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The election on Tuesday, April 1 will decide control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel are running for a 10-year term. While this is a nonpartisan election, Crawford is generally seen as a liberal supported by Democrats, and Schimel is considered to be a conservative supported by Republicans. Liberal justices now have a 4-3 majority. This election will either keep that majority or switch it to the conservatives. In 2019, 6,000 votes decided a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, while three in four eligible voters stayed home. This election could be just as close.
This year, the Court will rule on an attempt to reactivate the state’s 175-year-old abortion ban and on whether Republicans in the state Senate have the authority to fire Wisconsin Elections Commission’s nonpartisan administrator Meagan Wolfe. The Court is also expected to hear an appeal of a Dane County judge’s decision that overturned Act 10, restoring collective bargaining rights to unions representing 200,000 teachers and other public employees. The winner will rule on any potential redistricting and voting rules cases, such as a 2022 case where a conservative-dominated Court banned ballot drop boxes.
In recent years, the Court struck down Republican-drawn legislative maps and in a meat packing case, ruled that workers should be paid for time spent putting on or removing protective gear. The Court declined to hear a Democratic-backed lawsuit that sought to redraw the state’s congressional map. It also declined to hear a lawsuit brought by Democrats seeking to end the state’s taxpayer-funded private school voucher program.
Here’s background on the candidates’ positions, relevant rulings, experience, and publicized endorsements. Follow our links to get further information on the candidates’ positions and actions.
Susan Crawford is currently a judge for the Dane County Circuit Court. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Lawrence University and her J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law. She worked as assistant attorney general for the Wisconsin Department of Justice, becoming Director of Criminal Appeals in 2000. She also worked in the Wisconsin departments of Natural Resources, Corrections, and Employment Relations. She was chief legal counsel for the Wisconsin Office of the Gove-rnor, and then a partner at the Pines Bach law firm from 2011 to 2018. She was elected to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2018.
Crawford’s endorsements include: Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky, and Janet Protasiewicz, and
former Justice Lewis Butler, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, UAW, Wisconsin AFL-CIO, the Wisconsin Laborers District Council, Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin Conservation Voters, Senator Tammy Baldwin, and the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, along with 150 judges, former judges, and court commissioners.
Brad Schimel is currently a judge for the Waukesha County Circuit Court. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School. After six months in private practice, he was hired as Waukesha County Assistant District Attorney from 1990 to 2006 and then was Waukesha District Attorney from 2006 to 2014. He was elected Wisconsin Attorney General from 2015 to 2019. In 2019 he was appointed to the Waukesha County Circuit Court by then-Governor Scott Walker.
Schimel’s endorsements include: the Waukesha County Police Chiefs Association, the Milwaukee Police Association, the Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Association, and more than 70 Wisconsin county sheriffs, along with Judge Maria S. Lazar, Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin, Senator Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Young Republicans, and Wisconsin’s five Republican U.S. House representatives.
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