CNN
By Fredreka Schouten, CNN
(CNN) — Elon Musk is emerging as a new star in Democratic ads and fundraising appeals, as politicians from Virginia to Wisconsin try to seize on the tech billionaire’s role in slashing the federal government to motivate their voters and donors.
A leading Democratic outside group recently launched ads in nearly two dozen House races that seek to paint vulnerable GOP incumbents as willing to cut spending on health care for children and the elderly to benefit billionaires such as Musk. The ads from House Majority Forward show images of Musk wielding the chainsaw that he held aloft last month during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference as he celebrated pursuing steep spending cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency.
The Tesla CEO also has a starring role in a digital ad campaign from the Virginia House Democratic Caucus that seeks to expand the party’s narrow majority in the state House of Delegates. And he’s featured in new commercials that back the liberal candidate running for an open judicial seat in Wisconsin in an election that could change the ideological balance of the state’s Supreme Court.
The advertising blitz tests whether Musk – whom Forbes pegs as the world’s richest person – will prove a political liability for Republicans as he continues to take a leading role in chopping the federal workforce and shuttering parts of the government.
“He makes for a very convenient boogeyman,” said Lynda Tran, a Democratic strategist and former Biden administration official. “He’s driving the vast majority of headlines right now. Whether you want to or not, his name is on your lips because he’s taking up so much of the oxygen in the room.”
Recent polling suggests that Musk is an unpopular messenger for the administration’s cost-cutting moves – particularly among the Democratic voters that the party needs to turn out in off-year elections in places such as Virginia. The governor’s seat and state legislative contests are on the ballot in the Commonwealth this year, and elected officials there are grappling with the fallout of DOGE-driven cuts to the state’s sizable federal workforce.
Fifty percent of respondents in a Marist/NPR/PBS national poll conducted in late February had an unfavorable view of Musk, compared to 39% who had a favorable opinion.
A separate poll from Quinnipiac University found, overall, that 55% of voters think Musk has too much power in making decisions affecting the US.
The poll also revealed a stark partisan divide: Among Democrats, 96% said Musk had too much power; only 16% of Republicans felt that way.
Some Americans see the tech CEO “as the face of somebody who fired their uncle or shifted their cousin’s factory overseas,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist. “Musk is now the image of the incredibly wealthy billionaires who have a major role in the Trump administration.”
Musk did not respond to a CNN inquiry. On Tuesday, during his joint address to Congress, Trump publicly thanked Musk, who had a prime seat in the gallery, for his work to identify and end “appalling waste.” Some Democratic lawmakers protested during Trump’s speech, including Texas Rep. Al Green, who was censured by the House this week for his actions.
“As millions of Americans witnessed on Tuesday night, the Democratic Party is grossly unaligned with the American people and fundamentally unserious,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said in an email in response to a CNN inquiry about the anti-Musk ads. “Poll after poll shows that the mission of DOGE is widely supported, and Democrats need a reality check.”
But in one sign of the growing backlash over the deep cuts and Musk’s high-profile role in them, Trump this week imposed new limits on Musk’s authority, telling Cabinet members that they are in charge of staffing changes at the agencies they lead. The president also called for more precision in the federal cost-cutting moving forward, saying the government would use a “scalpel” rather than a “hatchet.”
Musk as fundraising, turnout tool
In Wisconsin, Musk – who spent nearly $300 million to elect Trump and Republicans in last year’s federal elections – is poised to play an outsized role in the race to fill a single open seat on the seven-member state Supreme Court.
Musk’s political action committee, America PAC, has spent $3.2 million through Thursday afternoon to aid the conservative candidate in the race, Brad Schimel, and hit the liberal contender, Susan Crawford, state records show. Another group that Musk has financially backed in the past, Building America’s Future, has spent another $2 million on advertising and mailers in the race.
The April 1 election, which is expected to break national spending records for a judicial contest, will determine whether liberals retain their 4-3 majority on the court. A Schimel win would flip the court in this perennial swing state to conservatives.
The court will decide whether a 19th century law banning most abortions can be enforced and could weigh in on a slew of other issues, including whether to overturn a 2011 law that ended most collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin public-sector employees and a legal challenge brought by Musk’s electric-vehicle company Tesla to a law that prohibits carmakers from owning dealerships in the state.
Groups supporting Crawford have begun to hit back with their own ads featuring Musk. The Wisconsin Democratic Party has launched a seven-figure campaign that includes commercials, town halls and a People v. Musk website
Another group supporting Crawford, A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund, is running ads that accuse Musk of “causing chaos” in Washington and attempting to “buy” the Wisconsin court seat.
For its part, Crawford’s campaign has run Facebook ads that seek to use Musk’s spending in the race to boost donations. One ad asks for money to help Crawford “fight back, fast” against the billionaire’s investments.
Crawford campaign spokesman Derrick Honeyman said donors have stepped up. In a single week, the campaign took in more than 36,000 individual grassroots donations – outpacing the 30,000 individual contributions that Crawford had received between launching her campaign last June and the start of February.
Crawford also has the support of billionaires in her race. Financier George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker are among the recent donors to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which has transferred money to Crawford’s campaign.
“The attempts by Susan Crawford and the Democrats to distract the people of Wisconsin from her extreme views and the radical billionaires funding her are a mockery of hypocrisy,” Schimel campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer said in an email to CNN.
In Virginia, meanwhile, Democrats are hoping their Musk-focused advertising will sway voters as residents start to feel the impact of his efforts to pare down the federal workforce.
Musk “is taking a chainsaw to their lives and livelihoods, and decades of public service in many cases,” said state Delegate Dan Helmer, who chairs campaign efforts for Virginia’s House Democratic caucus and represents an outer suburb of the nation’s capital.
Last year, Virginia was home to more than 144,000 federal civilian workers, according to a tally by the Congressional Research Service.
Democrats, who currently control 51 seats in the state House of Delegates to Republicans’ 49, are seeking to tie Musk to vulnerable Republican incumbents. The Democrats’ targets include 12 GOP state lawmakers, eight of whom serve in districts that Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, prevailed in last year, Helmer said.
Harris won the state overall, but Trump made gains in 2024 on his performance in 2020 and 2016.
Emphasizing Musk “is a way of communicating with people who supported Trump, but are uneasy about (federal) cuts,” said Kyle Kondik, the manager editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball political newsletter at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
But there are potential downsides to a Musk-focused campaign for Democrats.
“The risk of going after Musk in politics is that he has an unlimited bank account,” said a strategist who works with Democrats. “Does going after him increase his incentive to throw more money in?”
Early focus on midterms
Earlier this week, House Majority Forward – the nonprofit arm of the leading super PAC working to elect Democrats to the House in next year’s midterms – began running ads that accuse Republicans of failing to deliver on campaign promises to reduce the prices of basic goods and of planning to cut healthcare spending to benefit wealthy people such as Musk.
The ads seek to link the lawmakers to Musk and a recent vote by House Republicans to push forward the president’s agenda – including extending Trump’s first-term tax cuts – through a budget process.
The House GOP spending framework seeks to find $880 billion in healthcare and energy savings over a decade. Although health policy experts say a logical target for savings would be Medicaid, Republican leaders and Trump insist they do not support direct cuts to Medicaid benefits and would find savings by tackling waste, fraud and abuse.
More than 1 in 5 Americans have health insurance through the federal program.
The new Democratic ads accuse Republicans of planning to kick individuals off Medicaid to give the rich tax breaks. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm for House Republicans, argues that misrepresents the broad benefits of Trump’s tax proposals.
“The Democrat Party is upstream without a paddle – they have no message, no agenda, and no support,” NRCC spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement about the latest ads from Democrats. “Now they’re running the same playbook of resorting to shameless fearmongering and outright lies because they’re trying to hide the fact that they just voted to raise taxes on hardworking Americans.”
CNN’s David Wright contributed to this report.
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