Does Justice Rebecca Bradley Face An Enthusiasm Gap?

Justice Rebecca Bradley. (Coburn Dukehart / Wisconsin Watch)

The signs are ominous for Republicans. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley faces a tough battle for reelection in April 2026. That’s just nine months away, yet Bradley hasn’t raised a dollar of campaign money.

Meanwhile her liberal opponent, Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor of Madison, has already raised $583,000 in the two months since she announced her campaign, setting a new record for a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate. And Taylor has announced endorsements from 100 current and retired judges from across Wisconsin. This is a well-organized campaign that looks pretty formidable.

Why isn’t Bradley taking this more seriously? Speculation abounds: that she’s tired of being a minority judge on the high court, which is no fun. That she’s not excited about undergoing the personal attacks that are inevitable in a hard-fought, red-versus-blue election.

But perhaps there’s another factor: maybe she’s getting the message that some Republicans aren’t excited about working for her reelection. “It doesn’t appear that she’s been raising any money at all, so that tells me she’s not running,” veteran Republican strategist Bill McCoshen told Wisconsin Public Radio.

McCoshen was quick to note that Bradley should have an advantage in the race. “It’s pretty rare that an incumbent gets beat in a statewide race here in Wisconsin,” he noted.

But that’s not completely true. Yes, incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court justices have almost never lost historically, but most of those elections were in the traditional style of judicial races, quiet affairs that were largely about a candidate’s qualifications, giving incumbents an automatic advantage. But in the last 15 years, the state’s high court races have become far more partisan and heated.

In 2017 incumbent Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman decided not to run for a second 10-year term in 2018. After his 2008 election, Gableman had made it clear he aimed to serve for multiple terms. But Gableman’s entire term was so mired in controversies and ethical conflicts that he looked unelectable, as I wrote back then. “As one GOP insider told me, Gableman has probably gotten the message that the money won’t be there should he run for reelection.”

Bradley is nowhere near as toxic as Gableman. But she is an extreme conservative who historically has called gay people “queers” and “degenerates,” has compared abortion to the Holocaust and called feminists “angry, man-hating lesbians.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Justice Bradley compared restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of the disease to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. She sided with Donald Trump and voted in dissent to overturn the 2020 election. And she was the sole judge on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to rule in favor of a man who argued the Second Amendment allowed him to brandish firearms while intoxicated and arguing with his roommates.

All of which creates a major strategic problem for Republicans, who will want to portray Chris Taylor as a liberal extremist and to argue that her victory would give the court a 5-2 liberal advantage, which is out of keeping with a closely divided swing state like Wisconsin. But it’s hard to make that argument when your standard bearer is Rebecca Bradley, a justice with some of the most extreme views in modern Wisconsin history.

Not to mention the nasty tone of her comments. Even the photos of Bradley often show her looking angry or aggrieved. Her personality may not play well in candidate debates and you can bet Crawford will be looking to draw out Bradley’s anger.

Should Bradley bow out, it is likely that State Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar would run for the Supreme Court. She won the position in a successful 2022 race against incumbent Judge Lori Kornblum, who was appointed to the position by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers the year before that. The seat is based in Republican-leaning Waukesha and Lazar ran a solid campaign, calling herself a “rule of law” judge “who doesn’t legislate from the bench but interprets the law as written.”

Yes, that’s boiler-plate conservative stuff and will be echoed by Bradley if she indeed runs as promised. But Bradley’s vitriolic judicial decisions will make those assurances a good deal harder to believe.

Taylor has accused Bradley of “extremism and partisanship” and “being more interested in pushing her own right-wing political agenda than protecting Wisconsinites’ rights and freedoms.” She would probably make the same argument against Lazar. But the charge will be more believable when hurled against Bradley.

There’s no doubt that there will be lots of third party spending by right-wing groups backing Bradley in the campaign. But the indifference by the candidate herself to campaign fundraising suggests there will be an enthusiasm gap in this race, one that may go beyond Bradley herself, and is surely worrying Republicans.