[Victory will have consequences for abortion and voting rights in
the state as Democrats become serious about down-ballot races ]
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LIBERAL JUDGE’S WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT RACE WIN SHOWS A SHAKE-UP
IN US POLITICS
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Sam Levine
April 5, 2023
The Guardian
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_ Victory will have consequences for abortion and voting rights in
the state as Democrats become serious about down-ballot races _
Janet Protasiewicz celebrates after the race was called for her
during her election night watch party in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.,
Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Janet Protasiewicz’s victory in the Wisconsin
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Tuesday amounted to a political earthquake in Wisconsin, one of
America’s most volatile political battlegrounds.
Her victory underscores the continued political salience of abortion
rights for Democrats [[link removed]].
Her election to the court means that the Wisconsin 1849 abortion ban
will be struck down (a case is already coming through the courts).
Just as they did across the country in 2022, Democrats made it a
central issue in the supreme court campaign and voters turned out.
“Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They’ve chosen to
reject partisan extremism,” Protasiewicz said during remarks at her
election night party in Milwaukee. “It means our democracy will
always prevail.”
When Protasiewicz is seated in August, the ideological balance of
Wisconsin’s seven-member supreme court will shift from conservative
to liberal. A challenge is expected shortly thereafter to
Wisconsin’s electoral maps, which are so heavily distorted in favor
of Republicans that it is virtually impossible for Democrats to ever
win a majority. Protasiewicz has said the maps are “rigged” and
the court is likely to strike them down, making elections much more
competitive in the state.
These two significant consequences show how Democrats may have finally
been able to catch up to Republicans when it comes to focusing on
so-called down-ballot races – little-known contests for offices like
state legislatures and state supreme courts that can have huge policy
consequences.
In 2010, Republicans focused on state legislative races in Wisconsin
as part of a nationwide effort to have control over the decennial
process of drawing district lines. They were successful and able to
cement their majorities for the next decade.
As recently as 2019, Democrats were struggling to catch up. That year
Lisa Neubauer, a liberal candidate, lost an election for the Wisconsin
state supreme court, a contest in which she was favored, by 6,000
votes. Eric Holder, the former US attorney general, publicly lamented
that no prominent Democrats had come to the state to campaign. “This
should be a wake-up call for us. I felt a little lonely out there in
Wisconsin,” he told Mother Jones after the election.
Democrats got the wake-up call.
In 2020, Jill Karofsky, a liberal, ousted conservative Dan Kelly –
the loser in Tuesday’s election – from the court. This year,
high-profile surrogates including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton
weighed in on the race. The liberal podcast Pod Save America hosted an
episode focused on the race in Madison.
The race was also the most expensive
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US history, with spending topping $42m, nearly tripling the previous
record for an American judicial election. Protasiewicz was able to
keep up with a flood of spending from outside groups backing Kelly.
She raised at least $14.5m, nearly $9m of which came from the state
Democratic party, according to recent campaign finance reports. Those
huge contributions were enabled by a Republican effort to weaken
campaign finance laws.
“It has taken a while to get this kind of focus, but we are on a hot
streak,” Mandela Barnes, the former state lieutenant governor, who
ran an unsuccessful US Senate campaign last year, said in an interview
on Tuesday.
“We built a presidential-scale campaign through the state party and
then never stopped. And that’s why we were able to win the
governor’s race and now a state supreme court race,” Ben Wikler,
the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic party said at Protasiewicz’s
election night party in Milwaukee, where he could be seen dancing off
to the side of the stage where the newly elected justice gave her
remarks. “That’s possible when you don’t shut everything down
after every election.”
New maps could have a big effect in places like the Milwaukee suburbs,
where Republicans wiped out Democratic gains last year by redrawing
district lines. Sarah Harrison, a Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for
one of those redrawn seats in the state assembly, was ecstatic at
Protasiewicz’s watch party on Tuesday evening.
“For me to think that we might get a fair map is outstanding,” she
said. “It’s going to mean our voters can be represented
“appropriately”. She declined to say directly whether she would
run again for the state legislature.
Protasiewicz’s victory marks the latest in a series of consequential
down-ballot wins for Democrats. Last year, the party flipped both
chambers of the state legislature in Michigan and the state senate in
Minnesota. They also have since been able to win control of the
Pennsylvania state legislature.
“I think the big lesson for competitive states is build a permanent
infrastructure that operates with a presidential integrity at every
level of the ballot,” Wikler said.
The Wisconsin supreme court race also marked a new era of highly
politicized supreme court races. It comes at a moment when state
supreme courts across the country are being asked to weigh in on a
number of important issues, including abortion and voting rights.
After her victory remarks on Tuesday evening, the three other liberal
justices joined Protasiewicz onstage and raised their hands with her
in triumph – a milieu that left little pretense of the alignment of
the new majority on the state court.
But not everyone agrees with the outside money that propelled the
justices’ campaigns. “Everybody hates that,” Sonya Bice, 57, a
lawyer from Madison, said at Protasiewicz’s watch party. The success
Democrats had under Wisconsin’s existing campaign finance rules may
also weaken the appetite for tightening them.
More turmoil could also lie ahead. Republicans on Tuesday earned
a supermajority in the state senate
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giving them the requisite votes to impeach state officials. It is
unclear if they would exercise that power on the state supreme court.
As they showed up to vote on Tuesday, Wisconsinites said that amid the
stronger messaging this year, they liked knowing where a candidate for
state supreme court stood on important issues.
“I do like to know their beliefs. Not that they are voting
specifically on their beliefs. Because they need to follow the law,”
said Karen Bitzan, a 64-year-old voter in Menomonee Falls, a Milwaukee
suburb. “Otherwise you’re just looking at ‘oh, they’ve got
blue eyes’ or ‘she’s got pretty hair’, or whatever.”
Holder, meanwhile, acknowledged a very different race than the ones he
remembered from past years.
“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,” he said in a statement on Tuesday celebrating
Protasiewicz’s victory.
“And that is an important lesson for how democracy can ultimately
win in this ever enduring fight.”
* Wisconsin
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* 2012 Election
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