Maria Lazar Touts a ‘Geeky’ Love of the Law in Run for Supreme Court

Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Maria Lazar at a campaign event Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in Germantown, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar has described herself as an underdog in an era that’s seen liberals run the tables in elections for the state’s highest court, but says she’s beaten the odds before.

Supreme Court races have become highly partisan, and Lazar is running against a former Democratic state lawmaker. Still, she says what people really need is someone “geeky and law nerdy enough” like her to “live and breathe the law” for the next 10 years on the state’s highest bench.

Lazar has worked inside the courtrooms since 1989. She’s run her own law firm, was an assistant state attorney general, served as a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge and now sits on the state’s 2nd District Court of Appeals. Her biography also lists dozens of law-related activities, including a stint as editor of a Wisconsin Bar Association newsletter.

She was born in Milwaukee and spent most of her life in Waukesha, save for her time earning her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. She’s also familiar with the stage. Lazar was a member of the Georgetown Gilbert and Sullivan Society theater group comprised of law students, and she met her husband at a high school one-act play competition.

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar takes photos with attendees at a campaign event Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in Germantown, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

During a February forum in Menomonie, hosted by the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Lazar told the crowd she loves the law and even reads high court decisions for fun in her spare time. Wisconsin Supreme Court races have become too politicized, said Lazar, while noting that her liberal opponent in the race, 4th District Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, was a player in Democratic politics for more than a decade.

“This is not a position where this state should just take a risk,” said Lazar of the April 7 election. “This is a court where you need someone who is geeky and law nerdy enough that they will live and breathe the law for 10 years. And I promise you, I promise you, that’s what I will do.”

‘This race is not going to get national attention’

In recent years, Wisconsinites have been inundated by political ads and record-breaking spending for Supreme Court races that are ostensibly nonpartisan, but that attention has been missing this year.

In 2023, liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz defeated former conservative Justice Dan Kelly in a race that cost donors around $56 million, according to an analysis by WisPolitics. Last year, liberal Justice Susan Crawford defeated former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel in a race where around $115 million was spent.

Conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel played rock and roll cover songs with his band at his election night party in Pewaukee on Tuesday, April 1, 2025. At around 9:30 p.m., Schimel told the crowd he had lost the election. Rich Kremer/WPR

The court’s majority hung in the balance for both of those contests. That’s not the case this year, and Lazar is well aware of that.

“This race is not going to get national attention,” Lazar told WPR, while adding spending is probably not going to be setting any records either.

As of the last campaign finance reports in February, total contributions to both campaigns stood at around $5 million. Of that, Lazar’s campaign had raised just $676,000. Conservatives have taken notice. When the final fundraising reports for 2025 showed Taylor outraised Lazar by 10-to-1, WISN-AM talk radio host Dan O’Donnell called it “abysmal” and a “five-alarm fire within political circles.”

Lazar isn’t deterred. She notes Taylor had a months-long head start and she’s seen a “groundswell” of support since then. Lazar said even with fundraising disparities, she believes “if you have the mission and the vision, you will prevail.”

“All it does is spur me on to do better, to do more, and to get my message out to everyone in the state,” Lazar said. “And when it is all said and done, and I prevail on April 7, the doubters will owe me an apology and possibly chocolate.”

Polling in February suggests Wisconsin voters aren’t paying as much attention either. The Marquette University Law School found only 6 percent of respondents to their survey said they’d heard a lot about either Lazar or Taylor. At the same time last year, the Marquette poll found 39 percent had heard a lot about the race between Schimel and Crawford.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Maria Lazar addresses attendees at a campaign event Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in Germantown, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

‘She just worked twice as hard as everybody else’

In 2011, Lazar applied for a job with the Wisconsin Department of Justice under former Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. Former Deputy Attorney General Kevin St. John said she was initially hired to focus on bankruptcy cases but transitioned to complex civil litigation. At the time, Wisconsin Republicans had just won control of the state Legislature and governor’s office, said St. John said “that resulted in a lot of reform legislation, and all of that legislation ended up being challenged in court.”

As an assistant attorney general, Lazar defended Republican-drawn legislative maps from gerrymandering claims along with laws on voter ID, abortion and Act 10, which restricted collective bargaining rights for most state employees. St. John said Lazar “was able to do the work of two attorneys because she just worked twice as hard as everybody else.”

“And I was very impressed with her work at the time, because it was challenging,” said St. John. “It was difficult. The cases operated on fast timelines, and they often involved novel and important legal questions.”

A sign for Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Maria Lazar at one of her campaign events Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in Germantown, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

As she now crisscrosses the state campaigning for Supreme Court, Lazar said she balances that with her duties as an appeals court judge. That means reading countless legal briefs for cases before her while her husband drives from event to event.

There’s an intensity to the way Lazar carries herself, in the courtroom and elsewhere.

Musing about “other fun facts you might not know about me,” Lazar said she once jumped out of a plane despite being “deathly afraid of heights.”

“So, I went skydiving because I told everyone, ‘Oh, if anyone asked me,’ I would do it,” said Lazar. “And then I got called out.”

She said the landing knocked the wind out of her and she didn’t immediately respond when instructors on the walkie talkie asked if she was ok. She remembers people running across a field to check on her as she gathered herself.

“I think they thought I was dead on the ground,” Lazar said. “I will say I never jumped again. But I was glad I did it once.”

Voters want to hear where candidates stand on issues. Lazar says her rulings speak for themselves.

Because Wisconsin elects its Supreme Court justices, candidates jumping into these races must balance politics and judicial ethics rules. But Marquette University pollster Charles Franklin told WPR that several surveys show the electorate is clear on whether they want to hear candidates talk about what they stand for.

“We did give both sides of the argument there and still got this lopsided 83 percent in October, saying, ‘No, we want them to talk about the issues,’” said Franklin.

Charles Franklin is the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. Angela Major/WPR

In the last two elections, liberal justices have leaned into issues like abortion by talking about their values without saying how they’d rule on any particular case. Republican lawmakers cried foul and even toyed with the idea of impeaching Justice Protasiewicz in 2023 for hearing a redistricting lawsuit after her campaign had received $10 million from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Recent conservative Supreme Court candidates have tried to counter this in different ways. In 2023, former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly claimed he was “running to be the most boring member of the Supreme Court in the state’s history.” He lost by 10 percentage points.

Schimel embraced politics to a much greater extent during his campaign in an attempt to get people who cast ballots for President Donald Trump in 2024 to turn out for him. He received massive infusions cash from the Republican Party of Wisconsin. And he lost by 10 points, too.

“At least on the conservative side, it didn’t seem to make much difference between, ‘I’m just following the law, and I’m not going to talk about it,’ versus ‘I’m sending pretty clear signals about where I stand,” said Franklin.

Lazar’s ads send signals

Some Republicans favoring the more political approach have suggested Lazar’s campaign is more like Kelly’s run than Schimel’s. Rather than answering political questions, she directs voters to her website featuring her appeals court rulings and position papers on topics like Act 10 and abortion, wherein she lays out the legal history and her commitment to keep politics out of any potential future rulings.

At the same time, said Franklin, Lazar and Taylor have released videos that “look an awful lot like campaign ads, rather than high-minded judicial ads.”“What they put on the air tells you how they’re really trying to appeal to voters,” said Franklin. “So, I do think there’s a bit of a gap between reticence and sending signals.”

Wisconsin Appeals Court Judges Maria Lazar, left, and Chris Taylor are running for Wisconsin Supreme Court. Images courtesy of PBS Wisconsin’s “Here & Now”

Lazar’s ads describe her as a constitutional conservative who will “simply uphold the law,” but the commercials are more aggressive in the way they describe Taylor. They attack Taylor’s legislative record supporting bills expanding abortion access, for example. The video of Taylor switches from grainy black-and-white to red, and is edited to appear shaky, like a horror film.

A statement from Taylor campaign spokesperson Jackie Rosa said Lazar “can try to rewrite her record all she wants” and pointed to her work defending Republicans 2011 legislative maps, a law restricting abortion access and Act 10.“On the bench, she’s carried that same far-right agenda,” said Rosa.

Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates haven’t won since 2019

Regardless of the approach, it’s been a tough six years for conservatives running for Wisconsin’s highest court.

The last time a conservative won a race for Wisconsin Supreme Court was in 2019, when now-Justice Brian Hagedorn won by fewer than 6,000 votes. Hagedorn was seen as the underdog in that race — Lazar told PBS Wisconsin “the parallels are there.”

Since then, conservatives and the Republicans boosting them have lost three straight Supreme Court elections. Schimel’s loss in 2025 was especially notable because it came months after Trump won Wisconsin.

Longtime GOP strategist Mark Graul, who ran conservative Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler’s successful 2007 campaign, told WPR Schimel’s loss was more about his campaign getting “swallowed up” in the first few months of Trump’s presidency, not to mention billionaire Elon Musk’s “weird oversized role” in the election.

“People in that race were reacting a lot less to Brad Schimel and a lot more to Elon Musk and DOGE and some of the chaos that was happening in Washington, D.C., frankly,” said Graul.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Maria Lazar speaks to attendees at a campaign event Tuesday, March 10, 2026, in Germantown, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

But the repeated, double-digit losses have some Republicans feeling pessimistic. In 2017, Zielger was considered so tough to beat that liberals didn’t even field an opponent. This month, when Ziegler announced she won’t run again in 2027, Turning Point Action field representative Brady Penfield posted on social media that it’s “becoming apparent we likely can’t do anything to save the Wisconsin Supreme Court at this time.” “Still vote for Maria Lazar on or before April 7!” Penfield added in a follow-up post.

Graul said he’s “not one of those who think this race is over.” He said if Lazar focuses on bread-and-butter issues like portraying herself as tough on crime, she can potentially win over some voters who drifted away from the GOP because of Trump.

“Her challenge is, ‘OK, I know, based on what this electorate is going to look like, I have got to do better amongst these suburban, educated voters than previous candidates for this office have done,’” Graul said. “It’s not easy. It’s a tough environment for conservatives right now in these April elections, just because the electorate starts out against you.”

Maria Lazar leaning on judicial experience in run for Wisconsin Supreme Court was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.