Crawford Battles Schimel Over Impartiality

Dane County Judge Susan Crawford speaks at an event held by the Rotary Club of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Press Club as she campaigns for Wisconsin Supreme Court. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford accused her opponent Brad Schimel of being a “partisan politician” at an event Tuesday hosted by the Rotary Club of Milwaukee and Milwaukee Press Club. Her comments come as both candidates have tried to claim they will be the more impartial justice.

The fight over impartiality has outlined this year’s campaign in contrast with 2023, when Justice Janet Protasiewicz won her seat, and majority control of the Court for the body’s liberals, by proclaiming her “values” that support a woman’s right to access abortion and that the state’s previous legislative maps unfairly benefited Republicans.

“I would ask voters and the media to look at the difference between the campaigns and the candidates,” Crawford said. “I have never taken a position on any case or any issue before the Supreme Court. And anyone who wants to support me needs to know that I am not making any promises.”

But she said Schimel, a Waukesha County judge and former Republican state attorney general, has built a career as an elected Republican and taken stances on cases that will likely come before the Court in its next term, including cases about Wisconsin’s 1849 law that has been interpreted as a blanket ban on abortion and a lawsuit against Act 10, the controversial law that limited collective bargaining rights for most public employees.

Crawford also pointed to millions of dollars in assistance Schimel’s campaign has gotten from Elon Musk and comments, reported this week by the Washington Post, that he told a group of supporters in Jefferson County that President Donald Trump had been “screwed over” by the Wisconsin Supreme Court when it ruled against his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Just days before Schimel’s comments were made public, he told reporters after a speech at a Wisconsin Counties Association conference that he didn’t know enough about the case to determine if it was decided correctly.

“He apparently has no objection to Elon Musk’s canvassers going door to door, saying that ‘Brad Schimel is going to uphold the Trump agenda,’” she said. “You know, he has not said anything to put a stop to that. So he’s got a long history as an extreme partisan. He’s run for partisan office something like five times, and he’s running this race very much as a partisan politician.”

Throughout her remarks, Crawford said that if she’s elected, she’d work with all six of the other justices, not just the liberals — taking digs at comments Schimel and some of the Court’s conservatives have made previously — but that she defines being a judicial liberal as someone who stands up for people’s rights and how the law can be used to protect those rights.

“If what people mean by liberal is that I’m going to work to protect the rights of every Wisconsinite on the Supreme Court, that I view our laws and our Constitution as tools to protect the rights of Wisconsinites, then I embrace that label, because that is what I will go about,” she said.

Last week, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Schimel had said in a radio interview the Court’s liberals, all women, were “driven by their emotions,” when hearing oral arguments in a case about the 1849 abortion law. And in recent years, conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley has frequently attacked her liberal colleagues in published decisions, accusing them of being mouthpieces for the Democratic Party.

“I think there is a little bit too much talk and too much emphasis, particularly by my opponent, on the makeup of the court and these so-called lines between who’s the majority and who’s the minority,” she said. “My opponent, unfortunately, has been lobbying attacks against the same justices on the Supreme Court. You won’t hear me doing that. I intend to work with every other member of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is a body of seven justices, and they need to talk to each other.”

In a statement, the Schimel campaign said the panel of reporters moderating Tuesday’s event didn’t ask tough enough questions and that Crawford wouldn’t be an objective justice.

“Susan Crawford continued her campaign of hoodwinking Wisconsin voters today by spreading falsehoods and pushing the radical agenda of her Democrat handlers to a sympathetic press,” Schimel spokesperson Jacob Fischer said. “What Crawford should have been pressed on was her weak on crime penchant for releasing pedophiles and murderers back onto Wisconsin streets, her willingness to offer two congressional seats in exchange for financial support, or how she sold out her objectivity to the agendas of George Soros, Bernie Sanders, and other extreme liberals. Unlike Susan Crawford, who is clearly unfit to represent the interests of Wisconsin as an impartial justice, Judge Brad Schimel is committed to restoring fairness to the Court and saving Wisconsin from the Democrats’ radical agenda.”

During the event, Crawford pointed to occasions she would have sided against the Court’s liberals and times she issued rulings that she didn’t personally like but upheld because it was the law.

She said that when hearing challenges to the lame duck laws passed by Republicans in the Legislature in 2019 to take powers away from the governor and attorney general before Democrats Tony Evers and Josh Kaul could take power, the actions of the Legislature “left a bad taste in my mouth,” but she upheld some of those laws.

“That’s a case where, as a lawyer, I might have taken a different position as an advocate, but as a judge, I was applying the law to the facts of that case, and I came to a narrow decision,” she said.

Crawford battles Schimel over impartiality was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.