Democrats are targeting Elon Musk after failing to dent President Donald Trump’s popularity.
Despite a series of negative campaigns by Trump’s political opponents, nothing seems to stick to “Teflon Don.”
With town hall meetings erupting into furious attacks on GOP reps over Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency and the backlash against the billionaire’s Tesla brand, Democratic Party activists have united behind a new strategy of targeting the world’s richest man.
While Trump’s popularity has remained relatively high in some polls–voters gave him a 47 percent positive rating in an NBC News survey published last week–a majority of voters disapprove of Musk.
Musk has featured prominently in a recent campaign by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have embarked on a nationwide “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.
At their first stop in Las Vegas on Thursday, AOC singled out Musk and told the crowd the oligarchy has the power to “destroy the public good to enrich themselves while millions of Americans pay the price.”
Sanders referred to Musk’s DOGE cuts, saying: “They are like heroin addicts. They need more and more and more. And if they destroy Social Security and Medicaid to get what they want, that is what they will do.”
Musk has described Social Security as the “biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
“Our job in the coming weeks and months is not just to take Trump on every step of the way but to do more. It’s to have a vision for where our country should be going,” Sanders added.
In Wisconsin, Democrats have sidestepped Trump to launch a campaign with Musk as the prime target in a key judicial race.
Two new ads attempt to link the DOGE boss to Brad Schmiel, the former state attorney general running for the state’s Supreme Court, Politico reported.
“Elon Musk is out of control, and now the power-hungry billionaire is unloading millions to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” one of the ads contends. “He knows corrupt politician Brad Schmiel is for sale and will abolish the checks and balances that protect us.”
A super PAC backed by Musk has injected $7 million into the contest—the most expensive state Supreme Court race in history.
The state Democratic Party leadership sees the costly campaign as a litmus test that may signal how they approach future swing state contests and the crucial 2026 mid-terms.
Many in the party have decided that attacking Musk rather than Trump would boost Dane County Judge Susan Crawford’s chances.
“Democrats are furious about Musk, and independents are increasingly freaked out about the way that Musk is attacking things like Social Security and childhood brain cancer research,” Ben Wikler, chair of the state Democratic Party, told Politico. “Our test of our first Musk ad found that it moved likely 2025 voters by 6.2 percentage points.”
“We have a chance to demonstrate in this race that his money is politically toxic,” he added.
