A Deja Vu Election for State Supreme Court

Wisconsin Supreme Court. Photo by Mariiana Tzotcheva.

Wisconsin voters have seen this election day movie before.

An April election will — again — decide whether liberals or conservatives have a four-justice majority on the state Supreme Court.

Both candidates are — again — relatively unknown to voters, according to the latest Marquette University Law School poll.

Both — again — have billionaires donating heavily to their campaigns or have their own groups running independent ads championing their candidate or savaging their opponent.

Both — again — have aligned with the state’s two political parties, a reminder of how meaningless is the requirement that Supreme Court elections be “non-partisan.”

Many of the ads focus — again — on the same issues: abortion rights, he/she is “too extreme” for the seven-member Court, examples of past decisions by both that threaten public safety, and charges that a candidate favors making it easier or harder to vote.

And, finally, the campaigns and efforts by candidates’ third-party supporters will be the most expensive judicial elections in the nation’s history. Again. Totals compiled by Wispolitics.com document spending that has already exceeded the $56 million record set just two years ago.

The April 1 election for a 10-year term on the state Supreme Court between Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel and Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford has a Groundhog Day quality.

It was only two years ago, on April 4, 2023, when then-Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Daniel Kelly.

Then, Protasiewicz was the Democrats’ candidate; Kelly, the Republicans. This cycle, Crawford is backed by Democrats. Schimel, who ran as a Republican and served one term as Wisconsin Attorney General, is the GOP’s candidate.

The rerun nature of this campaign does not diminish its importance. Major cases pending before the high court include abortion and collective bargaining rights.

In their only campaign debate last week, both candidates stressed their experience.

“I’m proud of the work that I did as a prosecutor and proud of the work that I did later representing Wisconsinites in our courtrooms, protecting their health care rights, protecting their voting rights, and protecting their rights in the workplace,” Crawford said.

A former Waukesha County district attorney, Schimel cited his work with victims. “I was the guy they called at 3 a.m. to go to the crime scene. I was the guy who worked with law enforcement to build that case from the crime scene all the way to conviction. I was the shoulder that crime victims cried on.”

Although the arguments, ads and campaign underwriters echo the 2023 election, there are major differences.

First, Schimel is a better candidate than Kelly, a political novice when appointed to the court by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2016 who lost a bid for a full term in 2020.

Having run and won a statewide race for attorney general in 2014, Schimel’s political instincts and contacts — and the $10 million that Elon Musk-funded groups have already spent to help Schimel — gave him a higher profile than Crawford in the last Marquette University Law School poll.

In that February survey, 38% of registered voters said they did not know or had no opinion of Schimel, while 58% said the same thing about Crawford. The survey’s margin of error was 4.6%.

Marquette pollster Charles Franklin said a head-to-head poll between the two would have been meaningless, since both were so unknown. “A lot of people have to make up their minds and have to learn something about these candidates,” Franklin told Wisconsin Public Radio.

Another big change between the 2023 and 2025 Supreme Court elections was President Trump’s win in Wisconsin last November.

Can Schimel’s campaign maintain the statewide momentum conservatives got with Trump’s victory? Can Schimel and Musk get the surprisingly high number of young and minority voters who voted for Trump to identify with Schimel and again vote on April 1? Musk ads say Schimel will “support” Trump’s agenda; Schimel says it won’t influence his decisions.

Or will the efforts of Crawford, whose campaign is being helped by donations from billionaire George Soros and the state Democratic Party, again repeat the high turnout of metro Milwaukee and Madison-area voters that gave Protasiewicz a decisive 55% to 44% win over Kelly?

About 36% of Protasiewicz’s votes came from Milwaukee and Dane counties in 2023.

One encouraging number for Schimel’s campaign: Almost one of every 10 votes statewide for Trump last year were cast in Waukesha County, his home base.

Both sides are banking on high turnout from their base of supporters.

Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com.