The Portfolio of Pat Roggensack

Patience Roggensack. Photo by Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Wisconsin Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, who was recently criticized as “elitist” for comments she made during a court case, and her husband are worth at least $295,000.

Roggensack’s latest annual Statement of Economic Interest for 2019 showed Roggensack and her husband, George, a retired radiologist, had 14 investments, including stocks, mutual funds, money markets, and limited partnerships worth at least $295,000.

Roggensack’s precise net worth is unknown because the Statement of Economic Interest that elected officials must file annually with the state only requires the filer to identify whether an investment is worth between $5,000 to $50,000, or worth more than $50,000.

For instance, she lists five investments as larger than $50,000, with no upper limit. So all we know is that she has at least $250,000. But she could have 100 times that, or 1,000 times that, for all we know, in those investments.

In addition to investments, the couple lists five sources of income, including her state salary, which was $159,297 a year, two blind trusts, and Social Security.

Evidence for a much higher net worth is that Wisconsin Democracy Campaign records show that, since 1993, the couple has made contributions to state candidates exceeding $356,000, of which about $351,000 was for Roggensack’s various Wisconsin State Supreme Court campaigns.

Roggensack was criticized as “elitist” and “classist” for comments she made last Tuesday during a high court hearing on a GOP lawsuit challenging Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order. At one point during oral arguments in the case Roggensack said a recent flare-up of coronavirus cases in the Green Bay area affected a meatpacking facility and not “regular folks in Brown County.”