Justice Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal, won a heated race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday, beating balance of power on the state High Court, from conservatives to liberals, for the first time since 2008.
Although judicial races in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, Protasiewicz’s victory over former Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, a conservative, in the costliest judicial race in U.S. history is a turning point for the embattled Democrats.
Without saying exactly how he would govern, Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit court judge, ran as an abortion rights advocate and opponent of Wisconsin’s Republican state legislative and congressional maps, which he called “unfair.” .
The Court’s new 4-3 liberal majority is expected to overturn the statewide abortion ban, which took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down federal abortion rights in June. This law, which dates back to 1849, makes obtaining an abortion a crime punishable by up to six years in prison.
Assuming Democrats and their allies challenge the state’s maps again, a liberal-majority court would likely favor throwing out those maps as well.
Referring to the latter possibility, Wisconsin Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki told HuffPost in March that a possible Protasiewicz victory represents “a chance to have a chance.”
With that in mind, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has thrown all of its infrastructural influence behind the Protasiewicz campaign. State party efforts included direct transfers of $8 million to the Protasiewicz campaign.
The transparent way Wisconsin Democrats have treated the race as a contest over liberal priorities and political power has led Kelly and his conservative allies to accuse Protasiewicz of judicial activism that would tailor the court’s rulings to preferred political outcomes.
“Democrats have almost suggested that they see this as an opportunity to make policy decisions,” Kelly campaign spokesman Ben Voelkel told HuffPost. “This is a complete misreading of the role of the judiciary.”
But Protasiewicz, who has vowed to recuse herself from cases involving the Wisconsin Democratic Party, insisted Kelly is the candidate with the worrisome partisan bias. He noted, in particular, the paid work he did representing the Republican Party of Wisconsin at a time when it was exploring ways to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The former party chairman testified before Congress that he even consulted Kelly about a plan to name an alternate list of electors who would vote to reverse President Joe Biden’s victory. Kelly said he was only asked if he knew about the plan and he said no. But in an effort to convert his base in the latter part of the campaign, Kelly appeared at events with Scott Presler, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021. United States shortly thereafter.
“I don’t think he believes in representative democracy,” Protasiewicz told HuffPost in an interview in late March in Milwaukee.
To shift the terms of the debate away from abortion rights, Kelly and outside groups that support him have used Protsaiewicz’s public safety record, arguing that he has convicted violent criminals too lightly.
Based on conversations HuffPost had with a number of voters in the city of Milwaukee and surrounding suburbs, the message got across, even to win over Democrats.
Less than two weeks before Election Day, Neal Bryant, a production supervisor at a rodenticide plant and lifelong Democrat, told HuffPost he needed to do “more research” on the judicial race.
“He released a lot of inmates who committed a lot of rape and sexual assault,” Bryant said, describing his dilemma over breakfast at a restaurant on Milwaukee’s predominantly black north side. “And the other is against women’s right to have an abortion.”
In a pitch to right-wing Wisconsin voters, Kelly also argued that a liberal majority on the state Supreme Court risks jeopardizing more than a decade of conservative reforms, from lax gun rights laws to to cutting union rights and strict voter ID laws.
Jeff and Karen Grossman, former conservative Illinois residents who work at a Lutheran church in the Milwaukee suburb of Mequon, feared a Protasiewicz victory would open the door to Democratic hegemony in the Badger State.
“I’m not saying Republicans are perfect either,” Jeff Grossman told HuffPost after the couple voted for Kelly in late March. “But I’m afraid the state of Wisconsin will look like the state of Illinois where the voters voted. you have no more rights. They have no say in this matter.”
In the end, however, liberal and moderate voters’ concerns about abortion rights and the proper administration of elections took precedence, boosting turnout in an off-season, off-year race and helping Democrats hold on to gains in recent years with former suburban Republican voters. from Milwaukee.
HuffPost spoke with a former Mequon corporate executive who declined to give his name because he had tensions with conservative neighbors over his political views. In 2020, someone removed a Biden sign from his family’s back yard.
A fiscal conservative, the Mequon constituent had previously supported former Republican Gov. Scott Walker because he liked “union-union stuff.” But since Trump’s election in 2016, she told HuffPost, she’s “complete with Democrats.” The opposition of some of her neighbors to wearing masks and getting vaccinated against COVID-19 further alienated her from the GOP.
“I’m a big supporter of human dignity and gay rights, women’s rights,” she added, summing up her liberal positions on social issues.
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