Will Women Vote for Brad Schimel?

Brad Schimel. Photo from the State of Wisconsin.

It’s rare that a candidate announces so far ahead of time, but in late November former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel announced, a full 17 months before the April 2025 election, that he would run against incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.

One reason for this seemed clear: Schimel said he wanted “to avoid a damaging primary,” like the one between Dan Kelly and Jennifer Dorow, that became a war between right wing politicos in the state and made it easier for liberal Janet Protasiewicz to win election to the court in April. Starting early could help Schimel build enough support to leave no room for another conservative to enter the race.

There’s also the fact almost no high court justice in Wisconsin history has lost a bid for reelection. The statistics are stunning: of 120 Supreme Court elections in state history, only three incumbents who had previously won office were later defeated. Walsh Bradley herself is part of that history, having sailed to victory in reelection efforts: she faced no opponent in 2005 and crushed Judge James Daley in 2015, by 58% to 42%. That history might be another reason Schimel has started campaigning early.

Except that Wisconsin has become very different over the eight years since Walsh Bradley last won election. The ever-rising tide of extreme partisanship in Wisconsin and the nation has turned even “nonpartisan” court races into red vs. blue battles with huge spending by both parties and most voters siding with their ideological tribe. That was obvious in the most recent contest between Protasiewicz and Kelly and in several high court races before that.

Schimel’s election announcement made a cursory attempt to broaden his campaign beyond ideology, condemning the current court as one that “puts their own opinions above the law” and declaring that “Wisconsinites of all political ideologies should find this offensive.” But it was wrapped in a condemnation of the “liberal court majority” that clearly rings the red-state bell.

Which has been a winning formula for Schimel. Schimel has run up big numbers, winning more than 1.2 million votes in both the 2014 and 2018 race for Wisconsin Attorney General. Yes, he lost reelection in 2018 to Democrat Josh Kaul, but just by a whisker — .04% of the vote — coming much closer than Scott Walker, who lost the race for governor by 1.1%.

As Urban Milwaukee columnist Steve Walters has written, Schimel’s vote totals were amazingly consistent in his home county of Waukesha, with 146,321 in 2018 and 145,432 in 2014, and when you added the five other counties that Republicans running statewide typically must win (Ozaukee, Washington, Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago), he got a total of 372,008 votes in 2018 and 357,986 votes in 2014.

In short, Schimel is a proven vote getter in statewide races, which ought to make him a formidable candidate. Except on two issues women voters are likely to vote on.

Just as the abortion issue helped Protaswiecz, who made clear her support for abortion access, it is likely to help Walsh Bradley. Her defeat would tip the high court to a conservative majority, which would likely be hostile to any case supporting abortion rights.

Certainly Schimel’s history shows his adamant opposition. As Waukesha County district attorney in 2012, he endorsed a Wisconsin Right to Life legal white paper that argued for keeping on the books the state’s 1849 ban on abortions except to save the mother’s life. Running for attorney general in 2018 he declared his passionate belief that “life begins at conception.” As attorney general, Schimel supported laws in Indiana and Ohio that limited abortion access and opposed a Planned Parenthood lawsuit against a 2013 GOP law that limited abortions by requiring doctors performing them to have hospital admitting privileges. This history may not go over so well in a state that has ranked third nationally for the increase in women registering to vote since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overruled the right to an abortion.

Add to this Schimel’s dreadful record on processing sexual assault kits as attorney general, catalogued in a 2018 Urban Milwaukee column. Schimel’s office won a $4 million federal grant in September 2015 to inventory and process untested kits and one year later not one of the more than 6,000 untested sexual assault kits had been processed. By then his office had been awarded another $1.1 million in federal funds to process the kits. Yet four months later his office admitted that only nine kits had been processed.

After his spokesperson promised the AG would send 200 kits each month to private labs for testing “until all kits are tested,” Schimel still dragged his feet. Three months later, in May 2017, his office admitted that just 63 kits had been processed.

Studies had by then showed how important it was to process these kits. A 2016 report by Case Western Reserve University found that of 243 rape kits studied in 2013, at least 51 percent were linked to offenders of multiple sex crimes. Yet Schimel seemed to have little concern about this.

As his inaction got more attention and grew more embarrassing, Schimel authorized more overtime and hired 11 part-time workers in an effort to speed up testing. Meanwhile the backlog of untested kits continued to grow and reached 6,800 at its peak. Yet even with the extra overtime spending, Schimel’s office had by June of 2018 tested only 1,900 rape kits, though they had enough federal money to process 5,100 kits.

Whether due to incompetence, a lack of concern about the issue or both, Schimel left a huge problem for his successor. Yet, within nine months of Kaul taking office the number of untested kits processed was up to 4,400. Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers pushed for new legislation to prevent any future backlogs, which some Republicans opposed and delayed but the law finally passed in December 2021.

All of which is fodder for some tough attack ads, and won’t endear Schimel to any women voters who prioritize these issues. Add to this that he is running against and harshly criticizing both a woman justice and a court majority made up entirely of women, and that will make it even harder not to alienate independent voters who are women.

Meanwhile, Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar has said she is considering entering the race. She is also a Republican based in Waukesha who has a record defending abortion restrictions, voter ID laws and other conservative policies, but might come across differently as a woman challenger to Walsh Bradley.

Schimel will do his best to prevent her from gaining enough support to enter the race. One person who may be rooting for him to succeed is Ann Walsh Bradley.