Susan Crawford Makes Her Case for Wisconsin Supreme Court

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford addresses voters at a campaign event in Oregon on Feb. 7. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

On Friday, Feb. 7, dozens of Dane County progressive voters, anxious about the first weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term, crowded into Oregon’s Kickback Cafe to see Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford make her campaign pitch.

Looking for something tangible to do as President Donald Trump and billionaire Trump advisor Elon Musk work to dismantle pieces of the federal government, deport thousands of undocumented immigrants and roll back protections for minority groups, voters like Diane Olsen and Anne Hecht of Fitchburg said they were supporting Crawford’s campaign because they want to see the retention of a liberal majority on the state’s highest court that upholds “fairness and honesty, adherence to the law,” Olsen said.

“I feel strongly she’d represent things that are positive,” Olsen continued.

Wisconsin’s April 1 Supreme Court election will be one of the first statewide elections in the country since Trump’s win in November. The race for an open seat being vacated by retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will determine the ideological balance of the Court and provide the first test of the voting public’s mood early in the Trump administration. Crawford, a former prosecutor for the state Department of Justice and a current judge on the Dane County Circuit Court, is going up against Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general and now a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge.

Like the race in 2023 when the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz secured a liberal majority on the body, the 2025 race has already drawn national attention, as well as millions of dollars in campaign contributions and outside spending

On Monday, Crawford announced she had raised $4.4 million in the most recent reporting period, bringing her total fundraising to $7.3 million since she entered the race last summer. The Schimel campaign announced it had raised $2.7 million during the most recent reporting period and a total of $5 million since he entered the race. But in Oregon, Crawford supporters were wary of the support Schimel has received on social media from Musk and the potential for his money to swing a close race.

Voters packed into Crawford’s campaign event at the Kickback Cafe in Oregon. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

With about seven weeks until Election Day, the race is beginning to become more contentious. Schimel’s campaign has released an ad that blames Crawford for the failed prosecution of a convicted rapist in 2001. Crawford says she wasn’t the attorney who made the mistake and has complained that the Schimel campaign used artificial intelligence to doctor a photo of her — making her scowl when the original photo showed her smiling.

The campaign has filed an ethics complaint against Schimel over the ad because of a state law enacted last year that requires a disclosure if AI is used in a political ad.

Recently, after Schimel was reported to have said he’d been having to make repeat trips to Menard’s to buy knee pads for all the begging he’s had to do to raise campaign funds, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign filed a complaint against him with the state judicial commission, alleging that those direct pleas for money violate the judicial code.

Meanwhile, Crawford has released ads warning about Schimel’s previous anti-abortion stances, stating that if elected, he would help conservatives ban abortion in Wisconsin.

Next term, the Court is likely to decide major cases on abortion, labor rights and environmental regulations. It could also take up the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps.

“These races do have big consequences,” Crawford said in an interview. “They affect the fundamental rights and freedoms, personal freedoms, of everybody in Wisconsin, there should be a lot of attention on them. I think that part of it is positive, in a way that people understand that this third branch of government is really important and will affect their lives.”

For the second consecutive Supreme Court race, abortion is a driving issue among Wisconsin voters. The Court heard arguments late last year in a case that could overturn the state’s 1849 law that has been interpreted as banning  abortion but the issue could still be contested in future cases.

Schimel, who has accused Crawford of being a “political weapon” for the Democratic Party, has previously said he doesn’t see a problem with the 1849 abortion law and received support from a number of anti-abortion groups. While Crawford — who accuses Schimel of pre-judging the case — previously represented Planned Parenthood in court and has said she believes the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.

“Schimel has openly said that he believes that law should be enforced,” Crawford said. “So he is the one who is openly taking a position on the outcome of that case. Again, I don’t think it’s because he has delved into the filings of the parties and read the briefs or sat through the oral arguments or talked to any other justice on the court about it.”

The Court has also recently moved toward accepting a case that could overturn parts of Act 10, the controversial law enacted by Gov. Scott Walker that ended collective bargaining rights for most public employees. Crawford previously represented a group of teachers suing to overturn the law and has been endorsed by a number of labor unions. (Last week, the Court released a ruling saying it would not bypass the state’s appellate court to take the Act 10 case.)

“When I seek and accept endorsements from any group, I make it really clear that this is not a quid pro quo,” Crawford said. “I am not promising anything. I am not taking a position on any of their, you know, pet cases or causes that they might be trying to get from the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and so they have to accept the fact that, you know, I’m going to be fair and impartial and call the cases like I see them based on the full record at the time. And that’s again, in contrast to what we’ve seen my opponent doing, which is to openly announce how he would decide Act 10, or how he would decide the 1849 abortion law case.”

Late last year, when a Dane County judge struck down parts of Act 10, Schimel said in a statement the decision was “the latest instance of the Left using the justice system to satisfy their donors and dismantle laws they don’t like.”

The Court has also recently taken up cases on the authority of state government to enforce environmental laws as Wisconsin tries to clean up harmful chemical contamination in its water. When Schimel was attorney general, enforcement of environmental laws dropped precipitously and Wisconsin joined other states in opposing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to cut coal emissions to fight carbon emissions and global warming; the EPA’s stricter federal air emissions standards on ozone pollution; and its expansion of authority over water regulations, the Appleton Post Crescent reported in 2016. Crawford has been endorsed by Wisconsin Conservation Voters.

Meanwhile, both candidates, who have experience as prosecutors, have tried to claim the title of tougher on crime.

At the cafe event, Crawford touted her experience as a prosecutor, saying that helping to take care of her sister with disabilities as a child pushed her to choose a career protecting people.

“As a prosecutor, I always worked really hard to make sure that people who committed terrible crimes were held accountable, held in prison,” she said, “that crime victims’ rights were protected in the process, our communities were kept safe and that justice was done. That was the bottom line, the most important thing.”

Schimel has won the endorsement of most of the state’s county sheriffs — including some with controversial positions on a number of issues.

Crawford has repeatedly criticized Schimel for the state DOJ’s backlog of untested sexual assault kits that existed when he was attorney general.

In Oregon, Crawford was joined by Justice Jill Karofsky, who identified herself as one of the few people in Wisconsin who has worked closely with both candidates. Karofsky, who ran the DOJ’s office of crime victim services while Schimel was attorney general and sat on the Dane County bench with Crawford, said the rape kit backlog persisted because Schimel refused to ask the Republican-controlled Legislature for more money to hire more lab staff.

“He doesn’t belong within 100 miles of the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” Karofsky said.

Crawford told the Examiner that she believes her experience as a prosecutor will be helpful when reviewing cases on the Supreme Court.

“As a prosecutor, you have really a lot of power, and it has to be exercised very carefully, judiciously in determining what the charges are at the outset of the case,” she said. “I think, for me now as a judge —  and certainly …  on the Wisconsin Supreme Court — [its important] to just have that understanding that the case is a result of decision-making by an individual prosecutor. Sometimes they get it right; sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’ve got the evidence there to prove their case and sometimes they don’t. But just to recognize that those are human decisions that get made, because I’ve been there, and I think it’s an important perspective for any justice to understand that some prosecutor had to make a decision.”

Over the last term, under the current 4-3 liberal majority, the Court heard far fewer cases than in previous years, issuing decisions in just 14 cases. That decline in caseload from 45 decisions in the 2022-23 term included a drop in the number of criminal cases it weighed in on. Of the six justices that Crawford or Schimel will be joining on the Court, most of them worked as prosecutors at some point during their career.

Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison, said it’s not that informative for a Supreme Court candidate to talk about being tough on crime.

“It’s a traditional thing for a judicial candidate to do, to play up their alliance with police and law enforcement, and to emphasize their strict attitude about law breaking, and having a reputation for being tough on people who break the law,” Burden told the Examiner. “But it’s kind of a strange thing for Supreme Court candidates to do, because the state Supreme Court doesn’t have a lot to do with criminal cases. They aren’t prosecuting or hearing cases of people accused of everyday crimes. They tend to deal with bigger constitutional issues about structure of government and contracts and some controversial matters, you know, election laws and those kinds of things. So I suppose candidates feel obligated to do it, but it’s not very informative about actually how they would behave as justices.”

Crawford said that if elected to the Court, she’d work to “give everybody a fair shake” while Schimel would seek to implement his political agenda.

“I want you to know that I have stood up in courtrooms and fought for all of you and all of your fundamental rights and freedoms. It’s an important part of my history as a lawyer,” she said. “I give everybody a fair shake in my courtroom. I want everybody to know that when I sit down behind the bench, I’m standing up for Wisconsin families and Wisconsin values, and that’s what kind of justice I’m going to be on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”

Susan Crawford makes her pitch for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner