Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The members of Wisconsin’s Republican congressional delegation formally endorsed Brad Schimel in the April Wisconsin Supreme Court election Monday in a virtual news conference that highlighted Schimel’s campaign talking points.

Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit judge and former one-term state attorney general, is running for an open seat on the court against Susan Crawford, a Dane County circuit judge.

Elections for the state Supreme Court are officially nonpartisan, but they’ve become partisan in all but name over the last couple of decades, with both major parties supporting candidates. While Schimel’s announcement Monday touted the backing of congressional Republicans, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and other key Democratic leaders have endorsed Crawford.

The race to replace retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will determine whether the Court’s four-member liberal majority remains or falls to a new four-member conservative majority. 

At the Monday morning news conference U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien) said the Wisconsin voters who helped carry Donald Trump to a second term as U.S. president in November would do the same for Schimel in April.

“They’re sick and tired of the radical left agenda,” Van Orden said. “They want to make sure that someone that is sitting on the court is interpreting the law, not writing the law.”

Among the questions from reporters on the call was one about Schimel’s past statements on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters trying to overturn Joe Biden’s election as president in 2020.

During a talk radio show broadcast on Jan. 2, Schimel charged that the prosecution of the Jan. 6 defendants in Washington, D.C. — where the Capitol is located and the attack took place — was the result of political “manipulation” by Democrats because the population of the city “is overwhelmingly liberal.”

“They would never take their prosecution in a district where you had a fair shot as a defendant,” Schimel told radio host Vicki McKenna.

During Monday’s news conference, a member of Schimel’s campaign staff relayed a reporter’s question that began with a reference to a former U.S. Capitol Police officer “who is coming to Wisconsin tomorrow to criticize your comments about the defendants in those cases.”

The question didn’t specify Schimel’s comments or their context, but asked what he  thought “of the Trump pardons for Jan. 6 protesters who assaulted law enforcement officers.”

“I have no idea what comments you are talking about,” Schimel replied, adding, “I’ve said that anyone who engaged in violence and Jan. 6, assaulted a police officer, resisted arrest, those people should have been prosecuted. They should be prosecuted and held accountable, and judges should impose sentences that are just under the circumstances.”

But Schimel also criticized the use of a federal law against election obstruction to lodge felony charges against some of those who had broken into the Capitol that day. He said it took the U.S. Supreme Court to “finally recognize that prosecutors in Washington, D.C., overreached.” The Court vacated those convictions.

In addition, he voiced support for a president’s right to pardon offenders. “It’s a power they have,” Schimel said. “I don’t object to them utilizing that power.”

The news conference signaled that Schimel’s campaign is focusing on, among other subjects, Wisconsin’s 2011 law requiring voters to show a picture ID when they go to the polls. 

Republican lawmakers have proposed an amendment that would  enshrine the requirement in the state constitution. That proposal goes before voters on the April ballot — alongside the Supreme Court race. Republicans argue that the state Supreme Court might otherwise overturn the law.  

Schimel also raised the circuit court decision, now under appeal, that would overturn the 2011 law known as Act 10 sharply restricting collective bargaining for public employees.

As an attorney, Crawford represented clients who sought to overturn the state’s Voter ID law as well as Act 10.

“She advocated, she fought against and tried to overturn Wisconsin’s Voter ID law,” Sen. Ron Johnson said. “It’s such a huge difference between conservative judges, people like Brad Schimel, who will apply the law faithfully — again, not what his policy preferences are, but respect not only our state constitution, but the federal constitution in the separation of powers, the checks and balances and being a judge, not a super legislator.”

Schimel noted Crawford’s work as a lawyer opposing Act 10 in a case that the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority at the time, rejected.

“This has been settled law for over a decade, but it’s coming right back,” he said. “If my opponent wins, does anyone believe a case, a law, like Act 10 has any chance of a fair, objective examination?”

Asked what his standard would be for recusing himself from ruling on a case, Schimel said that would include “any case where my family, I or my family, my immediate family, have a personal stake, win or lose, in that case.” He said he would “perhaps … need to recuse” himself on issues with which “I was directly involved in the past” or that “I took strong positions on” — but added that “it’s hard to predict what that might be in a vacuum like this.”

On Monday, however, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin accused Schimel of prejudging the issue of abortion rights. The party highlighted a New York Times report on the race that included references to his opposition to abortion rights and his work as attorney general in helping to “map out a strategy to restrict abortion rights.”

The Times article quoted Schimel telling supporters during a campaign stop this past summer that he supported Wisconsin’s 1849 law that was thought to ban abortion until a December 2023 circuit court decision declared that it did not. That ruling is now under appeal and the case is likely to go before the state Supreme Court, possibly this year.

“There is not a constitutional right to abortion in our State Constitution,” The Times quoted Schimel telling supporters in Chilton. “That will be a sham if they find that.”