A liberal judge who had a history of being soft on crime bulldozed her way into a seat on the state’s highest court by openly vowing to protect a woman’s right to choose. Her conservative opponent made a bad bet, believing that backing an 1849 abortion ban would net him a win.
The race was framed as the most important of the 2023 election cycle and gave liberals a one-vote majority in determining the fate of abortion rights, election law, and partisan political maps.
A seat on the same court is up for grabs again this year.
The April 1 election will pit Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, who is backed by liberals, against former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, who is backed by conservatives.
The race is technically nonpartisan but has turned into a de facto partisan contest with millions of dollars flooding in from billionaire donors and outside special interest groups. Both candidate camps have blasted the other for trying to “buy” the election, though both have benefited. The 2023 election brought in more than $50 million. Political experts predict this year’s race will easily shatter the record.
“Get used to the insanity,” Howard Schweber, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Washington Examiner.
There will be four more elections for seats on the same court over the next five years.
“There is a plausible hypothesis that the ideological majority of the court switches in every single one of those elections,” Schweber said. “There are multiple reasons why you don’t want courts to work that way. When people say ‘elections have consequences,’ it isn’t supposed to be quite so drastic with respect to a court.”
Schweber said everyone, from business owners to women concerned with their reproductive rights, should have “stable” expectations of what the law will be from year to year. But with so many potential ideological flips on the horizon, that’s not always the case.
What’s at stake
In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court is made up of seven justices who are elected to a 10-year term.
The court has the final say on everything from interpreting laws on abortion to gerrymandering to reviewing the actions of state officials.
Currently, Wisconsin has a Democratic governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. Republicans control both chambers of the state legislature.
From 2009 to 2023, conservatives controlled the court and decided cases that limited union rights, expanded gun rights, and curbed the power of the Democratic governor. In 2023, after liberals gained the majority, they approved legislative district maps drawn by Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) and allowed absentee ballot drop boxes to be used in the state again.
The court is due to settle a lawsuit on abortion and could also take up a case on unions soon. There are also several fights brewing over electronic voting. With so much at stake, the candidates have come out swinging.
“Susan Crawford and the current liberal majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court view the court as a political weapon to implement their partisan agenda,” Schimel told the Washington Examiner. “I am in this race to restore integrity and humility in our justice system.”
Crawford claims it’s Schimel who is weaponizing the race, calling him “the most extreme candidate to ever run for this office in Wisconsin history.”
How did a nonpartisan race become so political?
Prior to 2007, Wisconsin’s judicial elections, which are officially nonpartisan, were just that.
It’s not that people didn’t care. It’s that the political parties had not yet gotten involved. The candidates did not identify themselves by party affiliation, and the parties didn’t run the campaigns. Overall, the elections were low-key affairs with very little spending and turnout.
That all changed in 2007 when then-Justice Shirley Abrahamson, the first woman to serve on the state’s high court, made a series of left-leaning rulings that displeased the business community.
“Led by a group called Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the business community came to a conclusion that they should stop treating court elections as secondary and that they should make a conscious decision to capture the court, in the same way you make a decision to capture the state legislature,” said Schweber, an affiliate faculty member of the UW Law School.
That year, the candidate was not a well-known member of the bar but instead someone the group ideologically favored, Justice Annette Ziegler.
“She would not have been a plausible candidate in any previous year,” Schweber added. “She had serious ethics problems in her earlier work as a judge. She was not well known or a distinguished lawyer, but she had the right ideology. It’s the same way in legislative elections. Parties look for candidates to spec. It’s like ordering a jacket in a 38 regular. They want a candidate who ticks all the right boxes.”
For the first time, the GOP got really involved in a state judicial contest. Ziegler’s campaign was run by party operatives and was funded by both party and non-party sources in and outside the state.
“All of this was totally strange to Wisconsin elections and took everyone by shock and surprise,” Schweber said. “The television ads, in particular, were so extreme. It almost immediately jumped the shark.”
Democrats were caught off guard and would take several more years to catch up. When Ziegler first ran for reelection, she ran unopposed.
Those days are over, and both sides have recognized the stakes are too high to sit the election out.
DNC chairman pushes for new ‘mindset’ and money
Democrats parachuted in Ken Martin, their newly elected leader, to the Badger State.
Martin recently told a group of supporters that they’ve “got to get out of the mindset that these [state Supreme Court elections] aren’t political anymore.”
He said the DNC was “helping in different ways,” including ponying up funds to promote Crawford.
“I’m here,” he added. “We’re sending volunteers. We’re doing our part to raise the awareness of this campaign nationally.”
The Democratic Party‘s state campaign wing, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, announced Tuesday that Wisconsin was one of its “key” priorities.
“Democrats’ ability to win state legislative races and build power in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania hinges on the outcomes of these state Supreme Court races,” DLCC President Heather Williams said.
Crawford is also reaping the benefits from billionaire George Soros, Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL), and Gloria Page, the mother of Google co-founder Larry Page, as well as LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. The only outside group that has jumped in to help Crawford is A Better Wisconsin Together, which has spent $1 million on digital and television ads. In 2023, the group spent more than $6 million on the state Supreme Court race that helped flip control of the court from its 15 years of conservatives in the majority.
Crawford has been slammed by Schimel and other Republicans for “selling” the race during a donor call in which she allegedly billed the contest as a chance to put two more House seats in play through redistricting.
“Susan Crawford was caught offering two congressional seats to out-of-state billionaires to eliminate Republicans’ House majority and is funded by George Soros, JB Pritzker, and Reid Hoffman,” Schimel told the Washington Examiner. “She nationalized this race on her own.”
Musk’s millions and MAGA
Elon Musk, President Donald Trump‘s billionaire backer, has also thrown a lot of money into this year’s race. Musk was the country’s largest donor in the 2024 election cycle and has now turned his efforts toward electing Schimel, a career Republican official who said he decided to run because he disapproved of the campaign rhetoric in the 2023 race.
Musk’s America PAC has spent $1 million on canvassing operations in Wisconsin. Some of the money was used to distribute pamphlets that read, “President Trump needs you to get out and vote.” His group blasted out attack ads featuring a picture of a woman named Susan Crawford, only it was the wrong Susan Crawford.
Crawford, the candidate, has blasted Musk’s meddling and suggested he stay in Washington.
“Brad Schimel welcomes Elon Musk’s involvement, and Musk’s organization is now going door to door with paid canvassers handing out flyers that say that Brad has got to be on the Supreme Court to protect the Trump agenda,” Crawford told reporters on Feb. 25. “We don’t need that kind of politics on our Supreme Court.”
Another group called Building America’s Future, which has received funding from Musk in the past, shelled out $1.6 million for a TV ad campaign on behalf of Schimel.
Even though Trump hasn’t specifically waded into the race, GOP strategist Brian Seitchik believes Musk “serves as a dye marker for Donald Trump” and that his involvement implies “a blessing” from the MAGA world.
Schweber agrees.
“Musk publicly sending support to Schimel is a way for the White House to indicate solidarity with the MAGA movement without Trump surrendering any of his ambiguity [on hot-button topics],” he told the Washington Examiner.
Musk also used X, his social media platform, to blast out support for Schimel, urging his almost 219 million followers to “vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud.”
The Republican State Leadership Committee, a spending group dedicated to winning state-level races across the country, has committed to spending $2 million in advertising to help Schimel. The Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin also announced a new round of ads.
“The stakes are high and AFP-WI’s grassroots army is locked in to elect Brad Schimel on April 1st,” AFP-WI State Director Megan Novak said.
One senior Wisconsin-based Republican operative told the Washington Examiner Schimel seems to be better positioned in this year’s race than conservative candidate former Justice Daniel Kelly was in 2023 but declined to share specific polling.
Why should we care?
The money being funneled into the race should serve as a “big red flag,” Iuscely Flores, racial equity and economic justice advocate at Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, told the Washington Examiner.
“The influence of money in what is supposed to be a nonpartisan race is very telling,” she added, saying it could become the norm and spread to other states. “Unfortunately, our state balance lies with whoever has the money and influence.”
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The outcome of the Wisconsin race also could determine the balance of power in Congress if redistricting lines are upheld or redrawn in the state.
It is also being looked at as an early litmus test of how strong the MAGA movement still is and if voters will still come out to support it, the GOP operative told the Washington Examiner.
