you know under this pretense of waste Fraud and Abuse that at the end of the day we're not the biggest
indicators of I mean if you want like the one agency that everybody thinks about when they think about waste Fraud and Abuse is the agency that's failed seven Audits and yet he decided to go after usaid cfpb Department of Labor National Labor Relations Board all of these agency EPA all of these agencies had investigations looking into him and his own business interests and so this is just one more instance of of more of the same yeah I I think that he is a transactional guy and is looking to spend his money in the way that
uh fits his financial interests and you know it's not enough for him to be able to control the federal government so he's waiting into you know even State Judicial races and trying to uh protect his his financial interests uh on a state supreme court in Wisconsin and so given the the attacks that you've seen again that are funded by folks like Elon like these other Republican billionaire donors what would you use this opportunity to say to dispel given given the The Narrative that they're trying to push yeah you know uh these ads are just uh
so they're so uh patently full of lies and we know more is coming uh they have you know they're doing the kind of ATT attacks that I think we saw during the uh fall presidential campaign where they are putting out digital ads that uh actually um say I've taken positions that I've never taken before uh that I am running to like push a a you know farle agenda which I'm not and just try to General make me um appear more far to the left than I actually am so we're seeing that and then we're also
seeing these attacks that uh you know distort um and misrepresent decisions that I've made as a judge uh mostly on criminal cases they have two favorites that they talk about cases where I sent people to prison uh for several years and uh and and have on a strict supervision uh through our State Department of Corrections even today so they are are trying to scare people and also trying to lie to people and and misrepresent who I am so we're working really hard to make sure we've got the resources to fight back and to show people
who I am what my record's really about you know I have a a career as a prosecutor uh a civil rights lawyer and uh a lawyer a constitutional lawyer protecting people's uh fundamental rights in our courtrooms and now as a judge for several years and my opponent is a really extreme right-wing politician who has he actually has quite a history of selling out to the highest bidder you know it's always follow the money when it comes to Brad Shimmel so it's not even the first time he's done this kind of thing can you give a
little background into into what voters should know about about Brad Shimmel yeah well when he was a republican attorney general in Wisconsin he uh had a agenda of pursuing right-wing causes at the expense of wisconsinites and Public Safety uh so he left a backlog of over 6,000 6,000 uh sexual assault kits on tested in Wisconsin for over two years uh these are the K kits that can uh be tested for DNA to determine who the perpetrators of those crimes are and he only got nine of them tested in two years out of over 6,000 and
then he lied about it and said that first of all he said there wasn't a back log well he was caught out in that and then he said that there were hundreds tested and it turned out to be only nine and then you know it became an issue in his election campaign to try to get reelected as attorney general and uh somehow he found the resources to get thousands of them tested in the last six months of his term of office but you know wisconsinites didn't buy that and they sent him home he also uh
was sitting on his hands while the opioid epidemic was raging in wisc son people were dying of overdoses families were being destroyed and Most states in the country were joining a national lawsuit to hold those opioid manufacturers accountable for that kind of harm and not Brad Shimmel he was standing by doing nothing and at the same time was taking thousands of dollars of campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry so again you know follow the money and he is doing it again with Elon Musk and he actually you know if you kind of follow the timeline
here Brad Shimmel was out at the inauguration in DC for about a week in January attending these high ticket Black Tie Galas by groups like Turning Point USA and then he comes back and a day or two later literally a couple of days later Elon Musk is tweeting about the Wisconson Supreme Court race saying vote for the Republican and then a month later he's dumping million millions of dollars and at about that time Brad Shimmel was was joking on right-wing radio shows in Wisconson about how he's been on his knees begging for support financial support
for his campaign and he's wearing out his knee pads and then lo and behold millions of dollars start showing up from Elon Musk yep well to that point then what should voters know about you because we are going to see more attacks because look when you have somebody like Elon funding these campaigns that means that there is just a bottomless pit of of money to to pull from we saw that in the Trump campaign where that really benefited him to a huge degree and so and so what do you want to take the opportunity to
say to voters whose perception of you is going to be colored by the ads that are going to be put out by these partisan interests yeah well you know I want them to know that I'm somebody who uh brings Common Sense uh justice I have always viewed the law and our constitutions as you know tools to protect people's rights and I want to protect the rights of all wisconsinites I grew up in chipa Falls you know was a small town in Wisconsin and uh worked hard you know my family uh went through some tough times
when I was a kid I financed my own college education as a result and I learned values like hard work and honesty and watching out for people and that's the kind of person I've always always been and it is how I've always tried to use my experience and my legal skills you know I started out as a prosecutor and always you know was focused on making sure that people were held accountable when they harmed our community uh that corporations likewise are held accountable when they do harms and that Crime Victims have a voice in the
process uh then I was in private practice for several years and uh represented Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and their doctors to make sure that women could have access to repr itive Healthcare Services you know at that time we had a a you know very far to the right governor in Wisconsin and a a lock up of Republicans in both houses of our legislature and they were doing everything they can of course this was uh before R versus Wade was overturned but they were doing all they could to restrict the ability of doctors to provide Health
Care Services to women so we fought back on that and you know I was in um in court fighting for public school teachers so when the rights in the workplace were taken away and worked hard to protect the voting rights of wisconsinites to make sure that every eligible voter in Wisconsin is able to cast their ballot so I've had a lot of experience uh fighting for the fundamental rights of people in this state and I want them to know that uh I'm going to keep doing that on the Wisconsin Supreme Court perfectly put uh judge
Crawford how can folks who are watching listening help your campaign well I would invite people to take take a look at our campaign website it is Crawford forwith wisconsin.com uh they can learn a lot more about it there and there are links to uh support the campaign there that they can take a look at you know they can also follow us on all the different social media and see what we're up to I've been spending a lot of time traveling all over the state uh talking to voters and uh there's a lot of people out
there who are really enthusiastic about the really engaged and you know they're mad actually they're mad to see that Elon Musk is trying to buy a Judicial election in Wisconsin so I've got really motivated supporters and I welcome the help of anybody out there who's watching and and I would just Echo that point that this race not only has huge implications for what happens in the state of Wisconsin itself and for fair maps in Wisconsin which is really the whole ball game in terms of in terms of you know what laws are able to get
passed what protections and civil rights are able to be uh preserved for the folks there but also this is this is a a bellweather for what happens moving forward as we head toward 2026 this is a big race in terms of where the momentum is going to lie uh as we head toward this next major election so highly recommend all eyes are going to be on Wisconsin for the next few weeks here highly recommend if anybody is in the position to be able to help please donate what you can um let folks know you know
everything that you know about this race amplify judge Crawford's uh social media platforms and just make sure that people are aware of what's happening in the state because this really is the most important race in the entire country right now judge Crawford thank you so much for taking the time best of luck in the campaign Trail well thanks so much for the opportunity Brian [Music]
