Op-Ed
Mar 10, 2025, 11:09 AM CST
Whether through misleading arguments, frustrating questions on “electability” or problematic tough-on-crime ads, campaigns for state Supreme Court have gone in a troubling direction.
This column is from The Recombobulation Area, a weekly opinion column and online publication founded by Dan Shafer, now part of the Civic Media network. Learn more about The Recombobulation Area and subscribe here.
How do we want to elect Supreme Court justices in the state of Wisconsin? What is it that truly matters in these races? Are we really focusing on the right issues? Or, has the highly politicized nature of these elections pushed these campaigns into needlessly divisive and sometimes irrelevant territory?
The next election for Wisconsin Supreme Court is now just weeks away, where Brad Schimel, the former Republican Attorney General and now a Waukesha County judge, is facing Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge who has been endorsed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, in this race for an open seat on the state’s highest court. On the line is majority control of the court’s ideological balance of power, just as it was two years ago when Janet Protasiewicz defeated Daniel Kelly to form the court’s first liberal majority in at least 15 years.
As we approach the final stretch of this race, it’s important to take a look at how we got to this place where Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin have become highly politicized nail-biters. And not just how we got here, but how a certain type of ad has shaped this type of race, and how that has played a role in missed opportunities to make long-overdue history along the way.
If we’re looking at just the last 10 years, we see a drastic change in how these races play out.
The Supreme Court elections from 2015, 2016, and 2017 are all completely different. In 2015, Ann Walsh Bradley won with 58% of the vote. Also in the April election, Wisconsin voters approved an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution to allow the members of the court to elect the chief justice. Before the amendment, the Constitution said that the most senior member of the court would be the chief justice. The effect of the amendment was that it allowed the court’s conservative majority to remove Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and replace her with Conservative Justice Roggensack. Clearly, two different outcomes in how one election played out.
In 2016, conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley won with 52% of the vote against liberal justice Joanne Kloppenburg. Also that year was a primary on the liberal side with then-Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Joe Donald (now a judge on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals) also running. It’s important to note that Judge Joe Donald is a Black man from Milwaukee.
That year and that election in 2016 was long before Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC) was founded, and at the time, I worked for a labor union, coordinating the interview process for our members. For a lot of folks, what Judge Donald was saying and how he campaigned really resonated, but the question came up “Can he win?” There were the whispers of him being from “Milwaukee” – which became code for “Can a Black man win a statewide Supreme Court race?” All those questions came into play for organizations trying to wrestle with an endorsement. Joe Donald got 12% of the vote and did not make it out of the primary. That race never sat well with me.
Over the years, I’ve heard stories from lawyers and organizers about Justice Louis Butler. He was appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court by former Gov. Jim Doyle in 2004. He ran for a full 10-year term in 2008, but was defeated by Michael Gableman. Yes, that Michael Gableman. He won with 51% of the vote — a margin of just 22,303 votes. I’ve heard stories and seen think pieces about how ugly that race was. Justice Butler wanted to talk about the issues and the law while Gableman got political and divisive. This could have been seen as a turning point in how our Supreme Court races are run. Perhaps the echoes of Louis Butler’s election made people nervous about taking a chance on a Black man, despite their overqualification.
In 2017, now-Chief Justice Annette Ziegler won re-election without a challenger. In 2019, conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, who would become a swing vote in several cases, defeated liberal candidate Lisa Neubauer by just about 6,000 votes — a less than 1% margin.
In 2020, we saw what many call the “Pandemic Election.” While most states had shifted their primary election days because of the emerging Covid-19 pandemic in spring of 2020, Wisconsin was forced to vote in person. The Governor moved to delay the election, but that decision was overturned through various courts and in-person voting was back on. The same people who were disproportionately impacted in the early days of the pandemic — Black and Brown communities — were also the same ones targeted for voter suppression. This, however, backfired and voters braved long lines in Milwaukee with only five polling places open throughout the entire city. Jill Karofsky won the race with 55% of the vote.
Year after year, these outcomes can be unpredictable. If we think back to the 2023 Supreme Court race, we saw how instantly it caught national attention. Roe v Wade had been overturned the previous summer and this was going to be a major test of any potential backlash.
Also that year, the state was introduced to a Black pastor and judge from Dane County, Everett Mitchell. Mitchell had a way of really seeing and connecting with people. He was a favorite in so many circles, but that light was quickly extinguished by that pesky “electability” dog whistle.
This election was for all the marbles and would determine the balance of power on the court. Abortion access and fair maps were on the line. Given the track record of Black candidates not being supported, people didn’t feel they could take a chance on Everett, even if they may have thought he was the better candidate. Everett lost the primary with 7% of the vote. It was a devastating blow that yet again, Wisconsin chose electability dog whistles over making long-overdue history.
Just months before were the fall midterm elections and the race for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin. We all remember how Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes was treated. His skin was darkened in ads and painted him as a “scary” Black man. I heard dozens of times, “well Mandela wasn’t successful in his bid for U.S. Senate, I don’t know if the state is ready for a Black man statewide.” Mitchell’s family history was also dragged into the campaign in an ugly and irrelevant way. But Janet Protasiewicz ended up winning the election, changing the balance of power on the Supreme Court.
Over time in these campaigns, tough-on-crime ads became more and more normal. I have been pushing back on these ads since BLOC started weighing in on Supreme Court races in 2018. In our work, we noticed a lot of confusion about what the Supreme Court is, and how it impacts the day to day lives of Wisconsinites. We do a lot of education about what the Supreme Court is — cases that may have impacted them, the 10-year terms that justices serve, etc.
It is wholly unethical to mislead the electorate and imply that the state Supreme Court justices will help crime in your neighborhood. It also isn’t strategic, when voters see inaction on local crime, they will eventually stop seeing a reason to vote for Supreme Court or engage in the election. If voters stay home because they aren’t compelled to vote for Supreme Court, that also impacts other candidates on the ballot as well as any potential ballot measures.
In the 2023 primary, we saw tough-on-crime ads from both sides, including those against conservative Judge Jennifer Dorow, who lost in the primary. Also in January 2023, Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was killed by Memphis police officers. The video of his murder went viral as these tough on crime ads were being run. It was a tragically disgusting tactic and timing. Distasteful at best.
We have also normalized — on both sides — cherry-picking their opponents’ cases as a representation of their track record and judgment. I guarantee every judge has one case they probably aren’t proud of, but the facts of the case were what they were. Because judges don’t have a D or R next to their name on the ballot, we can’t always go on policy stances and we only have their background, including cases, to rely on.
I think about how those ads with “violent criminals” can reopen and retraumatize not only victims and their loved ones but the loved ones of the defendant. Their cases and pain are used for political points and do nothing to actually talk about the issues at hand. It often can further stereotype Black men like Tyre Nichols who lost his life because he was perceived as a threat.
Ads like this do not help the violence against Black men. Tough-on-crime ads, no matter what seat we are talking about, are dangerous for our community and are not needed in order to win, especially a Supreme Court race. Black men are the most incarcerated in this state but Black men are boxed out of serving on our state’s highest court. Tough on crime ads, “electability”, the highest incarceration rate all play a role in why we have not elected our first Black Supreme Court justice, or our first Black U.S. Senator in Wisconsin.
It is a playbook where Republicans back Democrats into a corner. It is a trap. We don’t need to continue to fall for it time and time again. Democrats can take a proactive stance on safety without playing into the Republican playbook.
With this heightened political landscape, it is no surprise that once again, this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race has become especially politicized. Unelected bureaucrat billionaire Elon Musk, a central figure in the new Trump administration, has given millions to oppose Susan Crawford and support Brad Schimel. Outside money pours into this state and we are on track for record-breaking money to be spent on this race. No matter what your political affiliation, it is a direct infringement on our voice as Wisconsinites to choose our leaders on our state’s highest courts and that should anger and alarm everyone.
While the last decade of Supreme Court races have taken a drastic turn, it’s one that isn’t completely surprising when you see how they have played out so differently year after year. Tough-on-crime ads are irrelevant and turn voters off, and research shows how ineffective those messages are. Out-of-state billionaires should not be able to buy our court and effectively a portion of our state.
Wisconsin will have a state Supreme Court race on the ballot for six consecutive years, starting this year, and we have an opportunity to take back our democracy and do things differently. We can make history and diversify our court in the future.
We can also make sure that in April we vote for a candidate who will protect our rights as Wisconsinites. Susan Crawford is who Wisconsin needs right now, but in the future, we need to reevaluate our message to voters for future Supreme Court elections.
This is an opinion column written by Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (BLOC). Lang is a regular contributor to The Recombobulation Area, is the winner of an award from the Milwaukee Press Club for her work at the publication.
Subscribe to The Recombobulation Area to get columns like this delivered right to your inbox.
Civic Media Inc.
Put us in your pocket.
