Fundraising No Show Grows Speculation Rebecca Bradley Isn’t Running For Reelection

In recent years, Wisconsinites have grown accustomed to a new spring tradition: that of the multimillion dollar, record-shattering, nationally scrutinized state Supreme Court race.

There’s one of those springtime elections on the books every year through 2029, but exactly who’s running in the next one remains an open question.

Justice Rebecca Bradley, a conservative whose first ten-year term comes to a close in 2026, said in April she’d run for a second term next year. But according to campaign finance reports filed this week, she hasn’t raised a dime.

That’s more than a little unusual in an era of unprecedented court race fundraising. By contrast, the liberal candidate in the race, Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor of Madison, has already raised more than half a million dollars, with more than eight months to go before election day.

It raises speculation about whether Bradley will actually seek her second term — and, if not, what else might be on the horizon.

“If she were indeed committed to running, you would expect her to be raising money at this point, as her opponent already is doing, and as we’ve seen folks doing in prior races at this time,” said Robert Yablon, who co-leads the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Bradley did not respond to WPR’s request for comment. In April, shortly after Justice-elect Susan Crawford clinched the court’s liberal majority for years to come, she told WisPolitics she was committed to fighting “an extremely radical court.”

“I will be spending the next several weeks assessing what happened (in the most recent Supreme Court election) and figuring out a path to achieving a court that is not led by and dominated by the radical left, that gets back to deciding cases under the law and respecting the constitution,” Bradley said.

But not raising any money in the early months of the year indicates that that path may not include running for reelection, said Bill McCoshen, a veteran Republican campaign strategist.

“It’s pretty rare that an incumbent gets beat in a statewide race here in Wisconsin,” he said. “So she would have the advantage, but she would need the resources, and it doesn’t appear that she’s been raising any money at all, so that tells me she’s not running.”

‘The willingness to play the game’

Bradley could have her eye on other prizes. She enjoys national name recognition in conservative judicial circles, raising some speculation early in President Donald Trump’s second term that she could be a contender for a federal judgeship.

Another potential factor, Yablon said, is that a Wisconsin Supreme court bid “today certainly looks different than it looked a couple of decades ago.”

“One thing that any candidate has to consider is whether they have the willingness to play the game as it’s now structured,” he said. “And that means raising a lot of money, and it means probably weighing in more directly on hot button issues than used to be the case.”

The 2026 Supreme Court election also differs from its two most recent predecessors, because the stakes are a little lower.

In 2023, Democrats boosted the liberal contender, now-Justice Janet Protasiewicz, because it gave them a chance to flip the court’s majority to a liberal one for the first time in 15 years.

Two years later, Crawford ran to replace an outgoing liberal justice, so the ideological majority was again at play. Her win means liberals likely hold a majority for at least another three years.

This time around, conservatives would be fighting to stop that narrow liberal majority from becoming a 5-2 edge. That means Wisconsinites can still expect a heated battle, said Yablon, but perhaps with the gas turned down a bit.

“That might mean that the amount of money that comes into this race isn’t quite as high as it was before,” he said.

That’s not to say donors on both sides of the ideological spectrum are sitting this one out.

Taylor, the all-but-certain liberal candidate, raised $583,000 in her first six weeks running — more than Crawford raised in the same period last year.

“People are still going to want to invest in this race,” Yablon said.

How to replace an incumbent candidate

If Bradley doesn’t run, McCoshen said, replacement conservative candidates would want to get their ducks in a row quickly to have the resources to mount a competitive campaign.

That’s as conservative court candidates have faced increasing political headwinds in Wisconsin, where Republican-backed candidates perform better in general elections in November — especially when Trump is on the ballot — and Democratic-backed candidates have an edge in lower-turnout springtime races.

In the last two high-profile Supreme Court races, the liberal candidate has beaten the conservative candidate by 10 points. That includes Justice Protasiewicz, who defeated former Justice Dan Kelly in 2023 in a $56 million race, and Justice-elect Crawford, who defeated Judge Brad Schimel in April in a race that topped $100 million.

There’s a bench of potential replacements for Bradley, McCoshen said, including Waukesha-based Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar. Her name was floated during the 2025 election. Lazar did not respond to WPR’s question about whether she’s considering a run.

A match-up between two relatively unknown lower court judges, compared to an incumbent statewide official, could put them on equal footing to define their place in the race, McCoshen said.

“If you’re talking about two new faces, and I think that’s where we’re heading, then it’s, ‘Which one can define themselves before the other side gets an opportunity to define them?’” he said. “So it becomes more of a level playing field for an open seat.”

Uncontested races for Wisconsin’s highest court aren’t completely unprecedented. The last one was in 2017, when liberals did not field a challenger against conservative Justice Annette Ziegler. At the time, conservatives relied on a different mix of voters and typically had the upper hand in April elections.

But Ziegler was an incumbent. Should Bradley not run, it would leave a vacant seat, and a nationally significant office could be wide open for the taking.

“So I’ve got to think, if Justice Rebecca Bradley chooses not to run, someone else will step in to fill that void,” said Yablon.

Listen to the WPR report

Justice Rebecca Bradley is up for election. But will she be on the ballot? was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.