Tens of millions of dollars are flooding into state elections. Subsequently, a political candidate for judge. Huge political stakes for key Battleground state.
Two years ago, the Wisconsin Supreme Court race vividly demonstrated How local elections that once flew under the radar were expensive, nationalized and Highly partisan matters.
Now, Democrats and Republicans in Wisconsin are gearing up for another contest in April that will once again determine control of the state’s highest court — and with it the fate of abortion rights, labor rights and two congressional districts.
The race is likely to be even more partisan, negative and expensive than 2023 electionwhose $56 million price tag broke national spending records for a litigation contest.
The election will be the first test of Democratic and Republican enthusiasm in the new Trump era, and it will unfold in a state where the new president won the narrowest edge victory. With several marquee contests in 2025—and no other statewide races until November—Wisconsin’s judicial race stands out as potentially the biggest, top election of the year since Mr. Trump’s return to power.
And while the contest is formally nonpartisan, it has already been stripped of any veneer of nonpartisanship.
Democratic allies of the liberal candidate, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, say her election will preserve abortion rights in the state and lead to new congressional maps that will help Democrats flip two Republican seats.
Republican supporters of the conservative candidate, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, a former Wisconsin attorney general, warn that upholding the court’s liberal 4-3 majority will spell the end of a series of laws dating back a decade. Scott Walker, Republican.
“We’re going to see a campaign where Decorum is dead,” said Brian Reisinger, a former aide to Wisconsin Republicans, including Mr. Walker and Senator Ron Johnson. “It will be a bare-knuckle fight in a state that has a history of bruising Supreme Court races.” It’s about to overflow. “
Election of the “Third Legislature”
The contest is just the latest in a state judicial election that has become a political battle.
In North Carolina, Republican Supreme Court justices could overturn Narrow victory for Democratic judicial nominee. In Ohio, the Republicans swept three state supreme courts races last year for millions of dollars in spending by Democratic former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Republican billionaire Richard Uihlein. And on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, three liberal justices will face a retention election in November, when they will run unopposed and voters will decide whether they should serve another term.
“We might as well elect a third legislative body and have that body — whatever the ideology, whatever the ideology — decide these important issues, as opposed to looking at it through a constitutional lens,” said Janine P. Geske, former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice that has called for an end to judicial elections due to their increasingly political nature.
Since 2023, when Wisconsin’s liberal justices command a majority for the first time in 15 years, they have pushed lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Legislature to redraw the state’s Assembly and state Senate state maps and repeal the drop box ban.
This year, the court is expected to decide cases involving abortion rights and 2011 Act signed by Mr. Walker It ended collective bargaining rights for most public employees—a measure that was the bane of Democrats and their labor union allies.
And then there are the state’s congressional maps. As of 2023, they have resulted in Republicans holding six of the eight House seats, even though other statewide elections have been decided by a percentage point or less.
“Chances for 2026,” read the subject line of last week’s email invitation to Democratic donors with Judge Crawford and Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman.
Among those organizing the event were aides to Reid Hoffman, a billionaire Democratic donor and staunch supporter of Wisconsin Democrats. Former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who is chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, also plans to travel to Wisconsin to campaign for Judge Crawford.
Republicans are trying to learn from their 2023 mistakes
Republicans, who last year watched Democrats shrink the GOP’s state legislative majority under the new maps, agree the stakes are high.
Edith Jorge-Tuñón, president of the Republican Leadership Committee, which helps state legislative candidates, wrote in a note to donors this month that if Judge Schimel won in April, last year’s legislative redistricting “could be reversed by a new conservative majority.”
Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents northern Wisconsin, was among several Republicans who said the Supreme Court election was more important than the state’s 2026 governor’s race.
“There is a virtual guarantee that they will flip the congressional maps if Ms. Crawford wins this race,” Tiffany said. “It’s no longer an academic exercise that this could happen.” This is happening. “
Republicans pointed to a weak candidate and a divisive primary defeat in 2023, when a conservative former justice, Dan Kelly, lost by 11 percentage points to Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge.
A larger factor was Justice Protasiewicz’s decision to accept endorsements and funding from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which brought in $10 million to her campaignwhile Mr. Kelly rejected direct funding from the Wisconsin Republican Party. Instead, he relied on outside groups and super PACs that spent less and paid far more for television advertising than he could have as a candidate.
Brian Schimming, the Wisconsin Republican chairman, said he maintained much of the party infrastructure that won the state for Mr. Trump to help Judge Schimel. But more important, Mr. Schimming said, is how he hopes to coax money from conservative donors through the State Republican Party, which can accept unlimited contributions and send cash to endorsed candidates.
“This race is not a Dan Kelly sequel,” Mr. Schimming said. “The party is very, very committed to making sure we are competitive in April.
television commercial, which started this month with Ads from both candidateslikely to focus on base motivation issues like abortion rights for Democrats and Crime and transgender issues for republicans.
In interviews last year, Judge Schimel said that “We will nationalize“The race and that he expected outside conservative groups. spend $10 million to $15 million on his behalf. Last week, he attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration. On Thursday Elon Musk posted on his social media site that it was “very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” a nod to unfounded claims of drop boxes and voter fraud.
Mr Kelly declined to comment on the race.
Abortion rights on the line
The race, like many in Wisconsin, is likely to dominate abortion rights.
As attorney general, Judge Schimel helped map out a strategy to limit abortion rights. And last summer, in the early stages of his campaign for the court, he told supporters that he supported an 1849 law outlawing abortion that became valid when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The Old Testament was. You will follow in December 2023 and is likely to appear in state court later this year.
“They have some issues ahead of them,” he told the crowd in Adams County, according to audio of the meeting shared with The New York Times. “One of them is the abortion ban of 1849, which by the way – what’s wrong with that law?”
At the next stop in Chilton, Wisconsin, Judge Schimel declared, “There is no constitutional right to abortion in our state constitution. If they find out, it will be fraudulent. “
He declined to be interviewed, but his spokesman, Jacob Fischer, said Judge Schimel “will have no case” and “enforces and respects the will of the voters.”
In an interview, Judge Crawford declined to address the 1849 law or the call for collective bargaining by public employees. But she said the state government should not be in the business of regulating abortion.
“I believe as a woman that I should be the one to make decisions about my own body and my health care along with my doctors,” she said. “I trust other women to make the same choices.”
Judge Crawford said she did not think about whether the state’s congressional lines were fair. During his tenure as Attorney General, Judge Schimel defended previous Republican maps that gave the GOP an advantage in both the state legislature and Congress.
Both candidates are expected to portray the other as a partisan extremist in a stream of attack ads, turning the election into another test of which side is more under pressure.
“I don’t know how much voting these days is determined by the issues,” said Representative Mark Pocan, a Democrat who represents Madison, the state capital, “as opposed to Team Red or Team Blue to get rid of their vote.”
Theodore Grinder and Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.
