Wisconsin voters will head to the polls Tuesday to decide the future of their state in what has turned into one of the most expensive and consequential judicial races in U.S. history.
Its outcome will directly affect the ideological makeup of the state’s Supreme Court and decide on issues like Wisconsin’s abortion ban, lopsided district maps, and election laws.
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Democrats have framed the showdown as their last shot at stopping Republicans from cementing their grip on the battleground state.
“If Republicans keep their hammerlock on the State Supreme Court majority, Wisconsin remains stuck in an undemocratic doom loop,” Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said.
Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told the Washington Examiner, “The stakes are huge.”
“The court has been deciding all of the important issues in Wisconsin over the last several years,” he said.
Over the weekend, conservative candidate former Justice Daniel Kelly pitched his case to voters in churches, community centers, and gatherings at the GOP offices in Fond du Lac and Eau Claire. Liberal candidate Judge Janet Protasiewicz, who was feeling under the weather, canceled a planned appearance in Madison. However, one of her high-profile supporters, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, stumped on her behalf and also made appearances in Milwaukee and Waukesha.
More than $31 million, most of it from out-of-state donors, has been poured into the nominally nonpartisan race.
Protasiewicz has pulled in millions in donations from billionaire George Soros, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL). In a race in which so much is on the line, critics say Protasiewicz has all but abandoned any notion of impartiality. She has openly touted her support for abortion, called the state’s election maps “rigged,” and has run much of her campaign like a partisan state race. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin, which gave Protasiewicz’s campaign nearly $9 million, also organized canvassing efforts on her behalf in Madison with Wisconsin Attorney General John Kaul and Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) in tow.
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Pod Save America, the popular podcast by former President Barack Obama’s speechwriters, headlined a show in Madison recently in an effort to drum up voters ahead of Tuesday’s contest.
But some, like Daniel Suhr, an attorney in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, said Protasiewicz and her allies’ over-the-top politicization of the race has been a turnoff.
“Janet Protasiewicz has been campaigning by sharing her ‘values,’ telegraphing her political preferences to voters with a brazen audacity beyond anything we’ve seen in the modern history of the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” he wrote in an opinion piece for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Kelly has also been clear on his views for the state, locking up support from Wisconsin’s three largest anti-abortion groups. He’s raised some eyebrows over blog posts that claim abortion access promoted “sexual libertinism,” as well as some controversial posts on marriage equality. He has also criticized Social Security and Medicare, arguing that the government used the programs to steal from taxpayers and once compared social security to slavery.
Though he has been significantly outraised by Protasiewicz, Kelly received the backing of GOP donor Richard Uihlein through a group he funds, Fair Courts America, which spent a small fortune to “help educate” voters about Kelly’s conservative record. The group has blanketed the airwaves highlighting cases where Protasiewicz gave violent criminals a slap on the wrist only to have them commit an even more heinous act.
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In her ads, Protasiewicz has painted Kelly as out of touch and hellbent on taking away a woman’s right to choose.
Protasiewicz and Kelly are running to replace conservative Justice Patience Roggensack, a conservative whose term expires in July.
