control of state Supreme Court will be up for grabs in the 20th century

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s 2024 Presidential Election – A Case Study and Implications for the Republican-Leading Attorney General Tom Protasiewicz

Some advocates for Protasiewicz say they also worry about conservative control of the court when it comes to setting voting rules for the 2024 presidential election in Wisconsin and if Republicans would challenge the 2024 results. Conservatives unsuccessfully fought the results of the 2020 race in the state, and there may be more lawsuits involving the 2024 race.

The race shattered the previous national record for spending in a state Supreme Court race. The old record for most money spent in a race for the Illinois Supreme Court was set in 2004, said the Brennan Center for Justice. Almost $29 million had been spent on ads for the Wisconsin race according to the center’s tracking. Another running tally by the Wisconsin political news site WisPolitics found total spending on the race had hit $45 million.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. – Democrats have scored a major off-year election victory in Wisconsin, winning the state’s open supreme court seat and flipping control of the court to liberals for the first time in 15 years.

Walker lost his bid for a third term to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2018. But Evers has been hamstrung by the Republican-led legislature, with the conservative Supreme Court breaking ties on matters such as a 2022 ruling during the once-a-decade redistricting process in favor of using Republican-drawn legislative maps rather than ones submitted by Evers. The decision cemented Republicans’ solid majority in the state legislature.

State legislative and congressional district maps will likely be challenged if Protasiewicz is elected. State legislative maps have been drawn to benefit Republicans since 2011.

The court has also shaped Wisconsin elections in other ways. It barred the use of most ballot drop boxes last year and ruled that no one can return a ballot in person on behalf of another voter. The court played a pivotal role in the outcome of the 2020 election in Wisconsin: Justices voted 4-3, with conservative Brian Hagedorn joining the court’s three liberals, to reject former President Donald Trump’s efforts to throw out ballots in Democratic-leaning counties.

Tuesday’s election will set the stage for the 2024 presidential race, with the court likely to be asked to weigh in again on election rules, including the state’s voter identification law, and potentially sort through another round of legal challenges afterward.

But the most immediate battle likely to reach the justices as early as this fall is over Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances.

“If my opponent is elected, I can tell you with 100% certainty, that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books. Protasiewicz said he could tell you that.

The Wisconsin High Court ‘Rate’ as voters go to the polls: Eric Holder’s testimony at a Wisconsin workshop on Election Day

That could all change as voters Tuesday decide one seat on Wisconsin’s high court in the most expensive state supreme court race in United States history.

Spending tripling of an old national record is expected to continue into Election Day. It now tops an estimated $45 million, mostly from out-of-state sources.

“I will tell you this. This is the most important election in this country in 2023,” said former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Saturday to get-out-the-vote volunteers in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha.

After his comments, he told the reporter at the event that he didn’t know how Protasiewicz would rule on certain issues. He said that he could tell you how a judge would vote on a particular case, especially when it came to questions of voting and whether they were fair.

The 1850 state law that took effect in the summer of 2016 was struck down by the Supreme Court. A lawsuit filed by Democrats last year challenging the old law will be argued at the circuit court level in May and could go to the state court within months.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/04/1167814397/tuesday-election-wisconsin-supreme-court-

The First Republican Senator in Wisconsin, Mary Ann Protasiewicz, Celebrated her 91-Year-Old Victory

According to her aides, Protasiewicz has been sick for the past few days. Kelly’s campaign says he’s made more than 20 stops over the last four days, including Sunday afternoon at Milwaukee County Republican headquarters in West Allis.

The first thing that I learned was that the servants don’t tell the bosses what to do.

Dennis Hipenbecker is a Lutheran pastor. He said he sees Kelly as “very moral, from what I know, though we don’t know everything about a person.” Hipenbecker thinks that Kelly would rule against expansion of abortion rights in the state.

Hundreds of thousands of people who Vote in Presidential Elections in Wisconsin don’t bother with Supreme court races. State Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming told the West Allis crowd to reach out to 10 people they know and convince them to vote.

As Protasiewicz approached the stage for her victory speech, the crowd at the Saint Kate hotel in downtown Milwaukee erupted, while some of her closest supporters danced on stage.

“Our state is taking a step forward to a better and brighter future where our rights and freedoms will be protected,” Protasiewicz said. “And while there is still work to be done, tonight we celebrate this historic victory that has obviously reignited hope in so many of us.

Protasiewicz is a Wisconsin Democrat: How a Judge Destroyed the Courts and the Judiciary

Protasiewicz was born and raised on Milwaukee’s south side, spending 25 years as a prosecutor in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s office and most of the last decade as a judge.

While she never promised to rule one way or another on cases that come before the Supreme Court, Protasiewicz was especially open about her politics during the campaign. She believes women have a right to make their own decision on abortion. She said the legislative maps were “rigged” when it came to re-drawing them.

Her campaign also relied more than any in history on the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s financial support, so much so that Protasiewicz vowed to recuse herself from cases involving the state party once she takes office.

In his concession speech to supporters in Green Lake, Wis., Kelly had sharp words for Protasiewicz, saying she had “demeaned the judiciary” with her campaign.

Throughout the campaign, Kelly downplayed his political views, but he brought a long Republican resume to the race. He was made an appointment to the court by Scott Walker. Kelly’s career was most of the time an attorney. In 2012, he defended Wisconsin’s Republican-drawn legislative maps in federal court. In 2020, after Kelly lost his first election, he returned to private practice, where his clients included both the state and national Republican parties.

A group called Fair Courts America, funded by Richard Uihlein, is one of Kelly’s main financial backers. Together, they spent more than $10 million on ads criticizing sentences handed down by Protasiewicz as a judge in Milwaukee County.

During the closing weeks of the race, Kelly and conservative groups gave Protasiwitz a lot of money but he still raised more than 14 million, breaking previous records. The majority of the money comes from the state Democratic Party.

Protasiewicz will take office on Aug. 1 for a term that runs until 2033. Barring the unexpected, the next chance conservatives have to flip the court back will be in 2025.

The Democrat Midterms: What have we Learned in Michigan, Where do we Stand? How Do We Are, What Are We About?

The result in Michigan, where abortion rights activists won a vote to get abortion rights into the state constitution, is now considered to be a victory. Those results continued a streak of successes for Democrats who dug in hard on the issue – a political winner in many swing states and legislative districts.

And as they did in last year’s midterms in some places around the country, Democrats, once again, appear to have capitalized on a broad backlash to the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a base still energized by the specter of another Donald Trump presidency.

In the Wisconsin general election, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by less than 25,000 votes.

In February, Protasiewicz told the Wisconsin Radio Network that the right to choose could be reconsidered. (Act 10 eliminated collective bargaining for most public sector employees.)

With a second presidential election coming up, her willingness to consider attempts to roll back or reverse restrictive voting laws could have national implications.