Special Elections in Wisconsin and Florida: TIME D.C. Brief Podcast for March 31, 2025

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00:00You're listening to TIME's DC Brief Newsletter from March 31, 2025.

00:05This audio was produced by 11 Labs for TIME using an AI voice.

00:10Our top story today is called

00:12What to Watch for in Tuesday's Wisconsin and Florida Special Elections

00:16by TIME Senior Correspondent Philip Elliott.

00:20During a closed-door meeting last week, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise

00:25gave his fellow Republicans an ice-cold dose of reality.

00:29Tuesday's special elections in Florida, and maybe even the super-pricey Supreme

00:33Court race in Wisconsin, were poised to be bad for the GOP brand.

00:38In a Florida House district that went Republican by 30 points in November,

00:42the Democrat is polling just a few points behind and out-raising his rival by a 10-to-1 margin.

00:49In the other House race in that state,

00:51a 40-point GOP advantage is registering at about half that rate in early vote numbers.

00:57Meanwhile, the Wisconsin race, where Elon Musk is handing out $1 million checks,

01:02is a true jump ball.

01:05That's why Scalise was meeting privately with Republicans last Tuesday to issue this warning.

01:10Even in a GOP sweep, the election results are going to raise inevitable questions

01:15about the fragile GOP standing and the fading power of Trump's endorsement.

01:20Scalise, like leadership-aligned Democrats speaking candidly,

01:24expects the Florida seats to stay red. But the slide is going to be tough to ignore.

01:30Here are the players and stakes for all three races.

01:33Florida's 6th District

01:35Randy Fine vs. Josh Weil

01:38Back in November, Republican Mike Waltz won re-election in Florida's 6th District by 33

01:43points. When he resigned to become Trump's national security advisor,

01:47the assumption was the seat was still a safe Republican hold.

01:51But a March private poll from a firm close to the Trump White House

01:54showed Republican State Senator Randy Fine ahead

01:58by just three points, according to Hill aides who have dug into the crosstabs.

02:02That was much closer than the 12-point spread in February.

02:07It's a clear sign that the Democrat, Orlando teacher Josh Weil,

02:11has effectively tapped into national frustrations with the second Trump term.

02:16Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been sniping his fellow Republican in recent weeks

02:21for running a campaign as though Fine had already won.

02:25Trump this past weekend held an 11th-hour telephone rally to remind his MAGA faithful

02:30of his preference. And Musk is rushing in with tens of thousands in new ads.

02:36GOP leaders in Washington are well aware that Fine was incredibly late to get his own first

02:40ads on airwaves.

02:42I would have preferred if our candidate had raised money at a faster rate and gotten on TV quicker,

02:47Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, House Republicans' campaign chief,

02:52told reporters last week. But he's doing what he needs to do. He's on TV now.

02:57The seat should have been a safe Republican hold, and probably still is if folks are being honest.

03:03But the fact that Democrats are running up the score here is going to raise more grumbling

03:07about Trump's gut-based endorsements—and whether this race is a sign of a bigger problem

03:11for the party nationally.

03:13Florida's 1st District, Jimmy Petronas vs. Gabe Alamont

03:17Before he resigned from his House seat in hopes of becoming Trump's attorney general,

03:22Republican Matt Gaetz won re-election in Florida's 1st by 32 points.

03:27Most strategists describe the 1st District, which covers the western panhandle,

03:31as the most Republican in the state, a place where Democrats have little hope of tipping the race

03:36blue. Yet some Democratic donors are clearly buying the hype that an enormous Trump backlash

03:42is in the offing. Gabe Alamont, a gun safety activist who is running for the seat again

03:47after getting creamed by Gaetz last year, hauled in more than $6 million through mid-March,

03:53a lapping of Republican Jimmy Petronas by a factor of 5.

03:58Just as Weil has tried to nationalize his race—wins in both districts could potentially

04:02turn the House blue and give Hakeem Jeffries the title of Speaker—Valamont is trying to

04:08make her contest as a referendum on checking Trump's power.

04:12Where Weil is still making the race about his opponent,

04:15Valamont is very much running directly against Trump and racing right past Petronas, the state's

04:21CFO. Still, both Democrats are hoping to ride the national mood on opposite sides of the state.

04:29Democratic donor advisers have taken the pair of races as symptoms of what happens when

04:34activists are taken in with races that carry plenty of symbolism but no viable path to victory.

04:40But here is the surest signal that these races are not priorities for anyone with real power

04:46in the Democratic Party. House Democrats' official campaign arm is not playing in either race in

04:51Florida. While some, like Jeffries, have cut checks as signs of support, the major spigot

04:57of cash has remained closed. Wisconsin's Supreme Court seat—Susan Crawford vs. Brad Scheimel.

05:04State judicial races rarely draw big spending. Yet some estimate the money to decide who gets

05:10a single seat on Wisconsin's highest court will top $100 million, with $20 million alone coming

05:18from Musk. To put that in perspective, the average cost per winning U.S. House campaign in the last

05:24midterm elections was roughly $2.8 million. Wisconsin has emerged this century as the most

05:31unlikely of high court battlegrounds. The state's politics, perhaps as much as any of its neighbors,

05:37has had a massive reset of alignment. What was once a safe GOP harbor for the likes of former

05:43Governor Scott Walker gave way for a rising union machine, but it still allowed GOP Senator Ron

05:49Johnson to win reelection over one of the 2022 cycle's rock star candidates, Mandela Barnes.

05:56Put simply, a bet on Wisconsin's political DNA in the coming years is a gamble that only fools

06:02would take. That's why, just Sunday night, Musk was on Wisconsin's stage tossing an autographed

06:09cheesehead hat into the crowd. The race is rocketing to new levels of spending, putting

06:14it on par with marquee Senate races and surpassing what even some presidential bids collect.

06:19The stakes include workers' rights, voting rights, and abortion rights, as the winner will decide

06:25which team prevails on a four-to-three state Supreme Court. The plum political prize, of course,

06:30will be deciding how congressional districts are drawn, perhaps giving this parochial court

06:35a major say in which party—and its preferred speaker—gets to run the U.S. House.

06:41Madison politics has been drawing outsized attention for more than a decade now,

06:45starting with a string of union testing efforts and a recall palooza that set back a progressive

06:50march. The national glare to those working there is getting old. More recently, Democratic Governor

06:57Tony Evers and a Republican legislature have been riding a tense tightrope of governing frailty.

07:03The courts have been hanging back, awaiting the results of Tuesday's balloting.

07:07There's no party ID on the ballots, but it's clear the party affiliation of the two candidates

07:11as they each chase a promotion and a 10-year term. Brad Schimel, a former state attorney general and

07:18currently a Waukesha County judge, is carrying an endorsement from Trump. Dane County Judge

07:23Susan Crawford snagged the support of former President Barack Obama. And both candidates

07:28have their share of billionaire buddies in their back pockets. Think of the typical boogeymen—George

07:33Soros, Dick Elyne, Musk. Even actor Kevin Bacon has found his way into this tangle of out-of-state

07:39donors. But it's Musk who is topping the ranks and making the race all the more divisive with

07:45his visit that passed out $1 million checks like candy and his other efforts to use his money to

07:50encourage rank-and-file voters to cast ballots. In a twist, the legality of those moves have made

07:56their way to the court currently in play. Tuesday's election in Wisconsin has been

08:01Tuesday's election in Wisconsin is the lone statewide contest before voters this year,

08:06making it a tempting test case for political nerds. By all accounts, the whole Democratic

08:12playbook is making the election a referendum on Musk, the biggest cash source in the race.

08:18But it's also a warning. If the courts are so transparently for sale,

08:22can they actually be trusted to be neutral umpires for what's right and wrong?

08:27State Legislative Races Trending Blue All three of these races are coming on the

08:31heels of a few legislative races, with results that may hint at a larger Trump backlash,

08:37or may just be a lot of noise. Observers are prone to over-interpret the results of special

08:42elections, to be sure. Often, we're looking at just thousands of votes cast. When most voters

08:49are unaware, there is even an election happening. But they can be useful in diagnosing a mood.

08:54For instance, after the Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion with the Dobbs decision,

09:00the backlash in special elections was immediate, and Democrats cruised to a strong showing in the

09:052022 midterms. This time, it seems the MAGA reboot has been sufficient for Democrats to carry around

09:12optimism. Take an eastern Iowa legislative district that Trump carried by 21 points in November.

09:19In January, the Democrat flipped the seat. So far this year, Democrats obsessing over

09:26state legislatures, which actually have more day-to-day impact on most voters than any ramblings

09:31from Washington, have tracked a 9-point overperformance for their candidates from

09:35the voter registration numbers. Republicans surveying the 2026 map were already seeing

09:41a rough road ahead. The Trump factor is only adding a rumble strip.

09:45Thank you for listening to Times DC Brief. For more news and politics, visit time.com.

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