In the most expensive judicial election in American history, the Democratic candidate for defending democracy and women’s reproductive freedoms has won. It could mark the beginning of the end of former Gov. Scott Walker’s subversion of democracy in Wisconsin through extreme gerrymandering to create a permanent far-right GQP majority in the state legislature.
The New York Times reports, Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, in Victory for Abortion Rights Backers:
Wisconsin voters on Tuesday chose to upend the political direction of their state by electing a liberal candidate to the State Supreme Court, flipping majority control from conservatives, according to The Associated Press. The result means that in the next year, the court is likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by Republicans.
Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, overwhelmingly defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who sought a return to the bench. With more than 95 percent of votes counted by Wednesday morning, Judge Protasiewicz led by 11 percentage points, a huge margin in the narrowly divided state.
“Our state is taking a step forward to a better and brighter future where our rights and freedoms will be protected,” she told jubilant supporters at her victory party in Milwaukee.
The contest, which featured over $40 million in spending, was the most expensive judicial election in American history. Early on, Democrats recognized the importance of the race for a swing seat on the top court in one of the country’s perennial political battlegrounds. Millions of dollars from out of state poured into Wisconsin to back Judge Protasiewicz, and a host of national Democratic groups rallied behind her campaign.
Judge Protasiewicz, 60, shattered long-held notions of how judicial candidates should conduct themselves by making her political priorities central to her campaign. She made explicit her support for abortion rights and called the maps, which gave Republicans near-supermajority control of the Legislature, “rigged” and “unfair.”
Her election to a 10-year term for an officially nonpartisan seat gives Wisconsin’s liberals a 4-to-3 majority on the court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008. Liberals will hold a court majority until at least 2025, when a liberal justice’s term expires. A conservative justice’s term ends in 2026.
As the race was called Tuesday night, the court’s three sitting liberal justices embraced at Judge Protasiewicz’s election night party in Milwaukee, as onlookers cried tears of joy. During her speech, the judge and the other three liberal justices clasped their hands together in the air in celebration.
Janet Protasiewicz speaks to her supporters after defeating Dan Kelly in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
“Today’s results mean two very important and special things,” Judge Protasiewicz said. “First, it means that Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They have chosen to reject partisan extremism in this state. And second, it means our democracy will always prevail.”
[J]udge Protasiewicz made a calculation from the start of the race that Wisconsin voters would reward her for making clear her positions on abortion rights and the state’s maps — issues most likely to animate and energize the base of the Democratic Party.
In an interview at her home on Tuesday before the results were known, Judge Protasiewicz attributed her success on the campaign trail to the decision to inform voters of what she called “my values,” as opposed to Justice Kelly, who used fewer specifics about his positions.
“Rather than reading between the lines and having to do your sleuthing around like I think people have to do with him, I think I would rather just let people know what my values are,” she said. “We’ll see tonight if the electorate appreciates that candor or not.”
Over the last dozen years, the court has served as an important backstop for Wisconsin Republicans. It certified as constitutional Gov. Scott Walker’s early overhauls to state government, including the Act 10 law that gutted public employee unions, as well as voting restrictions like a requirement for a state-issued identification and a ban on ballot drop boxes.
In 2020, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was the only one in the country to agree to hear President Donald J. Trump’s challenge to the presidential election. Mr. Trump sought to invalidate 200,000 ballots from the state’s two largest Democratic counties. The Wisconsin court rejected his claim on a 4-to-3 vote, with one of the conservative justices siding with the court’s three liberals on procedural grounds.
That key vote gave this year’s court race extra importance, because the justices will weigh in on voting and election issues surrounding the 2024 election. Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump’s triumph in 2016 interrupted a string of Democratic presidential victories going back to 1988, is set to again be ferociously contested.
The court has acted in Republicans’ interest on issues that have received little attention outside the state.
In 2020, a year after Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, succeeded Mr. Walker, conservative justices agreed to limit his line-item veto authority, which generations of Wisconsin governors from both parties had used. Last year, the court’s conservatives allowed a Walker appointee whose term had expired to remain in office over Mr. Evers’s objection.
Once Judge Protasiewicz assumes her place on the court on Aug. 1, the first priority for Wisconsin Democrats will be to bring a case to challenge the current legislative maps, which have given Republicans all but unbreakable control of the state government in Madison.
Jeffrey A. Mandell, the president of Law Forward, a progressive law firm that has represented Mr. Evers, said he would file a legal request for the Supreme Court to hear a redistricting case the day after Judge Protasiewicz is seated.
“Pretty much everything problematic in Wisconsin flows from the gerrymandering,” Mr. Mandell said in an interview on Tuesday. “Trying to address the gerrymander and reverse the extreme partisan gerrymandering we have is the highest priority.”
The state’s abortion ban, which was enacted in 1849, seven decades before women could vote, is already being challenged by Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general. This week, a circuit court in Dane County scheduled the first oral arguments on Mr. Kaul’s case for May 4, but whichever way a county judge rules, the case is all but certain to advance on appeal to the State Supreme Court later this year.
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“Eric Holder Statement on Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Results”, https://democraticredistricting.com/eric-holder-statement-on-wisconsin-supreme-court-election-results/
Washington, D.C. — Today, Eric H. Holder, Jr., the 82nd Attorney General of the United States and Chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), released the following statement in response to the Wisconsin Supreme Court election results:
“When the people are able to participate in the democratic process, they have the power to protect democracy and deliver real change. That occurred tonight. When Republicans tried to place an unqualified MAGA extremist on Wisconsin’s highest tribunal, the voters went to the polls and soundly rejected this attempt to weaken our system of checks and balances. As a result, the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s majority has changed from one that has shown deference to one of the most gerrymandered Republican legislatures in the country to one that will demonstrate independence and protect the rights of all the people.
“So today, I not only want to congratulate Judge Janet Protasiewicz, but I also want to congratulate all Wisconsinites for their tireless work and tenacity. Despite the fact that, for more than a decade, Wisconsin Republicans have put in place multiple structural barriers to fair representation, including a gerrymandered legislature, voter suppression laws, and a conservative court majority that was wildly out of step with the public, the people did not give up—instead they stayed engaged. And that is an important lesson for how democracy can ultimately win in this ever enduring fight.
“Tonight was more than a win for an extremely qualified new justice. This is a critical victory for our democracy and puts us that much closer to realizing our Founding Ideals.”
Background on NDRC involvement in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election:
This election was top priority for Attorney General Holder who endorsed Judge Janet Protasiewicz in February following the Wisconsin Supreme Court primary election. Leading up to the general election, he participated in a series of fundraisers, including joint events with Wisconsin Democrats to ensure her campaign had the resources to fight back against national Republican attacks, and he participated in a series of local radio interviews to help get out the vote in Wisconsin. This past weekend, Attorney General Holder traveled to Wisconsin to help get out the vote in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and Madison. While at a campaign stop, Attorney General Holder spoke with Rev. Al Sharpton about the stakes of the election on his MSNBC show, PoliticsNation. In addition to Attorney General Holder’s participation, NDRC and affiliates continuously engaged their grassroots networks to help recruit volunteers and get out the vote leading up to the April election.
Jennifer Rubin writes, “After a huge progressive win in Wisconsin, the right wing is whining”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/05/wisconsin-supreme-court-election-democrat/
In a state so evenly divided that a 1- or 2-point margin is a resounding victory, Wisconsin voters turned out in droves on Tuesday to deliver an unmistakable blow to right-wing judges and politicians pushing forced-birth laws, hyper-gerrymandering, voter suppression and union-busting. Progressive Judge Janet Protasiewicz clobbered former right-wing state Supreme Court justice Dan Kelly by 11 points (with more than 95 percent of the vote in). (The Associated Press called the race less than an hour after the polls closed.) That gives liberal judges a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court, a dramatic shift for a court that in recent years had delivered one victory after another to right-wing politicians and activists.
Pundits who thought defeated former president Donald Trump’s indictment would set off some sort of backlash to Kelly’s benefit were engaged in wishful thinking. Wisconsin voters are savvy enough to understand the former president’s legal debacles have nothing whatsoever to do with their state courts.
Democratic state party chairman Ben Wikler, who mounted a mammoth turn-out-the-vote operation, told me Tuesday, “The GOP machine thought they had broken Wisconsin’s democracy enough that they could rip away fundamental rights from half the population and never suffer the consequences. Tonight, an enraged electorate proved them wrong. In the state that tips the country, Dobbs, the crowning achievement of the far right, became its undoing.”
“Republicans here warn that ‘the rule of law’ might be replaced by ‘the rule of Janet,’ and that if she wins, hyperpartisan court races will become the norm,” intoned Semafor’s David Weigel, as if the right’s evisceration of voting rights and reproductive freedom is the norm and exemplifies the rule of law.
Kelly paid lip service during the campaign to the “rule of law,” but he has left little doubt that he is a right-wing champion, not a neutral jurist. He provided legal advice to the state GOP on the phony elector scheme and worked for antiabortion activists. His application to former governor Scott Walker “included a writing sample that likened affirmative action to slavery,” Wisconsin Public Radio reported. No one could be confused about his ideological bent.
Protasiewicz explained in a recent interview for Wisconsin Public Radio, “I tell you what my values are because I think that Supreme Court candidates should share with the community and the electorate what their values are.” However, she added: “Nonetheless, I will uphold the law [and] follow the Constitution when I make any decisions. Nothing is prejudged.”
Frankly, after years of right-wing judges dissembling about their respect for precedent and their supposed open-mindedness (despite public advocacy against abortion), there is something refreshing about progressive judges going to voters to set out their values. Surely voters don’t prefer nominees dissembling under oath (as members and former members of Congress have accused U.S. Supreme Court Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch of doing)?
Perhaps it’s time to end the charade wherein right-wing judges pretend not to be right-wing (while their Senate allies bombard any Democratic president’s nominee with QAnon-based conspiracy theories and blatant distortions). Judges on the right have been roving through the judicial landscape to turn back the clock on 150 years of social progress. It’s time to recognize that our courts were long ago politicized. Candor about judges’ views at least respects the intelligence of those putting them on the bench.
If voters overwhelmingly elect judges such as Protasiewicz who clearly articulate their values while vowing to consider each case on its merits, then we are witnessing something far too rare: informed democracy. When everyone lays their cards on the table, it turns out that an honest appraisal of judicial philosophies overwhelmingly benefits Democrats. Newly appointed secretary of state Sarah Godlewski, who organized rallies and campaigned throughout the state for a progressive win, told me, “The results couldn’t be more clear: Reproductive freedom was the deciding factor in this election. Wisconsinites turned out because they understood that when abortion rights are under attack, the attacks won’t stop there.”
[I] long for the day when you could take judges at their word when they spelled out their fidelity to precedent. But we are not there. And we haven’t been there for years.
Elected judges around the country should perk up: If they want to hijack democracy by acting like MAGA legislators in robes, they’ll find themselves out of office. And the warning to Republicans could not be more blunt: If you keep pushing right-wing judges widely out of step with the 21st-century United States to trample on cherished civil rights, voters will boot you out, up and down the ballot.
Republicans have every right to panic that Dobbs might usher in a new era of Democratic dominance in critical swing states.