Wisconsin voters Tuesday elected Madison-based Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor to a seat on the state Supreme Court, a decision that expands the high court’s liberal majority to five justices and cements liberal control until at least 2030.
Taylor, a former Democratic state lawmaker and former policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, defeated conservative Waukesha-based Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar in the race to replace outgoing Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of the court’s conservative wing. Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are elected to 10-year terms.
“Tonight, the people of Wisconsin stood up for our rights and freedoms, our democracy, our elections and a strong state Supreme Court that will protect the independence of our beloved state,” Taylor told a packed room of supporters at the Madison Concourse Hotel. “Once again, Wisconsin showed the entire nation that we believe that the people should be at the center of government and the priority of our judiciary.”
The Associated Press called the election only 36 minutes after polls closed as early returns showed Taylor dominating the liberal bastions of Dane and Milwaukee counties, while leading or running close behind Lazar in rural counties. Taylor told supporters that Lazar called her to concede the race.
The state’s court races are technically nonpartisan contests, but like recent high court elections, public support for Taylor and Lazar broke along party lines with Taylor backed by Democrats and Lazar by Republicans.
Taylor’s victory further cements liberal control of the state’s judicial branch, even as a new governor enters the executive branch and Democrats and Republicans fight for control of the state Legislature later this year. Lazar had raised concerns that a five-member liberal bloc could prevent certain cases from reaching the bench because three votes are needed to take up an appeal.
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar gives her concession speech after losing the Wisconsin Supreme Court race to Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor during her election night watch party at The Ingleside Hotel on April 7, 2026, in Pewaukee, Wis. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Since Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s 2023 election win that secured a liberal majority for the first time in years, the high court has been a factor in disagreements over the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches and has made major decisions on politically charged cases, such as the 2025 ruling that invalidated Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban.
The 5-2 liberal court is likely to continue to play a major role in such cases, including challenges to the limits on collective bargaining rights for public-sector unions under Act 10 redistricting of Wisconsin’s congressional maps. Conservative Justice Annette Ziegler already announced she won’t seek reelection next year, creating another open seat that could further entrench a liberal majority.
Liberals have now won five of the last six Supreme Court elections going back to 2018. UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden called the election results “a remarkable turning of tides” from a decade ago when conservatives controlled the court and Ziegler didn’t have an opponent in 2017.
“Republicans have had a difficult run in Wisconsin during the Trump years,” Burden said. “With the court now out of reach, there will be tremendous pressure on the party this fall to take back the governorship and hold the state Legislature. The GOP is facing serious headwinds in a midterm year that will favor the Democrats nationally.”
Despite a sleepier race, politics remained a part of the 2026 election. In addition to political party support for each of the candidates, Taylor and Lazar represented starkly different judicial philosophies and career paths to the bench.
Taylor centered her campaign on protecting rights and freedoms. In campaign stops across the state, she warned of future threats to Wisconsin’s elections and highlighted her advocacy work in the state Assembly and for Planned Parenthood to support reproductive health care and victims of domestic violence.
Lazar’s campaign frequently zeroed in on Taylor’s legislative career and painted her as an activist and a politician rather than a judge. Lazar, who said the 2025 court race went “overboard” on politics, also sought to refocus Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections on judicial experience instead of political issues.
“I have led the type of campaign that I always said I would,” Lazar told her supporters Tuesday night in Pewaukee. “I have been honest. I’ve been transparent. I have been above board. I have led with integrity, and I want you to know that that is how we need to run races in the state of Wisconsin.”
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Endorsements from nearly 50 current and former Wisconsin judges were listed on the campaign website of conservative Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar as of April 2.
At a debate April 2, Lazar’s opponent in the April 7 state Supreme Court election, liberal Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, said she knew of no judicial endorsements for Lazar.
Lazar said in early March: “If you look at my website, I don’t even list any of my endorsements yet; we may be posting some. I don’t think it’s necessarily important.”
Lazar’s endorsements include Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler. After this brief was initially published, Lazar’s campaign said two appellate judges have endorsed Lazar.
Taylor’s site lists endorsements from some 160 judges and former judges. They include four current justices, one former justice and 10 current appellate judges.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
We’ve written more extensively about this topic in a different article. You can read more about it here.
Taylor’s opposition, while a Democratic state lawmaker, to the Republican-backed 2011 state law requiring identification to vote.
Her introduction of a 2017 bill, which did not become law. It would have provided driver’s licenses to unauthorized residents, but the licenses would have been labeled: “Not valid for voting purposes.”
Taylor’s opinion, in a 2024 appeals court ruling, which said absentee ballots count even if voters’ witnesses fail to give election clerks their full address. Citizenship is required to vote in Wisconsin, but Wisconsin election officials generally do not verify citizenship when a person registers.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
We’ve written more extensively about this topic in a different article. You can read more about it here.
In under two weeks, voters will head to the polls to select a new Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. The winner will likely play a role in how voters cast ballots for the subsequent decade.
That’s because the Wisconsin Supreme Court plays a key role in settling voting disputes, particularly when state government is divided between a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled Legislature.
While the Wisconsin Supreme Court race is officially nonpartisan, candidates have become increasingly willing to embrace partisan views and often campaign on their records as liberals or conservatives. In this race, Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor are squaring off. Taylor is a former Democratic member in the state Assembly, while Lazar is a member of the conservative Federalist Society.
Although there are exceptions, justices’ votes on election cases often align with their ideological backgrounds.
Unlike the past two Wisconsin Supreme Court races, though, this contest won’t determine ideological control of the court. Liberals already hold a 4-3 majority, and the outcome will either preserve the liberal majority or expand it to 5-2 by replacing retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. As a result, the race has drawn significantly less attention and spending than the last two contests, which decided the court’s ideological balance.
Critically, the winning justice will also be a member of the court for the 2028 presidential election, when voting disputes often intensify and escalate to court challenges.
“There’s a lot of importance just because of the length of the term,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who noted that the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the past 10 years has weighed in on absentee voting rules, the legality of postponing elections because of the pandemic and President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Because Wisconsin is a consistent battleground state, Burden said, the court becomes a frequent venue for efforts to change election rules for national races. Some of those potential lawsuits may be hard to predict, he added, because developments in technology and AI in campaigns over the next decade may require new rules or changes to current laws.
Although liberals have a firm hold on the court now, Burden said, they shouldn’t take that for granted. Ten years ago, conservatives had a clear court majority, so much so that liberals didn’t even field a candidate in the 2017 race. Now, liberals have a hold on the court and could extend it with a win.
With Wisconsin politics frequently switching from one side of the aisle to the other, he said, this election may be pivotal for the balance of power down the road.
Candidates’ pasts reveal stark contrast on elections
The candidates’ records — from their rulings, prior public-facing jobs and campaign positions — reveal sharp divides in how they each approach election law.
For example, as an assistant attorney general for the state under GOP Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, Lazar defended Wisconsin’s voter ID law and Republican-drawn legislative maps, which critics have described as among the most gerrymandered in the country.
Taylor took the opposite stances on both issues. During her time in the Legislature, she called for repealing the voter ID law, which has since been enshrined in the Wisconsin Constitution. She also derided the Republican redistricting effort as a means to do “whatever it takes to amass and protect their power.”
More recently, Lazar was involved in an unusual case in which two state appeals courts issued conflicting opinions on the same election issue: In November 2023, one court found that a conservative group wasn’t entitled to obtain information related to people deemed by judges to be incapable of voting. The next month, Lazar joined the majority in a second court that reached the opposite conclusion — despite a Wisconsin Supreme Court precedent stating that only the high court can overturn appellate decisions.
That case is now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Both candidates have also played pivotal roles in more recent election rulings.
In one case involving absentee ballots, Taylor wrote the majority opinion rejecting the Legislature’s argument that an absentee voter’s address must include a street number, name and municipality. Instead, she adopted a more lenient standard for an address, requiring voters to provide enough information for a clerk to reasonably identify where a voter lives.
Only a small fraction of cases heard in circuit and appeals courts ultimately come before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The high court issued just 23 opinions in its 2024-25 term, and it’s hard to predict which cases will be taken up. At present, only one election law case is currently before the court.
That number may remain low following a 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling restricting who can file lawsuits over election rules and policies. Writing for the majority, liberal Justice Jill Karofsky said people must be personally “aggrieved” to bring election lawsuits.
In dissent, outgoing conservative justice Bradley wrote that the majority’s ruling “guts the People’s right of access to the courts in election law matters.”
Among the issues likely to reach the court in coming years are challenges to the state’s congressional boundaries, which liberals are trying to redraw ahead of the typical 10-year cycle. One such case is currently slated for a jury trial before a three-judge panel in April 2027.
The court could also be asked to decide whether election officials can be sued for failing to count votes, a central issue in the ongoing lawsuit over whether Madison should be forced to pay out millions for disenfranchising nearly 200 voters whose ballots were misplaced in the 2024 presidential election .
Ultimately, the most consequential case the next justice could face may come in 2028, the next presidential election year. In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court narrowly halted Trump’s attempt to throw out enough Democratic votes to change the outcome of the race. The 2024 election wasn’t extensively litigated in Wisconsin courts, but the potential for court challenges remains in future presidential contests.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Reading Time: 11minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Both Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates talk about judicial independence, but their views line up on opposite sides of the conservative/liberal divide.
Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar emphasizes the need to prevent liberals from controlling five seats on the court.
Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor calls for a pro-democracy court opposed to gerrymandering and overturning election results.
Early voting starts Tuesday, March 24. Election Day is Tuesday, April 7.
Editor’s note (March 25, 2026): The debate between Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Maria Lazar and Chris Taylor was rescheduled for Thursday, April 2, at 7 p.m. The original debate was scheduled for March 25, but was canceled when Taylor announced she was diagnosed with kidney stones. The April 2 debate will still be hosted by WISN 12 and will be held at the station’s studios in Milwaukee.
Inside a dimly lit banquet hall at an Irish pub in Germantown and at a century-old supper club along Wautoma’s Silver Lake, both 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates championed a fair and impartial judiciary.
“We need to put someone on this bench who is not going to cater to the public whims, who is not going to put their hand up in the air and say, ‘What trend in society is important today?’” one candidate told the Germantown crowd.
“We must have the judiciary be fiercely independent,” the other candidate said in Wautoma. “We cannot be rubber stamps for any party, any branch of government and certainly not the federal government.”
A voter might have trouble deciphering which candidate made which statement, but in the April 7 election to fill an open seat on the state’s high court, the choice couldn’t be more stark.
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, prays during a campaign event for Lazar’s candidacy for the Wisconsin Supreme Court on March 10, 2026, in Germantown. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
While both Appeals Court judges Maria Lazar (the candidate in Germantown) and Chris Taylor (the candidate in Wautoma) advocate for impartiality, their judicial philosophies and public support represent opposing political views on issues such as reproductive health care, criminal justice policy and the balance of power between government and business. Taylor is a former Democratic lawmaker. Lazar is a member of and has spoken three times before the conservative Federalist Society. Taylor is endorsed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Lazar is endorsed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the state’s six Republican members of Congress.
The election marks a quiet departure from the two most recent high court elections when it comes to national attention, spending and vicious political attack ads. As of mid-March, outside spending by political groups on the 2026 election reached just over $638,000, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks money in state elections — far below the nearly $25 million at this time last year.
“It’s a positive in that it’s a much more low-key, low-energy, civil election,” said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You can argue that it has gone too far. There has to be something in between the endless barrages of television advertisements and elections that happen without anybody knowing about them, and as a state we do seem to, with respect to judicial elections, have trouble finding that happy middle ground.”
With fewer fireworks in 2026, the race has instead highlighted the stark contrast between Lazar and Taylor’s political backgrounds and how their campaigns have used those differences to attack each other.
Lazar, a conservative member of the Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals, started her legal career in private practice before joining the Department of Justice as an assistant attorney general under Republican Attorney General JB Van Hollen. During that time, she defended Gov. Scott Walker-era laws, such as voter ID and Act 10. She was elected to the Waukesha County Circuit Court in 2015 and 2021 and then to the Court of Appeals in 2022 when she unseated an Evers-appointed judge. That race also broke along party lines, with Republicans supporting Lazar.
Taylor, a liberal member of the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals, also began in private practice. Taylor worked as a policy and political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin for eight years until winning an Assembly special election in 2011 as a Democrat. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Taylor to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2020, and she ran unopposed in the 2023 election for the Court of Appeals.
Taylor’s campaign and liberal-leaning groups have seized on Lazar’s resume, often describing her as an extremist. Lazar’s campaign has swiped at Taylor’s legislative experience, casting her as a radical politician.
In interviews with Wisconsin Watch, both candidates dismissed the partisan labels.
Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, left, embraces Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor after endorsing her at a campaign stop at the Marathon County Public Library on March 14, 2026, in Wausau, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
“I’m not a Republican,” Lazar said. “No, I didn’t work for Scott Walker. I represented Scott Walker. I represented legislators. I represented the Government Accountability Board. I represented Tony Evers and Doug La Follette. So anyone who thinks that I’m extreme because I actually tried to do a good job and represent my state is the extreme party.”
Taylor, who told Isthmus earlier this year that she is a Democrat, said she does not approach her judicial work from a liberal viewpoint.
“I don’t ever think of myself as the liberal,” Taylor said. “I hear it all the time. I know everyone says that, but I don’t approach being a judge that way at all.”
The stakes in 2026 are different
The election’s subdued tone stems largely from the fact that no court majority is on the line.
Lazar and Taylor are running for the seat being vacated by conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, meaning a Lazar win on April 7 would not shift the court’s ideological balance. The liberal majority could grow to five out of seven seats with a Taylor victory, guaranteeing liberal control of the court through at least 2030.
“That would make the road back to a conservative majority very difficult, indeed,” Schweber said.
In addition, conservative Justice Annette Ziegler earlier this month announced she would not seek reelection in 2027. That could open the door further for liberal candidates, who in 2023 and 2025 won by more than 10 percentage points.
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, talks with several supporters during a campaign event for her Wisconsin Supreme Court candidacy, March 10, 2026, in Germantown. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
When Lazar discusses what’s on the line in this race, she tells supporters that the liberal majority on the court cannot “ever” grow to five justices. Three justices must agree to hear an appeal. The court needs balance — and to reflect the people of Wisconsin, Lazar explained to supporters in Germantown.
“We need to make sure that we have someone up there who can vote to take appeals,” Lazar said. “We need to make sure we have someone up there who will not legislate from that bench.”
Waukesha County Judge K. Scott Wagner said Lazar possesses the temperament, intellect and respect for the law the Wisconsin Supreme Court needs at this time. The two first met as private practice attorneys on a commercial litigation case in 1989. She encouraged Wagner to run for judge last year, he said.
“She really is very common sense. She understands the role of the court,” Wagner said in an interview. “I don’t think people understand how the courts are supposed to work. They really are the nonpartisan referee, and even in my brief career on the bench, I’ve had to say, ‘Look, this is not a law I would have written, but it’s a law that exists, so I’m going to apply it.’ You’re like the ref. I think she gets that.”
At recent campaign stops in central Wisconsin, Taylor describes the race as a chance to expand a “pro-democracy” majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. A strong court can protect the state from future attacks on the elections, she told the room in Wautoma, highlighting the court’s 4-3 split decision in 2020 that upheld Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin over challenges from Donald Trump’s campaign.
“It was a valid election, and our state Supreme Court rejected those efforts to overturn our election, but only by one vote. That’s it,” Taylor said. “We have to have a court that protects our democracy and stands up for our elections. The attacks on our elections are not going to stop.”
Lazar recently faced criticism about her response to that case in an interview with PBS Wisconsin in which she declined to comment on how she would have ruled in the case because the Trump campaign could come before the state Supreme Court in the future.
Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, who has endorsed Taylor’s campaign, said in an interview Taylor has a unique understanding of creating laws and how they impact real people. Plus, she said, Taylor’s legislative experience would bring an expertise that does not exist among justices on the court at this time.
“I believe that the people of Wisconsin deserve a justice on their Supreme Court who is prepared, that they have a justice who has the depth and breadth of legal and life experience that Chris Taylor has,” Karofsky said. “And they deserve to have someone who remembers every single day that the cases that come before us involve real people with real issues. Chris, quite frankly, checks every single one of those boxes.”
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor speaks with supporters while campaigning at the Portage County Democratic Party office on March 14, 2026, in Stevens Point, Wis. Taylor, the Democratic-backed candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, will face off against the Republican-backed state Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar on the ballot April 7, 2026. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Taylor has held a significant advantage over Lazar in fundraising, but with less attention on this race than past elections, both judges still have to turn out voters across the state. In February, registered voters surveyed by the Marquette University Law School Poll indicated they know little about the race and were largely undecided.
The Marquette poll found only 6% of registered voters said they had heard a lot about the state Supreme Court race, 55% said they had heard a little and 38% said they had heard nothing. At the same time in 2025, the poll found 39% of registered voters had heard a lot about the race, 42% heard a little about the election and 19% had heard nothing at all.
Another poll is scheduled for release on Tuesday, just two weeks before Election Day, and could provide a clearer picture of voter moods. Both candidates were scheduled to appear at a debate March 25 night hosted by WISN 12 at the Marquette University Law School. The debate was rescheduled for April 2 due to a health issue.
Lazar wants to change Wisconsin’s Supreme Court elections
Lazar did not immediately jump into remarks on the Supreme Court race as she stood before guests at the meet-and-greet event in Germantown. Instead, she grabbed the campaign yard signs of Appeals Court candidate Anthony LoCoco and Washington County Circuit Court candidate Grant Scaife and placed them alongside her own at the front of the banquet hall.
She highlighted LoCoco, an attorney for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty who is running unopposed for an open seat on the 2nd District Court of Appeals, where Lazar serves, due to the retirement of the lone liberal judge Lisa Neubauer. She complimented Scaife for challenging Washington County judge Gordon Leech, who Evers appointed in 2025.
Lazar endorsed both men and praised their campaigns before diving into the details of her own race. It takes “a lot of courage” to run for office, she told the audience.
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, talks with a supporter during a campaign event for Lazar’s candidacy for the Wisconsin Supreme Court on March 10, 2026, in Germantown. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Lazar considered the Supreme Court as a future endeavor, but Bradley’s retirement announcement in August changed her timeline. Former Waukesha County judge Kathryn Foster, whose judicial chambers were next to Lazar’s, said she could see Lazar was meant for the Supreme Court early in her time on the bench.
“As good as she is with people, I think she really loves to research and write,” Foster said. “And that’s what that job is.”
In September, Lazar spent time discussing a potential campaign with her family and friends. She looked at the current court and the “overboard” nature of the 2025 election and said: “I can do better than this.”
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination that month was a key part in the decision-making process, Lazar said.
“There was a lot of discussion in my family about should that be a reason why I don’t run,” she said in an interview. “And actually that was the impetus for me to say I’d made up my mind that I was running because we cannot let people scare us away from doing the right thing.”
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, talks with supporters during a campaign event for her candidacy for the Wisconsin Supreme Court on March 10, 2026, in Germantown. (Photo by Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Lazar entered the race in October, four months after Taylor launched her campaign. It’s been an uphill climb. Lazar has struggled to compete with Taylor’s fundraising numbers, even with $20,000 contributions each from Republican donors Diane Hendricks and Liz Uihlein. In the first month of this year, Taylor raised $750,000 from more than 10,600 individual donors to Lazar’s $183,000 from 353 donors. The final campaign finance reports before the election are due next week.
Still, Lazar said she remains optimistic. The February Marquette Poll showed Taylor seven points ahead of Lazar among likely voters. But 62% said they were undecided.
Lazar said she has tried to run a more traditional campaign focused on judicial background and experience.
“We are supposed to talk about who is the better candidate judicially, who has more experience in the judiciary and who has the better judicial philosophy,” Lazar told supporters. “And I’ll give you the answers: me.”
Taylor driven by helping others
Inside the Portage County Democratic Party office in Stevens Point, where the walls are papered with old campaign signs, Taylor stopped to talk with nearly every person in the room.
A man stuffing envelopes mentioned gerrymandering to Taylor. The state Supreme Court can “protect democracy” and hold lawmakers accountable for unfair maps that “don’t lift some people’s votes up and make them more important than other people’s votes,” she said.
A campaign staffer hoping to keep the day on schedule tapped Taylor’s elbow to move her along, but Taylor likes to talk.
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor speaks with supporters while campaigning at the Portage County Democratic Party office on March 14, 2026, in Stevens Point, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
“One more,” she responded, turning to shake another woman’s hand.
Taylor told the crowds she met on a Saturday across central Wisconsin communities that she’s driven by a love of people and standing up for injustice. It started as a child when she was bothered by bullies and continued through her work for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and her years in the Legislature, she said.
“Being in the Legislature was a lot like being an attorney in private practice and working for Planned Parenthood, because I was really an advocate for my constituents,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s legislative record includes support of bipartisan efforts such as the Safe at Home Act, which gives victims of domestic violence an assigned address for mail that is not their actual address. Taylor was the top Assembly Democrat on the bill, which was introduced in 2015 and led by then-Sen. Scott Fitzgerald and Rep. Joel Kleefisch, both Republicans.
A window refracts Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor as she listens to organizers introducing her during a campaign stop at the Silvercryst Supper Club Resort & Motel on March 14, 2026, in Wautoma, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The Republican Party of Wisconsin has hit Taylor for voting against crime victims during her time in the Legislature. A press release points to bills Taylor voted against on intimidating victims of domestic violence, which the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence opposed because it focused on harsher penalties rather than other reforms to the criminal justice system. Republicans also noted Taylor’s opposition to a bill on residency requirements for “sexually violent offenders,” which included an amendment that preempted local ordinances.
The party also criticized Taylor’s votes in 2017 and 2019 against Marsy’s Law, a constitutional amendment on strengthening the rights of crime victims during the judicial process. A campaign spokesperson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year that Taylor voted against the amendment because the state already had protections for crime victims.
Shannon Barry, who has worked in the field of domestic violence support for 27 years, first crossed paths with Taylor in meetings about the Safe at Home Act. Barry recalled Taylor asking thoughtful questions and listening to what would make victims of domestic violence safer.
“I think she really tries to ensure that whatever she is doing is aligning with the needs of people and their rights, and wanting to make sure that people have the ability to achieve their highest potential,” Barry said.
Taylor said she left advocacy behind to transition to the bench, but she believes her time in the Legislature has made her a better judge. She understands the role of each branch of government and how the Legislature functions, she said, which helps when the Court of Appeals has to determine the intent of state lawmakers.
Her work remains driven by how the law and the court can help others, she said.
“The main motivator in my life is that I care deeply about people,” she said. “That has motivated me for as long as I can remember, and I think people deserve a court that is going to protect them and stand up for them, not the most powerful.”
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Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race could have spurred another bank-breaking election cycle. Instead, national super donors have kept their pocketbooks closed, and with only a month until the election, the liberal candidate appears to be sailing ahead in contributions.
Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, the liberal candidate, has raised more than $3.8 million over the past year, compared to the $438,000 conservative candidate Maria Lazar, who is also an appellate judge, has brought in.
The low-key nature of this year’s race is a sharp reversal from the 2025 state Supreme Court contest, in which the candidate campaigns, political parties, outside interest groups and mega billionaire Elon Musk combined to spend a record $144.5 million on the contest. Brad Schimel lost to Susan Crawford, maintaining the liberal majority on the court.
But the financial landscape of the election is not a done deal, both camps say.
“We can’t take anything for granted on our side,” said Sam Roecker, a Taylor adviser. “We know that there are supporters of (Lazar’s) who have the capacity to dump a lot of money in this race, and we saw what happened last time around when tens of millions of dollars got poured in.”
And as more voters start paying attention to the race, Lazar has a “window of opportunity” in the weeks leading up to the April 7 election, Republican strategist Bill McCoshen said.
“The truth is a lot of folks on the conservative side thought that our candidate wasn’t going to have a very strong chance a month ago. Now we think she could actually win,” McCoshen said.
Without big spending, this year’s state Supreme Court campaigns aren’t breaking through to voters like they did in 2025. Just 6% of voters said they had heard a lot about the election, compared to 39% at the same time last year, according to a Marquette Law School Poll released last month.
Despite Taylor’s wide fundraising advantage and outsize TV advertising, about two-thirds of voters are undecided, the same poll found. Taylor polled 5 percentage points higher than Lazar among voters who have made a decision, narrowly outside the margin of error.
“The real point is it’s not getting through to voters, or voters haven’t tuned into it. But you know, that’s more than a six to one greater awareness a year ago than it is today,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “I’m not saying that we’ll go into election day without anybody having heard anything, but it was an earlier campaign last year and with more resources behind it.”
Generally, liberal candidates have an advantage in spring judicial elections, Franklin said. College graduates and older voters, who have shifted leftward over the past several decades, are the primary voting blocs in spring court elections.
The stakes are different this cycle. The court’s liberal majority is secure. The winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. Still, losing this race would make it even harder for conservatives to regain power on the state’s high court. If they lose this year, they would have to retain the seats held by conservatives Annette Ziegler next year and Brian Hagedorn in 2029 and then flip seats held by liberals Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky in 2028 and 2030.
“Last year’s was to determine which ideological faction will have control of a majority of the court, and this year’s won’t change that. This year’s is to replace a conservative on a court that leans liberal already,” said Jeff Mandell, the co-founder of the progressive organization Law Forward.
Janine Geske. a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, said that liberal voters have been galvanized to turn out for judicial elections by hot-button national issues like abortion and gerrymandering that have taken center stage in the state’s highest court.
“Those issues became really the issues on the ballot versus the candidates themselves. As a result, I think we had more progressive candidates,” Geske said.
It’s a playbook that was adopted by Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who won Wisconsin’s high-profile race in 2023 on a platform of sharing her “values” regarding political issues that were likely to come before the court.
Lazar just might find success with that strategy, too, McCoshen said.
“Judge Lazar is doing a better job of at least tipping her hat to what her conservative leanings may be so that voters have a better understanding of what they’re voting for,” McCoshen said.
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
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