Spending on the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court race approached $100 million or more – in total – according to reports leading up to Election Day.
The WisPolitics news outlet tally was $107 million, including $2 million contributed by billionaire George Soros to the Wisconsin Democratic Party.
The party, in turn, funneled donations to the liberal candidate, Susan Crawford.
The Brennan Center for Justice tally was $98.6 million, enough to make the nonpartisan Wisconsin contest the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.
According to the center, a program at New York University Law School that tracks campaign spending:
The largest amount spent, $28.3 million, was by Crawford’s campaign.
Schimel was backed by billionaire Elon Musk. The Musk-founded America PAC spent $12.3 million. That’s also a national record for outside spending in a judicial race.
Minutes later Tuesday night, the conservative-backed Brad Schimel took the stage at his watch party to acknowledge the loss. Angry yells broke out. One woman began to chant about his opponent: “Cheater.”
Schimel didn’t hesitate. “No,” he responded. “You’ve got to accept the results.” Later, he returned to the stage with his classic rock cover band to jam on his bass.
In any other American era, Schimel’s concession wouldn’t be considered unusual – except maybe the guitar part. But it stands out at a time when the nation’s politics have opened a fissure between those who trust election results and those who don’t.
“It shouldn’t be super laudable,” said Jeff Mandell, general counsel of the Madison-based liberal law firm Law Forward. “But given where we are and given what we’ve seen over the past few years nationwide and in Wisconsin, it is laudable.”
Schimel’s concession of that very same court to a liberal majority, though in line with what generations of candidates have done in the past, was not a given in today’s divisive atmosphere.
Onstage, as his supporters yelled, Schimel shook his head and left no uncertainty he’d lost — a result that would become even clearer later in the night as Crawford’s lead grew to around 10 percentage points.
“The numbers aren’t going to — aren’t going to turn around,” he told the crowd. “They’re too bad, and we’re not going to pull this off.”
By acknowledging his loss quickly, Schimel curtailed the kind of explanation-seeking and digital digging that erupted online after Trump, a Republican, lost the 2020 presidential election, with citizen journalists falsely accusing innocent election workers and voters of fraud.
Schimel also avoided the impulses to which many in his party have defaulted in recent elections across the country, as they’ve dragged their feet to avoid accepting defeat.
Last fall, Wisconsin Republican Eric Hovde spent days sowing doubt in the results after he lost a Senate race to Democrat Tammy Baldwin. He conceded nearly two weeks after Election Day, saying he did not want to “add to political strife through a contentious recount” even as he raised debunked election conspiracies.
In a 2024 state Supreme Court race in North Carolina, two recounts have affirmed Democrat Allison Riggs narrowly won the election, but her Republican opponent, Jefferson Griffin, is still seeking to reverse the outcome by having ballots thrown out.
Trump also has continued to falsely claim he won the 2020 presidential election, even though there was no evidence of widespread fraud and the results were confirmed through multiple recounts, reviews and audits. His close adviser, billionaire Elon Musk, has also spread a flurry of unfounded claims about voter fraud involving noncitizens.
Musk and his affiliated groups sank at least $21 million into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and he personally paid three voters $1 million each for signing a petition to boost turnout. He had said the race was central to the “future of America and Western civilization.”
But after the results came in, he said he “expected to lose” and touted the successful passage of a voter ID amendment in Wisconsin’s Constitution. Trump, who had endorsed Schimel, didn’t post about the loss but used his Truth Social platform to celebrate the voter ID win.
An assessment: ‘That’s democracy’
Not all Republicans watching the race were in a magnanimous mood as they processed the results. Peter Bernegger, the head of an election integrity organization who has brought numerous lawsuits against Wisconsin election clerks and offices, raised the specter that an “algorithm” was behind Crawford’s win. InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reacted to the results on X, saying, “Election fraud should be investigated.”
But at Schimel’s watch party, several supporters applauded his high road.
“He was all class,” said Russell Jones, a 51-year-old attorney. “That’s how you lose.”
Adam Manka, of the La Crosse County Republican Party, said he worries about how a liberal court could redraw the state’s congressional districts. “But you can’t exactly change it,” Manka said, calling Schimel “very graceful” in his defeat. “This is democracy.”
Crawford, in an interview Wednesday, said Schimel’s phone call was “the way elections should conclude” and said she would have done the same thing if she had lost.
The moment is a good example for future candidates, said Ari Mittleman, executive director of the Wisconsin-based nonprofit Keep Our Republic, which aims to rebuild trust and confidence in elections. He compared elections to a Green Bay Packers football game: “We know who won, we know who lost.” He said he thinks Schimel, a lifelong Wisconsin resident, understands that.
“It’s transparent, and we accept the final score,” Mittleman said. “That’s democracy.”
Schimel and his band, performing for a thinning crowd Tuesday night, took the loss in stride.
“Can you ask them at the bar to get me a Coors Light please?” Schimel said between songs. “Put it on my tab.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Denise Jess walked into a Madison polling place on Saturday to vote early in person and encountered a familiar barrier: an absentee ballot envelope with a blank space for writing in her name, birthdate and address.
Jess, who is blind, chuckled along with her wife, who accompanied her to the polls. Who was going to do all that writing?
A poll worker quickly offered help, reminding Jess that she had the right to assistance. Jess, who is executive director of the Wisconsin Council of the Blind & Visually Impaired, knew she had those rights. But the moment still bothered her.
“It’s just a bummer,” she said, comparing voting with other tasks she performs independently, like identifying birds by ear, paying bills online, posting on social media, and grocery shopping. Voting is a constitutional right in Wisconsin and yet, she said, it remains far less accessible.
Other industries have prioritized accessibility because it benefits their bottom line, she said, but voting systems were not originally designed with accessibility in mind.
“We’re making strides,” she said, “but it’s still always, always about retrofitting and trying to catch up.”
Denise Jess uses an accessible voting machine during a test run at a Madison, Wis. polling place on March 29, 2025 (Courtesy of Denise Jess)
Jess’s experience illustrates a persistent tension in election policy: how to ensure both ballot security and accessibility for all voters. Electronic absentee voting is particularly nettlesome. Disability rights advocates have pushed for this option as a way for people with vision or other disabilities to vote independently, and in private, from home. But cybersecurity experts warn that current technology cannot guarantee that ballots returned electronically will be safe from hacking or manipulation.
Over a dozen other states provide fully electronic absentee voting for people with disabilities. In those states, voters with disabilities can receive a ballot electronically, mark it using a screen reader and return it electronically — similar to signing and returning a document electronically. Wisconsin isn’t one of them. Here, voters with disabilities must cast their votes on a paper ballot, or on an accessible voting machine at a polling place that prints out a paper ballot.
That means that voters who are visually impaired or unable to write must often rely on others to complete their ballots — undermining ballot secrecy, which is also constitutionally protected. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when many disabled voters were reluctant to visit the polls in person, Wisconsin’s rules presented an even bigger barrier.
Last year, four voters with disabilities, along with Disability Rights Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, filed a lawsuit seeking access to electronic absentee voting. A lower court initially granted some voters that option, but an appeals court paused and eventually reversed that order. The case is now before the Dane County Circuit Court.
Beyond the roughly dozen states that offer fully electronic voting, a few others, including Vermont, Michigan, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, allow voters with disabilities to fill out ballots electronically, but they have to print out the ballots and return them by mail, drop box, or in person. Verified Voting, a nonpartisan election technology group, promotes this option as a step forward for states wary of fully electronic voting.
That wouldn’t solve the issue for everyone, though. Jess pointed out that many blind voters don’t own printers, meaning they’d still face accessibility hurdles.
Security concerns haven’t been resolved
At a time of heightened concern over election security and integrity, some technology experts say fully electronic voting is still not ready to be used widely.
Between August 2021 and September 2022, the University of California, Berkeley, hosted a working group of election, technology and cybersecurity experts to discuss the feasibility of creating standards to enable safe and secure electronic marking and return technologies. The group found that widespread adoption of electronic return would require technologies that don’t currently exist or haven’t been tested.
A 2024 report by several federal agencies, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Election Assistance Commission, found that sending digital copies of ballots to voters is safe and that filling them out electronically is somewhat safe, but that returning them electronically adds significant security risks.
“Sheer force of will doesn’t suffice to solve this problem,” said Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director at Verified Voting. “There needs to be extensive technical innovations that we can’t just dial up.”
Lindeman said threats from electronic ballot return include the possibility that somebody hacks into the system and changes votes. One potential safeguard — having voters verify that their selections were received and counted correctly — remains unproven at scale, the UC-Berkeley working group said.
“That’s the fundamental technical tragedy at this stage of the game,” Lindeman said. “Paper ballots are obviously inconvenient for many voters. They pose real obstacles to voting, but we haven’t found a technical alternative to paper ballots that solves all the problems.”
Denise Jess chooses ‘path of least pain’
In Wisconsin, Jess chooses among three imperfect voting options.
She can vote on Election Day in her polling place, whose layout she has memorized, though it can get too busy for her comfort. She can vote using an accessible machine but still has to hand-sign the poll book, something she typically does with the assistance of a poll worker and a signature guide, a small plastic card with a rectangular cutout that frames the area where she has to sign.
Alternatively, she can vote absentee in person during the early voting period, but then she has to receive help with paperwork and navigating an unfamiliar polling place.
Or she can fill out an application online and vote by mail, which she avoids because she can’t fill out a paper ballot without assistance.
“It’s kind of like, what’s the path of least pain?” she said.
An ExpressVote machine is on hand at Madison West High School polling place during the spring election on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
An ExpressVote machine is on hand at Madison West High School polling place during the spring election on April 1, 2025, in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
For this Wisconsin Supreme Court election, given the potential for bad weather, she opted for early in-person voting at the Hawthorne Public Library, which isn’t her regular polling place.
“There’s enough consistency here at Hawthorne, but still there are surprises,” she said, sitting at a table at the library on Madison’s east side. “Even the simple navigation of going to the table to get the envelope, getting in line. They’re queuing people to wait behind the blue tape, which, of course, I can’t see.”
She could opt for more hands-on help from poll workers to speed up the process, but she said she sees her voting trips as a chance to learn more about the potential barriers for people with disabilities.
Some voters who are newer to vision loss or have more severe barriers can quickly become demoralized by the extra energy they need to put into casting a ballot, especially if poll workers aren’t trained or ready to help, she said.
“We’ve had voters say, ‘I’m not going back. I’m just not doing that again, doing that to myself,’ she said. “So then we lose a voter.”
If electronic voting were available, Jess said, she would do it a lot more often than voting in person because she wouldn’t have to depend on transportation or the weather.
“It would just be absolutely liberating,” she said. “I might still vote in-person at my polling place periodically, because I like my poll workers, and I always like to visit with them and give them kudos. But it would surely ease some stress.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Absentee voting didn’t used to be popular in Addison, a rural town of 3,300 in southeast Wisconsin. A few days before the last Supreme Court election in 2023, only about 60 residents had cast absentee ballots in person.
This year, at the same point in the election cycle, that number was over 300.
The sharp increase is due partly to Republicans’ recent embrace of absentee voting, especially in the nearly two-week period before Election Day when voters can cast absentee ballots in person. Washington County, where Addison is located, is one of the state’s most Republican counties and one of many Republican-dominated areas across Wisconsin where early voting rates have surged.
But perhaps a bigger reason is a recent Washington County initiative aimed at making early voting more accessible for voters and more feasible for municipalities. The program compensates municipalities for the costs of extending their hours during the state’s early in-person voting period. It makes up for the gaps in municipal budgets that previously limited early voting opportunities.
“It really comes down to a matter of priorities,” Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, a former municipal clerk, told Votebeat. “And there’s nothing more fundamental to county government and to government in general, in Wisconsin and America, than the opportunity for people to vote.”
County absorbs the added costs for municipalities
The county first rolled out the initiative during the November 2024 election as part of a broader funding package approved by the county board. The package included over $150,000 for extended in-person absentee voting hours, voluntary audits and cameras for ballot drop boxes across the county.
Public funding for such activities is more critical now after voters last year approved a Republican-written constitutional amendment banning private funding for election support, responding to a Republican outcry over private grants to fund election administration, especially in Democratic strongholds.
County Board Chair Jeff Schleif said he was eager to support the proposal because it would ensure that Republicans, who were just coming around to voting early, had the time and opportunity to do it, just as Democrats did in places like Milwaukee.
“Our board is as conservative as it’s ever been,” he said, adding that extending early voting hours is helpful to everybody.
Moreover, Schleif said, the proposal would authorize and fund election audits that could debunk allegations from people like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell that some voting machines were being hacked to change votes.
After the November election, about $71,000 of the funds remained unspent. This year, the county signed off on using that money to continue the program into this high-stakes April election.
For this election, the county is compensating municipalities at 150% of the added cost for extending their early voting hours beyond what they were in the April 2023 election. About 90% of the municipalities in the county are participating, Washington County Clerk Ashley Reichert, a Republican, said. The county also mailed voters a schedule of their town’s early voting hours.
Reichert said the initiative aims to provide local residents with voting opportunities comparable to urban areas, including weekend and night voting options. The additional hours benefit many residents who commute to Milwaukee for work and can’t vote during typical business hours, she said.
“We have quite a few very rural communities where the clerks are very part-time, and their budgets are small, and so for them, offering additional time was just not a feasible option,” she said. “Being able to take the funding off the table as a concern really helped quite a few of our municipalities.”
More hours for voting, and more voters showing up
Addison Town Clerk Wendy Fairbanks said early voting hours have expanded significantly due to the county’s support. In 2023, Addison’s early voting was generally open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Now it’s open as early as 7 a.m. and as late as 6 p.m., including Fridays.
“I’m able to bring in election workers to help me with this so I’m not doing it all on my own,” Fairbanks said. “Otherwise, I’d get no other work done.”
The county’s help, she continued, “takes the burden off the town, so that we’re not using money from our tax levy that could go towards road repair or something in the town.”
Another Washington County municipality, the village of Richfield, now offers Saturday hours for early voting thanks to county funding. About 90 residents participated on a recent Saturday, contributing to a total of 1,674 early ballots cast as of Thursday morning — about double the amount from this time two years ago.
Village Administrator Jim Healy said the initiative was crucial for voters who couldn’t vote during regular hours. “We really felt strongly for these types of elections that have either state or national implications that we ought to try to go the extra mile,” Healy said, expressing hope that other Wisconsin counties might follow Washington County’s example.
In all, as of Thursday morning, Washington County had over 13,400 voters cast absentee ballots in person, nearly triple the number of votes at this point in the 2023 cycle and the fourth most in the state, despite it being only the 10th largest county by voting age population.
While increased absentee voting means additional ballots to process, local clerks aren’t concerned about significantly longer counting times.
“This is absolutely adding one more thing,” Schoemann said, “but I also know that their biggest pain point is their budgets. They’re really, really tight. So we want to try to hit their biggest pain point where we can help them and get what voters want, and that is more opportunity.”
Other clerks look at the Washington County model
Reichert, the Washington County clerk, said she has heard from a number of county and municipal clerks, along with legislators, interested in replicating this initiative across the state. Right now, though, she said Washington County appears to be the only county offering municipal clerks that compensation.
That may change soon: At a recent event, Rep. Scott Krug, a legislative leader who formerly chaired the Assembly Elections Committee, said one of his top upcoming legislative priorities was funding early voting so every municipality offers the same availability. He wasn’t available to comment further on Thursday.
Meanwhile, in most counties, early voting hours are uneven from town to town. In neighboring Ozaukee County, municipal clerks are staggering their hours to try to make time for residents seeking to vote early in person, said County Clerk Kellie Kretlow, a Republican. Some municipal election offices are open every day for early voting, while others are only open a few days across the nearly two-week voting period.
Sheboygan County Clerk Jon Dolson, a Republican, told Votebeat he was interested in the proposal but couldn’t see how his fiscally conservative board would approve a $15,000 funding increase, much less a $150,000 package like the one passed in neighboring Washington County. The county board recently cut the number of positions in his office, he said.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, seen at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in 2024, said the county board prioritized an initiative to help municipalities expand early voting hours after years of disciplined budgeting and surplus management. (Matthew DeFour / Wisconsin Watch)
So how did such a large spending proposal for election offices get through the fiscally conservative Washington County Board of Supervisors, which represents one of the most staunchly Republican constituencies in the state?
Schoemann, the county executive, said the board prioritized this initiative after years of disciplined budgeting and surplus management.
He said it was important for officials at the county level to take the lead, rather than expecting local clerks to each ask for help.
The proposals together were billed as an “election integrity package” that would enhance election security — a concern that Republicans have repeatedly raised.
Reichert, the county clerk, said it likely helped that the support for extended early voting hours was rolled into a broader package addressing security concerns around drop boxes and audits. Extending early voting hours itself addressed a security concern, she said, since some supervisors questioned whether mailed ballots would arrive too late or get lost in the mail.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Ten years ago, when Wisconsin lawmakers approved a bill to allow unlimited spending in state elections, only one Republican voted no.
“I just thought big money was an evil, a curse on our politics,” former state Sen. Robert Cowles said recently of his 2015 decision to buck his party.
As Wisconsin voters head to the polls this week to choose a new state Supreme Court justice, Cowles stands by his assessment. Voters have been hit with a barrage of attack ads from special interest groups, and record-setting sums of money have been spent to sway residents. What’s more, Cowles said, there’s been little discussion of major issues. The candidates debated only once.
“I definitely think that that piece of legislation made things worse,” Cowles said in an interview. “Our public discourse is basically who can inflame things in the most clever way with some terrible TV ad that’s probably not even true.”
More than $80 million has been funneled into the race as of March 25, according to two groups that have been tracking spending in the contest — the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy group that follows judicial races, and the news outlet WisPolitics. That surpasses the previous costliest judicial race in the country’s history, approximately $56 million spent two years ago on the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.
Money is pouring into this swing state election so fast and so many ads have been reserved that political observers now believe the current race is likely to reach $100 million by Tuesday, which is Election Day.
“People are thoroughly disgusted, I think, across the political spectrum with just the sheer amount of money being spent on a spring Supreme Court election in Wisconsin,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, which has long advocated for campaign finance reform.
But the elected officials who could revamp the campaign finance system on both sides of the aisle or create pressure for change have been largely silent. No bills introduced this session. No press conferences from legislators. The Senate no longer even has a designated elections committee.
The current election pits former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, now a circuit court judge in conservative-leaning Waukesha County, against Susan Crawford, a judge in Dane County, the state’s liberal bastion.
Though the race technically is nonpartisan, the Democratic Party, including former President Barack Obama, has endorsed Crawford; the party has received financial support from liberal billionaire George Soros. On the other side, President Donald Trump posted a message on his social media platform on March 21 urging his supporters to vote for Schimel, and much of Schimel’s money comes from political organizations tied to Elon Musk.
The stakes are high. Whoever wins will determine the ideological bent of the seven-member court just two years after Janet Protasiewicz won a seat on the court and swung it to the liberals. With Protasiewicz on the court, the majority struck down state legislative maps, which had been drawn to favor Republicans, and reinstated the use of drop boxes to collect absentee ballots.
A Schimel victory could resurrect those and other voting issues, as well as determine whether women in the state will continue to be able to access abortion.
Two pro-Schimel groups linked to Musk — America PAC and Building America’s Future — had disclosed spending about $17 million, as of March 25. Musk himself donated $3 million this year to the Republican Party of Wisconsin. In the final stretch of the campaign, news reports revealed that Musk’s America PAC plans to give Wisconsin voters $100 to sign petitions rejecting the actions of “activist judges.”
That has raised concerns among some election watchdog groups, which have been exploring whether the offer from Musk amounts to an illegal inducement to get people to vote.
On Wednesday night, Musk went further, announcing on X a $1 million award to a Green Bay voter he identified only as “Scott A” for “supporting our petition against activist judges in Wisconsin!” Musk promised to hand out other million-dollar prizes before the election.
Musk has a personal interest in the direction of the Wisconsin courts. His electric car company, Tesla Inc., is suing the state over a law requiring manufacturers to sell automobiles through independent dealerships. Musk and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment about his involvement in the race.
Also on Schimel’s side: billionaires Diane Hendricks and Richard Uihlein and Americans for Prosperity, a dark-money group founded by billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David. Americans for Prosperity has reported spending about $3 million, primarily for digital ads, canvassing, mailers and door hangers.
A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund, a union-supported electioneering group, has ponied up over $6 million to advance Crawford. In other big outlays, Soros has given $2 million to the state Democratic Party, while Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another billionaire, gave $1.5 million. And California venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, donated $250,000.
In Wisconsin, political parties can steer unlimited amounts to candidates.
State Sen. Jeff Smith, a Democrat and a minority leader, called the spending frenzy “obscene.”
“There’s no reason why campaigns should cost as much as they do,” he said.
Asked for comment about the vast amount of money in the race, Crawford told ProPublica: “I’m grateful for the historic outpouring of grassroots support across Wisconsin from folks who don’t want Elon Musk controlling our Supreme Court.”
Schimel’s campaign called Crawford a “hypocrite,” saying she “is playing the victim while receiving more money than any judicial candidate in American history thanks to George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and JB Pritzker funneling money to her campaign.”
Quizzed Monday by a TV reporter on whether he would recuse himself if the Tesla case got to the state’s high court, Schimel did not commit, saying: “I’ll do the same thing I do in every case. I will examine whether I can truly hear that case objectively.”
A decade after Wisconsin opened the floodgates to unlimited money in campaigns in 2015, some good government activists are wondering if the state has reached a tipping point. Is there any amount, they ask, at which the state’s political leaders can be persuaded to impose controls?
“I honestly believe that folks have their eyes open around the money in a way that they have not previously,” Nick Ramos, executive director of the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks campaign spending, told reporters during a briefing on spending in the race.
A loosely organized group of campaign reformers is beginning to lay the groundwork for change. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign recently called a Zoom meeting that included representatives of public interest groups inside and outside of Wisconsin, dark-money researchers and an election security expert.
They were looking for ways to champion reform during the current legislative session. In particular, they are studying and considering what models make sense and may be achievable, including greater disclosure requirements, public financing and restricting candidates from coordinating with dark-money groups on issue ads.
But Republicans say that the spending is a natural byproduct of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which equated campaign spending with free speech and opened the spigots for big-money races.
“For the most part, we don’t really, as Republicans, want to see the brakes on free speech,” said Ken Brown, past chair of the GOP Party of Racine, a city south of Milwaukee. Noting he was not speaking for the party, Brown said he does not favor spending limits. “I believe in the First Amendment. It is what it is. I believe the Citizens United decision was correct.”
Asked to comment on the current system of unlimited money, Anika Rickard, a spokesperson for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, did not answer the question but instead criticized Crawford and her funders.
Post-reform bill opened floodgates
At one point, Wisconsin was seen as providing a roadmap for reform. In 2009, the state passed the Impartial Justice Act. The legislation, enacted with bipartisan support, provided for public financing of state Supreme Court races, so candidates could run without turning to special interests for money.
The push for the measure came after increased spending by outside special interests and the candidates in two state Supreme Court races: the 2007 election that cost an estimated $5.8 million and the 2008 contest that neared $6 million, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Candidates who agreed in 2009 to public financing and spending limits received grants of up to $400,000 for the race. The money came from the Democracy Trust Fund, which was supported by a $2 income tax check-off.
“Reformers win a fight to clean up court races,” the headline on an editorial in The Capital Times read at the time.
But the law was in place for only one election, in April 2011. Both candidates in the court’s general election that year agreed to take public funding, and incumbent Justice David Prosser, a conservative, narrowly won reelection. Then Republicans eliminated funding for the measure that summer. Instead, the money was earmarked to implement a stringent voter ID law.
By 2015, GOP leaders had completely overhauled the state’s campaign finance law, with Democrats in the Assembly refusing to even vote on the measure in protest.
“This Republican bill opens the floodgates to unlimited spending by billionaires, by big corporations and by monied, special interests to influence our elections,” Rep. Lisa Subeck, a Democrat, said in the floor debate.
Wisconsin is no longer cited as a model. Activists point to other states, including Arizona, Oregon and Rhode Island. Arizona and Oregon established disclosure measures to trace the flow of dark money, requiring campaign spenders to reveal the original source of donations. Rhode Island required ads to name not only the sponsor but the organization’s top donors so voters can better access the message and its credibility.
Amid skepticism that Wisconsin will rein in campaign spending, there may be some reason for optimism.
A year ago, a proposed joint resolution in Wisconsin’s Legislature bemoaned Citizens United and the spending it had unleashed. The resolution noted that “this spending has the potential to drown out speech rights for all citizens, narrow debate, weaken federalism and self-governance in the states, and increase the risk of systemic corruption.”
The resolution called for a constitutional amendment clarifying that “states may regulate the spending of money to influence federal elections.”
And though it never came to a vote, 17 members of the Legislature signed on to it, a dozen of them Republicans. Eight of them are still in the Legislature, including Sen. Van Wanggaard, who voted for the 2015 bill weakening Wisconsin’s campaign finance rules.
Wanggaard did not respond to a request for comment. But an aide expressed surprise — and disbelief — seeing the lawmaker’s name on the resolution.
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A reader asked: Was Elon Musk’s endorsement of Brad Schimel a violation of lobbying laws because of Musk’s status as a federal employee?
We’ll get to that question in a second, but we also wondered about the answer to a related question: Are the cash giveaways from Musk’s America PAC ahead of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election legal?
Musk, the centibillionaire tech CEO turned efficiency czar for President Donald Trump, has dominated the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in recent weeks. Musk and affiliated groups have poured cash into the race between liberal candidate Susan Crawford and conservative candidate Brad Schimel, which will determine ideological control of the high court and could have national ramifications.
America PAC and Building America’s Future, two groups that are funded by Musk, have spent more than $16.7 million on advertising and voter mobilization efforts meant to aid Schimel’s candidacy. Musk has also donated $3 million to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which can transfer the money to Schimel’s campaign.
Musk’s super PAC, America PAC, is offering registered Wisconsin voters $100 if they sign a petition opposing “activist judges.”
“Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas,” the petition reads. “By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”
Participants can also get $100 for referring another petition signer.
Late on Wednesday the super PAC announced that “Scott A.” from Green Bay had been selected to win $1 million after filling out the petition. That mirrors a move America PAC deployed in last year’s presidential race.
It’s less clear whether America PAC’s “special offer” violates Wisconsin’s election bribery statute, according to Bryna Godar, a staff attorney with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.
(1m) Any person who does any of the following violates this chapter:
a. Offers, gives, lends or promises to give or lend, or endeavors to procure, anything of value, or any office or employment or any privilege or immunity to, or for, any elector, or to or for any other person, in order to induce any elector to:
i. Go to or refrain from going to the polls.
ii. Vote or refrain from voting.
iii.Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular person.
iv. Vote or refrain from voting for or against a particular referendum; or on account of any elector having done any of the above.
The $100 reward for signing the petition “definitely falls into a gray area because (America PAC) is paying people to sign the petition,” Godar said. “The question is whether the payment is being given in order to induce anyone to vote or refrain from voting.”
“These payments kind of walk an uncertain line on whether they are amounting to that or not,” Godar added.
Godar also noted that you have to be a registered Wisconsin voter to receive the payment, “so it does seem like it is inducing people to register to vote.” That violates federal law for federal elections, she said, but “federal law doesn’t apply to this election because there aren’t any federal offices on the ballot.”
“Under the state law, that’s not specifically one of the listed prohibitions,” Godar said. “It’s definitely in a gray area and sort of walks the line.”
Elon Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, that he would incentivize voting in Wisconsin with $1 million checks. The post appears to have been taken down. An X user asked the platform’s AI chatbot, Grok, whether Musk’s plan was election fraud. The bot responded that the plan likely violates Wisconsin election law.
Late on Thursday, Musk announced he would “give a talk in Wisconsin” in a social media post that has since been taken down.
“Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election,” he wrote. “I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote.”
An AI chatbot on Musk’s own social media site flagged the activity in the post as potentially illegal. “Though aimed at boosting participation, this could be seen as election bribery,” the AI profile @grok replied to someone asking if the post was legal.
In a follow-up email, Godar said giving “the payment for voting instead of for signing the petition much more clearly violates Wisconsin law.”
On Friday afternoon, Musk posted again: “To clarify a previous post, entrance is limited to those who have signed the petition in opposition to activist judges.”
“I will also hand over checks for a million dollars to 2 people to be spokesmen for the petition,” he wrote.
UPDATE (March 31, 2025, 9:00 a.m.): On Friday afternoon, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit to bar Musk and America PAC from promoting the “million-dollar gifts.” The suit also sought to prohibit Musk and America PAC “from making any payments to Wisconsin electors to vote.” The case was randomly assigned to Crawford, who immediately recused, and then reassigned to Columbia County Circuit Court Judge W. Andrew Voigt. Voigt declined to hear the petition prior to Sunday’s event, so Kaul went to the Court of Appeals and subsequently the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Both turned down his request to stop Musk from giving away two $1 million checks, which he did on Sunday evening.
Violating the statute is a Class I felony, which can carry a fine of up to $10,000, imprisonment of up to three-and-a-half years, or both.
A county district attorney or the Wisconsin attorney general would be responsible for filing criminal charges for violations of the statute, Godar said. It’s also possible someone could try to bring a civil claim to have a judge halt the payments. So far that hasn’t happened.
Now back to our reader question about Musk’s political activities as a federal employee.
Musk, in his role as a “special government employee” leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is bound by the Hatch Act, a law prohibiting “political activity while you’re on duty, while you’re in the workplace, and the use of your official position to influence the outcome of an election,” said Delaney Marsco, the director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center.
But special government employees like Musk are only bound by the Hatch Act while they’re on duty representing the federal government, Marsco said, so the world’s wealthiest man “is allowed to engage in political activity that might otherwise be prohibited as long as he’s not on duty when he’s doing it.”
The Hatch Act is intended to “maintain a federal workforce that is free from partisan political influence or coercion,” according to a memo from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.
The payment to a Green Bay man, which Musk announced Wednesday night on his social media platform X, is similar to a lottery that Musk’s political action committee ran last year in Wisconsin and other battleground states before the presidential election in November.
The upcoming election on Tuesday, filling a seat held by a liberal justice who is retiring, will determine whether Wisconsin’s highest court will remain under 4-3 liberal control or flip to a conservative majority. The race has become a proxy battle over the nation’s politics, with Trump and Musk getting behind Brad Schimel, the Republican-backed candidate in the officially nonpartisan contest.
The campaign for the Democratic-supported candidate, Susan Crawford, blasted the $1 million payment from Musk as an attempt to illegally buy influence on the court in a state where Tesla, his electric car company, has a lawsuit pending that could end up before the court.
“It’s corrupt, it’s extreme, and it’s disgraceful to our state and judiciary,” Crawford spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement.
No legal action against Musk’s payments to voters has been filed in Wisconsin with the Supreme Court election five days away.
Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, said the payments were a last-minute attempt to influence the election.
“Whether or not Wisconsinites will believe this is legitimate or not probably won’t be settled until after the election,” he said. “But this is not what a Wisconsin Supreme Court election ought to be decided on. Races for the high court are supposed to be on judicial temperament and impartiality, not huge amounts of money for partisan purposes.”
Musk’s political action committee, America First, announced last week that it was offering $100 to voters who signed a petition in opposition to “activist judges.” He did not say there would be $1 million prizes at that time, but in his post on Wednesday said an additional $1 million award would be made in two days.
It was not clear who determined the winner of the $1 million or how it was done.
Musk’s political action committee used a nearly identical tactic before the White House election last year, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments.
It is a felony in Wisconsin to offer, give, lend or promise to lend or give anything of value to induce a voter to cast a ballot or not vote.
The Musk petition says it is open only to registered Wisconsin voters, but those who sign it are not required to show any proof that they actually voted.
The petition says: “Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas. By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”
The petition, while designed to collect data on Wisconsin voters and energize them, also is in line with Trump’s agenda alleging that “activist” judges are illegally working against him. Trump’s administration is embroiled in several lawsuits related to his flurry of executive orders and Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort to downsize the federal bureaucracy.
During last year’s presidential race, Philadelphia’s district attorney sued in an attempt to stop the payments under Pennsylvania law. But a judge said prosecutors failed to show the effort was an illegal lottery and allowed it to continue through Election Day.
America PAC and Building for America’s Future, two groups that Musk funds, have spent more than $17 million trying to help elect Schimel, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. Musk also has given the Wisconsin Republican Party $3 million this year, which it can then give to Schimel or spend on the race.
More than $81 million has been spent on the race so far, obliterating the record for a judicial race in the U.S. of $51 million set in Wisconsin just two years ago, according to Brennan Center tallies.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and political groups he backs are pouring millions of dollars into the race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court as the electric vehicle company sues to overturn a state law that prevents it from opening dealerships — a case that eventually could make its way to the high court.
Tesla’s multiple attempts to open its own dealerships in Wisconsin keep running up against a state law that allows only third parties, not auto manufacturers, to operate them. The company filed a lawsuit in January seeking an exemption, just as two Musk-backed political action committees started supporting the Republican-backed candidate, Brad Schimel, over his opponent, Susan Crawford, who is supported by Democrats.
Musk, who is the world’s wealthiest person and is running President Donald Trump’s initiative to slash the size of the federal workforce, has given $3 million to the Wisconsin GOP while groups he supports have funneled more than $17 million into the race. The contributions are part of an extraordinary spending spree in the race, making it by far the most expensive judicial race on record in the United States. Total spending has eclipsed $80 million with days still to go before the final day of voting on April 1.
Schimel’s critics have accused Musk of trying to buy a favorable ruling for Tesla should the dealership case make it to the state Supreme Court. Here are details of the law and Musk’s lawsuit:
Why can’t Tesla set up Wisconsin dealerships?
State statutes generally prohibit vehicle manufacturers from owning or operating dealerships in Wisconsin and give that franchise to third parties. The law was intended to prevent manufacturers from undercutting independent dealerships.
Nearly 20 states have similar prohibitions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The laws took hold in the 1930s as carmakers started to rely on independent dealerships to sell and service vehicles so they could focus on production. Later, independent dealers wanted to prevent manufacturers from opening their own dealerships and driving them out of business.
Tesla sells its vehicles directly to consumers, who can have their vehicles shipped directly to them or to dealerships in 27 states. Because the company can’t set up its own dealerships in Wisconsin, buyers there must have the cars delivered to them or travel to dealerships in neighboring Minnesota or Illinois to pick them up.
Tesla officials have been working for almost a decade to secure an exemption from the law. In 2017 and 2021, Republican legislators introduced bills that would permit Tesla dealerships, but none of those made it out of the Legislature. They inserted an exemption for Tesla dealerships into the 2019-21 state budget, but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers used his partial veto powers to erase the provision.
The Wisconsin Automobile and Truck Dealers Association has been fighting to preserve the law. Bill Sepic, the association’s president and CEO, told The Associated Press that Tesla should have to follow the law like any other vehicle manufacturer. He said the statutes exist to enable third parties to act as consumer advocates “in making one of the larger purchases of their life.”
What is the company doing now?
Tesla filed a lawsuit in state court in January seeking permission to open four dealerships in Wisconsin.
The company argues that independent dealers wouldn’t meet its standards and says selling vehicles at its own dealerships is in the public interest because unaffiliated dealers’ prices are higher and less transparent.
Its lawsuit says that the state law barring manufacturers from running their own dealerships violates economic liberty rights and that the prohibition exists only to protect independent dealers from competition.
The case is pending in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, though no hearings have been scheduled.
The state Justice Department is defending the law. An agency spokesperson declined to comment.
How did Musk get involved in the state Supreme Court race?
Schimel, the conservative state Supreme Court candidate, is vying with Crawford for an open seat on the high court.
The race is the most significant election nationally since the November presidential contest, providing an early barometer for Republicans and Democrats given the intense interest and outside spending it has generated. It also will determine whether the highest court in the perennial presidential battleground state will flip from liberal to conservative control with major cases involving abortion, union rights and congressional redistricting on the horizon.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Susan Crawford, left, and Brad Schimel wait for the start of their debate March 12, 2025, at the Lubar Center at Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall in Milwaukee. The hourlong debate was the first and only debate between the candidates ahead of the April 1 election. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Eight days after Tesla filed the Wisconsin dealership lawsuit, Musk tweeted: “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!”
To be clear, there has been no evidence of widespread voting fraud in Wisconsin. Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the state over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 was affirmed by a recount and an independent audit. Trump, a Republican, won the state last November and offered no objections then to the voting or ballot-counting.
According to a tally from the Brennan Center for Justice, Musk-backed groups America PAC and Building America’s Future have spent more than $17 million to support Schimel with ads and flyers. The money he donated to the state Republican Party has been used to help Schimel, who has been endorsed by Trump.
Are the candidates focused on the Tesla case?
Crawford’s supporters contend the timing of the contributions show Musk is trying to ensure that Schimel wins and creates a conservative majority on the court that ultimately would rule in Tesla’s favor. Crawford said during a debate with Schimel this month that Musk “has basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign.”
Sepic, president of the state dealership association, said Wisconsin should elect the candidate who enforces the prohibition but declined to comment when asked if he thought Schimel or Crawford would do that.
Schimel has repeatedly said he would treat any case involving Tesla the same as any other when he considers whether to hear it or recuse himself. Schimel also has insisted that the donations from Musk and his groups do not make him beholden to them.
Crawford has said the same thing about billionaires who have donated to her campaign, including George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. Soros has contributed $2 million and Pritzker $1.5 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which has funneled the money to Crawford’s campaign.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
The Elon Musk–founded America PAC has spent at least $11.5 million on the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, WisPolitics reported March 24.
That doesn’t count another $3 million the PAC gave to the Wisconsin Republican Party, which can funnel unlimited funds to candidates.
Both support conservative candidate Brad Schimel over liberal Susan Crawford.
The nonprofit campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets tracks cumulative independent group spending in state supreme court and appellate court races through 2024.
Its figures indicate the biggest spender nationally is the Citizens for Judicial Fairness, which spent a total of $11.4 million in the 2020 and 2022 Illinois court races.
OpenSecrets’ data cover about two-thirds of the states; not all states report independent expenditures.
The progressive A Better Wisconsin Together has spent $9.2 million on ads backing Crawford, according to ad tracker AdImpact.
Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler said March 18 he believed Musk’s spending might be a national record.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The election to fill a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat has become a referendum not only on the new administration, but on Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become one of President Donald Trump ‘s top financial backers and the architect of his efforts to slash the federal workforce.
The April 1 election is the first major test in American politics since Trump secured a second term in November. It will serve as a crucial barometer of enthusiasm in both parties heading into next year’s midterm elections and is happening in a critical battleground state that Trump won by less than a percentage point.
It’s also a test for Musk himself. The Tesla CEO’s nascent political operation, which spent more than $200 million to help Trump win in November, is canvassing and advertising in Wisconsin on behalf of the conservative candidate. A win would cement his status as a conservative kingmaker, while a loss could give license to Republicans distancing themselves from his efforts to stymie government functions and eliminate tens of thousands of jobs.
“This is the first major election held since Donald Trump took office,” said Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “And I think notably Democrats are concentrating more on Elon Musk than Donald Trump.”
Musk, who is the race’s biggest donor by far, has also inserted himself into the race, holding a get-out-the-vote event on his X platform Saturday.
“It might not seem important, but it’s actually really important. And it could determine the fate of the country,” he said. “This election is going to affect everyone in the United States.”
April 1’s election will determine majority control of a court facing critical issues: abortion rights, collective bargaining and voter access. They include decisions that could have major implications for the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election, particularly if they end up hearing challenges to the state’s congressional maps, which could theoretically swing the balance of power in Washington if they are considerably redrawn.
The Supreme Court race is officially nonpartisan, but the campaign has been anything but. Brad Schimel, the Republican-backed candidate, has openly courted Trump’s endorsement, which he received on Friday night, as he campaigns against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, the Democrat-backed candidate.
The Waukesha County judge and former Republican attorney general attended the president’s inauguration in January and has said that he would be part of a “support system” for Trump. Earlier this month, he attended a “Mega MAGA rally” where he posed for a picture in front of a giant inflatable version of the president, which had a “Vote Brad Schimel Supreme Court” poster plastered on its chest.
He spoke on Musk’s get-out-the-vote call on Saturday. And he joined the president’s eldest son on stage at a get-out-the-vote rally, where Donald Trump Jr. said a Schimel win would protect his father’s agenda and keep up GOP momentum.
“We can’t just show up when Trump’s on the ticket,” he said at a brewery in the Milwaukee suburbs. “You have to engage because it’s not just about now, it’s about that future. This presidency could be put to a halt with this vote.”
Schimel has also resurfaced long-debunked conspiracies about voter fraud that Trump has embraced, urging his supporters to vote early to “make this too big to rig so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines.”
Still, he pledged to judge any case that comes before him on its merits — including potential cases involving Trump and Musk.
Republicans have cast the race as a chance for Trump’s loyal supporters to rally around their leader and push back against liberal judges they accuse of working to stymie his agenda.
Mailers from Musk’s America PAC feature photographs of the president. “President Donald Trump needs your vote,” they read. Others warn that “Liberal Susan Crawford will stop President Trump’s agenda.”
America PAC is also offering Wisconsin voters $100 to sign a petition in opposition to “activist judges” — and another $100 for each signer they refer.
Republicans have argued that if even 60% of the voters who cast ballots for Trump in November turn out, Schimel can win, helping to drive momentum for the party heading into next year’s midterms.
“In theory, the opposition party should be energized, but we’re feeling very good about the energy on our side of the aisle,” said Andrew Iverson, Wisconsin GOP executive director.
Andrew Romeo, senior adviser to the Musk-backed group Building America’s Future, which has spent millions on the race, issued a recent memo advising Schimel’s campaign to remind voters that he is “a strong conservative and Trump ally.”
Two groups funded by Musk have so far spent more than $14 million on the race, according to a tally by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice — with plans to spend around $20 million total.
Musk donated another $2 million to the Wisconsin Republican Party on Thursday, the same day the party gave $1.2 million to Schimel’s campaign.
Under Wisconsin law, contributions to candidates are capped, but candidates can accept unlimited cash from state parties, which in turn can accept unlimited cash from donors.
His spending has helped make the race the most expensive judicial election in the nation’s history, with more than $73 million spent so far, according to the Brennan Center, breaking the record set by another Wisconsin Supreme Court race two years ago.
Crawford has also received her own support from billionaires, including philanthropist George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
Democrats want race to be the people vs. Musk
Democrats are hoping to channel their voters’ outrage at the Trump administration by casting the race as an opportunity to stand up to Musk. After nearly a decade of running against the president, they see Musk as a potentially more divisive figure who can motivate their base voters to turn out.
“This race is the first real test point in the country on Elon Musk and his influence on our politics, and voters want an opportunity to push back on that and the influence he is trying to make on Wisconsin and the rest of country,” said Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman.
State Democrats have hosted a series of anti-Musk town halls, including one featuring former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, and featured Musk heavily in ads.
Crawford has also seized on Musk, going as far as to refer to her opponent as “Elon Schimel” during a recent debate.
“There’s so many people who are desperate for a way to fight back against what Trump and Musk are doing nationally,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chair, and see the race as an “opportunity to punch back.”
Wikler said the party had seen an “explosive surge” in grassroots and small-donor fundraising from across the country tied to Musk’s involvement. Both in Wisconsin and nationally, Democrats are packing town halls and angrily protesting the Trump administration’s firings of thousands of workers and shutdown of agencies. They have also show disillusionment with their party’s own leaders.
“Most voters still don’t know who Crawford and Schimel are, but they have extremely strong feelings about Musk and Trump,” he said.
What’s at stake for Musk
Musk said Saturday that he became involved in the race because it “will decide how the congressional districts are drawn in Wisconsin,” echoing Schimel’s claims that Crawford would push through new congressional maps that could favor Democrats.
Schimel’s campaign has relentlessly attacked Crawford for participating in a call with Democratic donors that was advertised in an email as a “chance to put two more House seats in play for 2026,” a reference to the state’s redistricting fights that have played out for years.
Crawford has said that she didn’t know that that was how the call had been billed when she joined and that nothing of that nature had been discussed while she was on the line.
“In my opinion, that’s the most important thing, which is a big deal given that the congressional majority is so razor-thin,” Musk said. “It could cause the House to switch to Democrat if that redrawing takes place, and then we wouldn’t be able to get through the changes that the American people want.”
Musk has also been giving money to Republican members of Congress who have echoed his calls to impeach federal judges whose decisions he doesn’t like.
He has other interests at play.
Democrats and Crawford have noted that, just days before Musk’s groups started spending on the race, Musk’s electric car company Tesla sued Wisconsin over a rule banning car manufacturers from operating dealerships — forcing buyers to purchase Teslas out of state.
The case could ultimately go before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Associated Press writer Scott Bauer contributed to this report.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
A group funded by billionaire Elon Musk is offering Wisconsin voters $100 to sign a petition in opposition to “activist judges,” a move that comes two weeks before the state’s Supreme Court election and after the political action committee made a similar proposal last year in battleground states.
Musk’s political action committee America PAC announced the petition in a post on X on Thursday night. It promises $100 for each Wisconsin voter who signs the petition and another $100 for each signer the voter refers.
The campaign for Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, said Musk was trying to buy votes ahead of the April 1 election. The offer was made two days after early voting started in the hotly contested race between Crawford and Brad Schimel, the preferred candidate of Musk and Republicans.
The winner of the election will determine whether the court remains under liberal control or flips to a conservative majority.
Musk’s PAC used a nearly identical tactic ahead of the November presidential election, offering to pay $1 million a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments.
Philadelphia’s district attorney sued in an attempt to stop the payments under Pennsylvania law. But a judge said that prosecutors failed to show that the effort was an illegal lottery, and it was allowed to continue through Election Day.
America PAC and Building for America’s Future, two groups Musk funds, have spent more than $13 million trying to help elect Schimel, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. The winner will determine whether conservative or liberal justices control the court, with key battles looming over abortion, public sector unions, voting rules and congressional district boundaries.
Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman accused Musk of “trying to buy a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to secure a favorable ruling in his company’s lawsuit against the state.”
Just days before Musk’s groups started spending on the Supreme Court race, electric car manufacturer Tesla sued Wisconsin over its decision to not allow it to open dealerships. Musk is the CEO of Tesla and also the head of rocket ship manufacturer SpaceX. Tesla’s case could ultimately come before the Supreme Court.
“Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud,” Musk posted on X, just eight days before the lawsuit was filed in January.
Andrew Romeo, a spokesperson for America PAC, referred to the post on X announcing the petition when asked for comment on Friday. A spokesperson for Schimel’s campaign did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Crawford and her allies have made linking Schimel with Musk a key plank of their campaign. The Wisconsin Democratic Party released a new ad this week accusing Musk of trying to buy the seat for Schimel, a close ally of President Donald Trump.
Schimel earlier this week campaigned with Donald Trump Jr. at an event where the president’s son said electing Schimel was essential for protecting Trump’s agenda. America PAC has also been making that argument in flyers it’s handing out to Wisconsin voters.
Musk’s other group, Building America’s Future, said in a memo Thursday that to defeat Crawford it must “present Schimel as a pro-Trump conservative.”
The new petition says: “Judges should interpret laws as written, not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas. By signing below, I’m rejecting the actions of activist judges who impose their own views and demanding a judiciary that respects its role — interpreting, not legislating.”
The petition, while designed to collect data on Wisconsin voters and energize them, is also in line with Trump’s agenda alleging that “activist” judges are illegally working against him. Trump’s administration is embroiled in several lawsuits related to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort to downsize the federal bureaucracy.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
The Republican-backed candidate in Wisconsin’s closely watched state Supreme Court race has resurfaced long-debunked concerns about voting fraud because of the late reporting of ballots in Milwaukee just two weeks before the April 1 election.
Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general, spoke of the possibility of “bags of ballots” and fraud in Milwaukee during an interview Tuesday on conservative talk radio. Schimel faces Democratic-backed Susan Crawford in the April 1 election with majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court at stake.
Schimel, in an interview on WISN-AM, said his supporters need to “get our votes banked, make this too big to rig so we don’t have to worry that at 11:30 in Milwaukee, they’re going to find bags of ballots that they forgot to put into the machines.”
Schimel said that happened in 2018 and in November “when (U.S. Senate candidate) Eric Hovde was ahead all night, and then all of a sudden, Milwaukee County changed that.”
Republicans and Democrats alike, along with state and Milwaukee election leaders, warned in the run-up to the November election that Milwaukee absentee ballots would be reported late and cause a huge influx of Democratic votes. Milwaukee is the state’s most populated city and is heavily Democratic. Its chief elections official was chosen with bipartisan support.
The reporting of those absentee ballots swung the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, fueling baseless conspiracy theories that the election had been stolen from President Donald Trump.
Milwaukee’s absentee ballots are counted at a central location and reported all at once, often well after midnight on Election Day. Elections officials for years have made clear that those ballots are reported later than usual due to the sheer number that have to be counted and because state law does not allow them to be processed until polls open.
A bipartisan bill to allow for processing prior to Election Day died in the Republican-controlled Senate last year. Republicans, who have controlled the Legislature since 2011, routinely complain about slow processing in Milwaukee but have not passed bills to allow for speedier counting.
In 2018, the reporting of more than 47,000 absentee ballots after midnight put Democrat Tony Evers ahead of then-Gov. Scott Walker. Evers went on to win, and Walker criticized the late reporting, saying it blindsided him.
And in November, Hovde said he was “shocked” by the reporting of more than 108,000 ballots in Milwaukee early in the morning after the election in his defeat to Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Schimel said in the radio interview he didn’t know what happened.
“I don’t know if there was fraud there,” Schimel said. “There’s no way for me to know that. All I know is this: We need to turn our votes out. That’s the best insulation we have against any potential fraud, is just get our people to the polls.”
Asked about his concerns during an appearance later Tuesday at the Milwaukee Rotary Club, Schimel said he brought up fraud because voters often ask him how to guarantee election integrity.
“I tell people, by following the rules,” Schimel said. “And then I tell them, ‘Here’s the best way to make sure your vote isn’t stolen: Go use it.’ That’s the answer.”
Yet despite his concerns, Schimel said: “I will always accept the results of the election.”
Crawford’s spokesperson, Derrick Honeyman, said Schimel was “dabbling in conspiracy theories to please his ally, Elon Musk, and it’s unbecoming of a judge and candidate for the state’s high court.”
Groups funded by billionaire Musk have contributed more than $11 million to help Schimel’s campaign. Crawford is backed by several billionaire Democrats, including philanthropist George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
Schimel’s comments drew criticism from the Democracy Defense Project, a bipartisan coalition promoting truth about elections that includes former Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen.
“There is no evidence of fraud in Milwaukee, but the failure of the state to allow early counting on absentee ballots before the close of polls feeds into conspiracy theories,” the group said in a statement.
The court is currently controlled 4-3 by liberals, but one of them is retiring, creating the battle for the majority.
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court election has been awash in record-setting spending and menacing ads about each candidate being soft on crime, even though Supreme Court justices are primarily focused on interpreting the law, not sentencing those convicted of crimes.
The nasty ads date back to the 2008 Supreme Court election in which conservative Michael Gableman launched similar ads against liberal Justice Louis Butler. The state’s business lobby spent what at the time was a staggering $1.8 million, an amount that seems paltry compared with the record-setting tens of millions being spent on this year’s race.
Though both candidates have talked about impartiality and objectivity, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel has more openly tacked to the right in what appears to emulate liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s winning 2023 strategy. Dane County Judge Susan Crawford has more recently emphasized her liberal credentials and has tried to turn the election into a referendum on billionaire Elon Musk, who has spent heavily on the race and stirred controversy as the White House efficiency czar.
The TV ads are dark and ominous. The faces of people convicted of serious crimes are flashed across the screen. A grim-sounding voice-over accuses one candidate of letting “a sex predator loose on our kids.” Another spot accuses the other of “putting pedophiles back on the street.”
These messages have for weeks blanketed TV broadcasts across Wisconsin and permeated digital media spaces like YouTube. Funded by candidates or third-party groups pushing a political agenda, they have largely focused on the same subject: crime and public safety. Another wave of ads is expected over the next two weeks.
The ads are meant to define Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel for voters ahead of the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
The race has become “probably the most intense Supreme Court race the state has ever experienced,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “For the second time in a row, (the election is) going to determine the ideological direction of the Supreme Court. And, in part, the ideological direction of state government.”
High-profile cases concerning abortion rights, voting rights, legislative and congressional maps, labor rights, environmental issues, tax policy and power disputes between the state’s Democratic governor and Republican Legislature have all come before the court in recent years or are expected to arrive there in the coming months.
The candidates have mostly shied away from sharing their thoughts about those issues with voters, though it’s widely believed Crawford would side with the Democratic position and Schimel would side with Republicans.
Instead, the ads — which represent most of the candidates’ direct communication with voters — have focused on criminal prosecutions and sentencing practices.
But those two things have little to do with the work Crawford or Schimel will be doing when the winner is sworn in as a state Supreme Court justice in August, four political and legal experts told Wisconsin Watch.
A means to an end
The TV ads are a means to an end for both the campaigns and third-party groups, the experts told Wisconsin Watch.
“What the ads are about is not what the court is about,” Burden said. “When those justices get together in the state Capitol and hear cases, they’re about facts and precedent and legal theories and their understandings of the law, at least that’s the idea. But what the discourse is about — especially from the groups that are not the campaigns themselves but are these outside groups running ads somewhat independently — they can be about whatever the groups think would be effective to get their side a victory.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford declined to take a position during the only candidate debate on a pending case challenging the state’s 1849 abortion law, but she criticized a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Roe v. Wade. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel said during the only candidate debate that Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law was a validly passed law, but voters should decide whether to change it, not the state Supreme Court. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The campaigns have zeroed in on issues that don’t often concern the work of the justices because “some campaign consultants somewhere concluded that they work,” said Marquette University Law School professor Chad Oldfather. Focusing on crime and public safety is a common playbook for judicial candidates across the country, Oldfather said.
“The role of a state supreme court justice does not involve much day-to-day interaction with the workings of the criminal justice system,” Oldfather said, adding that tough-on-crime or soft-on-crime ads are a way for interest groups to motivate voters.
A group like Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby and a heavy financial backer of conservative judicial candidates, including Schimel, is more focused on having a court that is friendly to business interests than it is concerned about the sentences Crawford has handed out, said Douglas Keith, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program.
“The people who are spending money to run those ads, those are not actually the cases they care about,” he said in an interview. “This is just a visceral idea that they can use to get voters’ attention in an ad.”
But while the spending behind these ads has exploded, the approach itself is not new. In the 2008 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, conservative candidate Michael Gableman successfully ousted liberal Justice Louis Butler with the help of similar-sounding ads funded by WMC for $1.8 million — a quaint figure compared to the amounts groups have spent on the race so far this year.
An ad from Gableman’s campaign also sparked controversy. It pictured Butler side-by-side with the mugshot of a convicted rapist and made misleading assertions that Butler was responsible for getting the man out of prison. After the man was paroled in 1992, he committed another rape and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The ad was unusually vicious for the time, but would fit among the ads in this year’s race.
Switching playbooks
At the start of the campaign, Crawford and Schimel both talked about wanting to bring “common sense” and “objectivity” to the court, but more recently they have tried to rally voters around more political issues.
Crawford initially backed away from Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s 2023 approach, in which the liberal then-candidate spoke openly about her “values” on abortion rights and gerrymandering — though in recent weeks the Dane County judge has been more forthcoming about her support for things like abortion rights. Crawford wants her work as an attorney to speak for itself, she said, pointing to her private practice work advocating for abortion rights, labor rights and voting rights.
“I think that tells a lot about my values and what I have worked for throughout my entire career,” Crawford told Wisconsin Watch in an interview earlier this month.
Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, speaks to supporters during a canvassing event March 1, 2025, at the Madtown Os Neighborhood Action Team headquarters in Madison, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The race is about the “future of the court, and it’s about the fundamental rights and freedoms of Wisconsinites,” she said. “For me, it’s about how we interpret the laws and constitution in the state of Wisconsin. I believe they should be interpreted to protect the rights of every Wisconsinite. That’s really why I’m running.”
A Schimel victory, Crawford said, could result in the restriction of Wisconsin residents’ individual rights and liberties. “I’m running to be a common sense justice who wants to use our laws and constitution to protect every Wisconsinite,” she said. “(Schimel is) an extreme politician who has an agenda that he’s bringing to the Supreme Court.”
“That’s garbage,” Schimel fired back when Crawford made a similar assertion at the candidates’ sole debate. Schimel’s campaign did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story.
Schimel seems to be embracing the Protasiewicz campaign approach, said Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at UW-La Crosse. Giving stronger partisan cues to voters, like Schimel is doing, “was massively rewarding for (Protasiewicz),” he said. Pairing those cues with election-defining issues like abortion rights and gerrymandering helped carry her to a blowout victory, Chergosky added.
Accordingly, Schimel has tried to tap into President Donald Trump’s political movement to bolster his campaign.
“The stakes could not be higher here in Wisconsin,” he told conservative commentator Charlie Kirk during an interview late last month. “Leftists took over the majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court two years ago in 2023 and they’re going through a political agenda. They are working to wipe out every conservative reform that’s been passed in Wisconsin to make us strong, prosperous, safe. All those things are on the chopping block now.”
The court’s decisions to throw out the state’s gerrymandered legislative districts and take up a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Act 10, the Scott Walker-era law that crippled public employee unions, are two examples, he said.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, left, shakes hands with an attendee as part of his “Save Wisconsin” tour during the Republican Party of Dane County annual caucus March 15, 2025, at the Madison West Marriott in Middleton, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Schimel said Trump’s election victory in November represented “a movement to save our nation.” Backing him on April 1 is a way to continue to be part of that movement, he said.
While speaking at an event the next day, Schimel continued to push that idea.
Prior to Nov. 5, he said, “America had walked up to the edge of the abyss and we could hear the wind howling. You could look down but you can’t see the bottom.” Trump’s victory let the country take “a couple steps back from that abyss,” he added.
“The job’s not done,” Schimel said. “And this is the message we have to get out to people: The job’s not done.”
Schimel is also appealing to Trump to visit Wisconsin to bolster his campaign, the New York Times reported last week.
Billionaires bloat spending
The stakes of the election — with the assistance of billionaires and outside groups — have already propelled the race to record spending. A recent WisPolitics.com tally found almost $59 million had been spent on the race with several weeks left to go, surpassing the record $56 million spent in the 2023 race between Protasiewicz and Daniel Kelly. Prior to 2023, the record for spending in a judicial election was $15 million in a 2004 Illinois contest.
Crawford’s campaign has been the biggest spender so far, dropping almost $23 million on just TV ads. The Madison judge’s fundraising has been boosted by the state Democratic Party, which has accepted sizable donations from liberal mega-donors like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, George Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — all billionaires.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justices, second from left, Janet Protasiewicz, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky walk to a press briefing with Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford following the WISN 12 Wisconsin Supreme Court debate with Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel on March 12, 2025, at the Lubar Center at Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall in Milwaukee, Wis. The hour-long debate was the first and only debate between the candidates ahead of the April 1 election. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
While the maximum contribution individuals can make to candidate campaigns is capped in Wisconsin, there is no limit on how much one person can donate to a state political party. Those parties can then, in turn, make unlimited transfers to candidate campaigns, a loophole used to bolster candidate fundraising.
Billionaire support for Schimel has largely come through third-party groups, though Schimel’s campaign has spent some $8.8 million on ad buys. The Waukesha judge’s largest benefactor, by far, has been Elon Musk, the centibillionaire tech CEO serving as Trump’s efficiency czar.
Musk’s super PAC has spent more than $6.5 million on the race so far, the bulk of which has been on canvassing and voter outreach efforts to bolster Schimel. A second Musk-affiliated group, Building America’s Future, has spent $6 million on TV ads, according to a WisPolitics.com tally.
Chatter about the race’s spending dominated the contest’s only debate. Crawford called Musk “dangerous” and tied him to the firing of air traffic controllers and the increased price of eggs.
“(Musk) has basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign,” Crawford continued, arguing that Musk is trying to buy himself a justice on the high court as Tesla filed a lawsuit seeking to open dealerships in Wisconsin. Crawford at one point called Musk “Elon Schimel.” The play comes as Democrats seek to make the election an early referendum on Musk and Trump.
Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Democratic Party launched “a seven-figure grassroots effort to turn Elon Musk’s attempt to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court race into a political disaster for Brad Schimel.” It includes a digital ad campaign, town hall events and billboards. Less than two weeks before Election Day, Crawford for the first time released an ad tying Schimel to Musk.
Schimel hit back, pointing to Soros’ financial support for Crawford, arguing the billionaire financier “funded DAs and judges who have let dangerous criminals out on the street.”
Another outside group funded by billionaire Richard Uihlein, Fair Courts America, has spent over $2.5 million on TV ads targeting Crawford. Americans for Prosperity, a group with close ties to billionaire Charles Koch, has spent over $1.2 million to boost Schimel.
Such heavy spending underscores how groups see the race as a means to advance their political agendas — despite being officially nonpartisan. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, for example, recently added the race to its target list for the 2025-26 cycle.
“Our mandate (at the DLCC) is obviously building Democratic power and securing and maintaining majorities in state legislatures,” said Jeremy Jansen, the group’s vice president of political. He added that the DLCC has been focused on state supreme court races in recent years that could affect that power, with a focus on redistricting.
“Investing in this race is a way to protect or preserve some of the work that the DLCC did in the most recent cycle and in previous cycles,” Jansen said, noting how Protasiewicz’s 2023 victory led to new legislative maps and 14 additional Democratic seats in the Legislature.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel gives a speech as part of his “Save Wisconsin” tour during the Republican Party of Dane County annual caucus March 15, 2025, at the Madison West Marriott in Middleton, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Republicans are eager for conservatives to retake a majority on the high court and protect the authority of the Legislature.
“For all the people who are concerned about concentration of power in the executive branch at the federal level, I think that we would have that happen here in Wisconsin,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters last month in response to a question about the stakes of the race. “We’re already seeing that the liberal court is taking power away from the Legislature simply because they don’t agree with us. I don’t think that’s right.”
A new normal
The final days of the campaign will be critical for both candidates. A Marquette Law School Poll from earlier this month found large portions of voters are unfamiliar with both candidates.
The survey of registered voters found that 38% of respondents lacked an opinion of Schimel and 58% lacked an opinion of Crawford. That’s “a very perilous position for a candidate to be in because it means that they need to define themselves quickly before the other side does it for them,” Chergosky said.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, left, and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, right, wait for the start of the WISN 12 Wisconsin Supreme Court debate March 12, 2025, at the Lubar Center at Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall in Milwaukee. The debate featured clashes over the tens of millions being spent on both candidates by billionaires. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The Marquette poll did not feature a head-to-head question. But a poll commissioned by WMC earlier this month found the race tied 47% to 47%. The survey was conducted by OnMessage Inc., which receives an “A” rating from polling guru Nate Silver.
The same poll found that “fighting to uphold the rule of law,” “reducing crime and keeping violent criminals off the streets” and “ensuring that abortion is available and accessible in Wisconsin” are the top issues in the race. Those issues continue to be prominent among the ads being rolled out by the candidates and outside groups.
And while crime has long been an issue in these races, Oldfather said, “(before 2008) judicial campaigns just did not use to look like this.”
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
On April 1, voters will cast their ballots in a nationally watched election to select Wisconsin’s next state Supreme Court justice.
The election, which pits liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford against conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, has already smashed the prior record for spending in a judicial race. In turn, TV stations across the state have been blanketed with ads from both campaigns and third-party groups. The ads reek of politics and often focus on issues that have almost nothing to do with what justices actually do.
So, what does the Wisconsin Supreme Court actually do?
What is the Wisconsin Supreme Court?
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is the highest court in Wisconsin’s judicial system.
It has seven justices, each elected to a 10-year term in an April general election. If a vacancy occurs on the court, the governor appoints a replacement. That justice serves until an election can be held, which occurs in the first April without an already-scheduled state Supreme Court election.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has the final authority on determining whether lower courts in state criminal or civil cases followed the law and also whether a Wisconsin law adhered to the state constitution.
In some rare instances, decisions from the Wisconsin Supreme Court can be appealed to the United States Supreme Court. But those appeals typically claim the state Supreme Court’s ruling in some way infringes on federal law or rights granted by the U.S. Constitution.
How do cases reach the Supreme Court?
Cases arrive at the state Supreme Court in a number of ways:
A party who lost a case in the Court of Appeals, the state’s intermediate court, can ask the court to review the decision.
Any party involved in litigation decided by a county circuit court may ask the high court to bypass the Court of Appeals and take a case. There are 71 county circuit courts in the state, each staffed by a varying number of judges. Circuit courts are sometimes referred to as “district courts” or “trial courts.”
The Court of Appeals can ask the high court to take a case.
The state Supreme Court, on its own motion, can decide to review a case appealed in the Court of Appeals directly.
A party can petition the state Supreme Court to take a case directly, known as an original action.
Who are the current justices on the court?
Today’s court is generally believed to have four liberal justices and three conservative justices. Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky and Janet Protasiewicz make up the court’s four-member liberal majority.
The court’s three conservative members are Chief Justice Annette Ziegler and Justices Rebecca Bradley and Brian Hagedorn. Of those, Hagedorn has most frequently voted with the liberal majority, giving him the reputation of a swing vote.
The April 1 election is to replace Walsh Bradley, who is retiring after serving for 30 years on the high court.
Who is running on April 1?
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel are jostling to be the state’s next justice.
Supreme Court elections are supposed to be nonpartisan. However, justices tend to adhere to liberal and conservative judicial and political philosophies, and partisan interests have spent heavily on candidates aligned with their interests.
Crawford is considered the liberal candidate. She has served as a Dane County judge since 2018. Prior to taking the bench, she worked for the state Department of Justice and served as chief legal counsel for Democratic former Gov. Jim Doyle. She has also worked in private practice, where she represented Planned Parenthood in litigation relating to abortion access. Crawford also worked on behalf of clients challenging the state’s voter ID law and Act 10, the Scott Walker-era law that hamstrung public sector labor unions. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin and liberal donors are heavily funding her campaign.
Schimel is considered the conservative candidate. He has served as a judge in Waukesha County since 2018. Prior to becoming a judge, he served one term as Wisconsin attorney general and spent eight years serving as the Waukesha County district attorney. He won both jobs campaigning as a Republican. As attorney general he led an unsuccessful national effort to invalidate the Affordable Care Act and appealed a federal court ruling that struck down a law restricting abortion access. Wealthy state and national Republican donors are backing his candidacy.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
On Wednesday, March 26, at 4 p.m. Central time, Wisconsin Watch will host a free, live Zoom discussion about the upcoming state Supreme Court election.
The event will feature a conversation between Wisconsin Watch statehouse reporter Jack Kelly and state bureau chief Matthew DeFour.
The link to RSVP is here, and full background details are below.
On April 1, voters will decide what direction the Wisconsin Supreme Court will shift, and there are only two possible outcomes: a guaranteed liberal majority until 2028 or a 3-3 split with Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative-leaning swing vote, again wielding outsized influence.
The two candidates are Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge endorsed by the court’s four current liberal members, and former Attorney General Brad Schimel, a Republican who now serves as a Waukesha County judge.
The actions of the state Supreme Court are a major focus for our team — in the final days before Wisconsin voters decide on the future shape of the court, we wanted to create a space for questions and thoughtful discussion.
Following the success of previous events, we’ll have that discussion as a live Zoom event hosted by state bureau chief Matthew DeFour and statehouse reporter Jack Kelly, who first wrote about the race back in January and again this month and has kept subscribers to our Monday morning newsletter, Forward, up to speed with the latest developments in the contest.
We want this discussion to be shaped by your questions, concerns and thoughts about the role of the state Supreme Court and the issues that may be determined by its members in the coming months.
You can submit yours when you RSVP using the form here or by emailing events@wisconsinwatch.org. If you are interested in the event but aren’t sure if you’ll be able to attend, register anyway — it’s free, and we will send everyone who registers a link to the full video after the event is over.
Finally, while the event is free to attend, it isn’t free to produce. If you can afford to make a donation to offset our costs, you’ll join a growing group of ordinary people funding local news.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
In just two weeks, Wisconsin residents will head to the polls for another pivotal and closely watched election.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom with a statewide focus, and one of our goals is to ensure that Wisconsin residents have access to reliable information before they head to the polls on April 1.
We also know that most of you are busy people, which is why we’ve pulled together a short list of resources from our newsroom and other reliable sources.
Here are the key statewide races:
State Supreme Court
Candidates Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge backed by the court’s current liberal members, and former Attorney General Brad Schimel, a Republican judge from Waukesha County, are vying to replace longtime liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who is retiring.
What you need to know: This election will determine whether the Wisconsin Supreme Court maintains a guaranteed liberal majority until 2028 or shifts to a 3-3 split, with conservative-leaning swing vote Justice Brian Hagedorn holding the deciding vote. Read our coverage here.
Want more? Wisconsin Watch is hosting a free, live Zoom discussion about the Supreme Court election with statehouse reporter Jack Kelly on March 26 at 4 p.m. Central time. Submit your questions when you RSVP here or by emailing events@wisconsinwatch.org — your input will shape the conversation.
State superintendent of public instruction
Incumbent Jill Underly, backed by the Democratic Party, faces education consultant Brittany Kinser, who is supported by conservative groups advocating for private school voucher programs.
What you need to know: Underly has faced criticism from Republicans for adjusting the state’s proficiency benchmarks for standardized tests. She argues the changes better reflect what students are learning. Kinser’s platform focuses on expanding school choice statewide.
Voters will also decide on a proposed constitutional amendment that would require individuals to present valid photographic identification to vote, with exceptions allowed by law.
What you need to know: Proponents argue it safeguards election integrity, while critics warn it could disenfranchise groups less likely to possess valid photo IDs, particularly marginalized communities. The outcome could have lasting implications for future elections in Wisconsin.
Helpful resources: Our partnerVotebeat has written about the ballot measure.
To find your polling location and see what local positions are on the ballot, visit MyVote Wisconsin. All you need to know is your address — the site will guide you through the rest.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Abortion rights and the influence of donations from billionaires Elon Musk and George Soros took center stage in a sometimes testy debate Wednesday between candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court less than three weeks before the election.
The race pits Republican-backed Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel, a former attorney general, against Democratic-backed Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford.
Here are highlights from the debate:
Abortion rights
A challenge to an 1849 state law that bans nearly all abortions is currently pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Schimel, who is supported by anti-abortion groups, said he believes the 1849 ban “was a validly passed law. I don’t believe it reflects the will of the people of Wisconsin today.”
Schimel said the future of abortion rights should not be up to the Supreme Court, but should instead be decided by voters.
Crawford declined to take a position on the pending abortion case.
But she said she was proud to have supported Planned Parenthood in a pair of abortion-related cases when she was an attorney in private practice. She also spoke against the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
“This is a critical issue in this race,” Crawford said. “My opponent has said he believes the 1849 law in Wisconsin is valid law and he’s trying to backpedal from that position now.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Brad Schimel, right, and Susan Crawford listen to one of the moderators during their debate Wednesday, March 12, 2025, at the Lubar Center at Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall in Milwaukee. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Donations from billionaires Musk and Soros at issue
Crawford said that Musk, a close adviser to Trump, “has basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign.”
Groups funded by Musk have spent more than $10 million in support of Schimel on television ads and going door to door canvassing for his candidacy. One of those flyers says that Schimel would defend Trump’s agenda as a member of the court.
“This is unprecedented to see this kind of spending on a race,” Crawford said.
She said it was “no coincidence” that Musk started spending on the race days after his electric car company Tesla sued the state over its decision blocking it from opening dealerships in Wisconsin.
Schimel fired back, “If Elon Musk is trying to get some result in that lawsuit, he may be failing because I enforce the law and I respect the laws passed by the Legislature.”
Schimel said he has no control over outside donations, or the messages they spread.
He was asked, in light of the donations from Musk, if he would rule against Trump.
“If President Trump or anyone defies Wisconsin law and I end up with a case in front of me, I’ll hold them accountable as I would anybody in my courtroom,” Schimel said.
Donald Trump Jr. and political activist Charlie Kirk plan to co-host a town hall on Monday in Wisconsin that’s being billed as a get-out-the-vote effort for Schimel.
Crawford has benefited from donations from prominent national Democrats such as Soros and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker who gave the state Democratic Party $1.5 million, which then donated it to Crawford’s campaign.
Schimel called Soros “a dangerous person to have an endorsement from.”
When asked what the difference was between the Musk and Soros donations, Crawford said, “I have never promised anything and that is the difference.”
Union rights
As an attorney, Crawford sued in an attempt to overturn the state’s law that effectively ended collective bargaining for public workers. That law, known as Act 10, was the centerpiece of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s tenure and made Wisconsin the center of the national debate over union rights.
A Dane County judge last year ruled that the bulk of the law was unconstitutional, and an appeal of that ruling is expected to come before the state Supreme Court.
Crawford said she “most likely” would recuse herself from a case challenging Act 10 if it were focused on the same provisions in the lawsuit she brought. But she said the current lawsuit is on different parts of the law.
When Schimel was attorney general, he said he would defend Act 10 and opposed having its restrictions also applied to police and firefighter unions, which were exempt from the law.
Schimel did not say in the debate whether he would recuse himself if a challenge to the law came before the court.
Voter ID
A measure on the April 1 ballot would enshrine Wisconsin’s voter ID law in the state constitution.
Schimel said he will vote for the amendment. Crawford, who sued to overturn the voter ID law, declined to say how she would vote on the amendment.
Congressional redistricting
A challenge to the state’s congressional district boundaries is expected to come before the court.
Crawford appeared at a briefing with donors earlier in the campaign that was billed in an email by organizers as a “chance to put two more House seats in play.”
Crawford said in the debate that she didn’t talk about redistricting during the call and the email sent by the organizers was “not an appropriate way to announce a judicial candidate.”
Schimel said it was hard for him to believe Crawford.
“We have to take my opponent’s word for it what happened on that phone call,” he said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl has been placed on administrative leave at least through the April 1 election, as city and state officials continue to investigate how she and her staff lost track of nearly 200 ballots on Election Day last fall, the city announced Wednesday.
Mike Haas, Madison’s city attorney, will take over her duties in the interim. Municipalities typically prefer not to make changes to election oversight so close to an election, but Haas, a former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, is widely considered one of the state’s foremost experts on election law. It’s not clear when — or whether — Witzel-Behl will return to her post.
“Given the nature of the issues being investigated, we felt this was a necessary step to maintain public confidence in the operations of our clerk’s office,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
The scrutiny of Witzel-Behl follows a series of oversights that contributed to the mishandling of ballots during the 2024 election.
In its probe, the Wisconsin Elections Commission found that mistakes began well before Election Day. One involved the poll books showing the list of registered voters in each ward. For the two polling locations where 193 ballots went missing, Witzel-Behl’s office printed the poll books on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day, despite commission guidance urging election officials to print poll books as close to the election as possible.
If the poll books had been printed later, they would have automatically marked certain absentee voters’ ballots as having been returned, making it clearer to poll workers on Election Day that some ballots had been received but not counted. Instead, poll workers manually highlighted the poll books to indicate returned ballots — a method that Wisconsin Elections Commission staff warned could have made it less clear to city and county officials reviewing the election results that some ballots were still outstanding.
“I am genuinely troubled by the number of profoundly bad decisions that are recited in these materials leading up to Election Day,” commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said in a meeting last week.
In that commission meeting, Jacobs also highlighted what she called an “absolutely shocking set of dates post-election, where every opportunity to fix this is ignored.”
In a statement to Votebeat, Jacobs said she wasn’t surprised by Witzel-Behl being placed on leave.
“We cannot have elections where properly cast ballots are not counted due to administrative errors,” she said. “City Attorney Michael Haas is to be commended for stepping in to manage the upcoming April 1 election with less than three weeks to prepare … I have every confidence he will do everything he can to restore trust in Madison’s elections.”
Clerk’s staff found the first batch of ballots — 68 in total — in a previously unopened courier bag in the clerk’s office on Nov. 12, while Dane County was in the middle of certifying the election.
There are conflicting accounts of what happened next: An unidentified Madison election worker claimed that the county was informed about the ballots that day, but Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell has vehemently denied this. Either way, Witzel-Behl, who told Votebeat she was on vacation for much of the time following Election Day, didn’t follow up with the county, and those ballots were never counted. She also failed to immediately notify state or city officials outside the clerk’s office.
A second batch of 125 ballots was discovered in the clerk’s office on Dec. 3. However, staff didn’t relay that information to the Wisconsin Elections Commission until Dec. 18 — well after the state certified the election. The commission then notified Haas about the error, and Haas relayed the news to the mayor’s office — which is when both learned of the problem for the first time.
While Witzel-Behl has sought to address some of the issues, her office remains under scrutiny from the Madison mayor’s office, the state and now a civil claim seeking damages for the ballots that went uncounted. She has proposed procedural changes, including requiring clerk’s staff to verify all election materials received on Election Night and ensuring that each polling place receives a list of the absentee-ballot courier bags it handles to prevent any from being overlooked.
The April 1 election that Haas will oversee for Madison includes a pair of high-profile contests: a race for a pivotal Wisconsin Supreme Court seat and a ballot question on whether the state’s photo ID requirement for voting should be enshrined in the constitution. Supreme Court elections typically draw a high turnout, especially in Madison.
Haas said he expected a smooth election, despite the investigation.
“I am completely confident in the ability of the highly trained, incredibly competent professional staff at the Clerk’s Office to continue the operations of the office without interruption, including conducting the upcoming spring primary election,” Haas said. “I look forward to working with them to ensure a secure, transparent, and safe election.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Wisconsin Watch has fact-checked 10 claims about the backgrounds and positions of the Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates, liberal Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford and conservative Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel.
Here’s a look at positions the candidates have taken on immigration, the Jan. 6 riot, abortion, Act 10 and more, as well as at some criminal cases they handled.
Did Schimel say he had ‘no objection’ to Jan. 6 pardons issued by Donald Trump?
Schimel has said he supports presidential use of pardons, but that rioters who were violent at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, should not have been pardoned. Crawford claimed Schimel had no objection to Trump’s “blanket pardons.”
Has Crawford supported stopping deportations and protecting sanctuary cities?
There’s no readily available evidence to back a Republican attack ad that claimed Crawford has supported stopping deportations of illegal immigrants or protecting sanctuary cities, which limit how much they help authorities with deportations.
Did Crawford sentence a child sex offender to four years in prison after a prosecutor requested 10 years?
In 2020, Crawford sentenced a Dane County man to four years in prison and six years of probation after a prosecutor requested 10 years in prison and five years of probation. The defense had requested only probation. The man was charged with touching a 6-year-old girl’s privates in a club swimming pool in 2010 and with twice touching a 7-year-old girl’s privates in the same pool on one day in 2018.
Crawford said the crimes occurring years apart made the man a repeat offender, requiring prison, but were less serious than other sexual assaults, and that 10 years was longer than needed for rehabilitation.
Has Schimel supported Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law?
Schimel has campaigned supporting the law, which bans abortion except to protect the mother’s life, asking “what is flawed” about it. He recalled in 2012 supporting an argument to maintain the law, to make abortion illegal if Roe v. Wade were overturned.
Schimel has also said Wisconsin residents should decide “by referendum or through their elected legislature on what they want the law to say” on abortion.
Was a sexual assault convict freed after Crawford’s office failed to file an appeal?
In 2001, while Crawford led the state Justice Department’s appeals unit, a lawyer in the unit failed to meet a court deadline, resulting in a sex offender being freed two years into his seven-year prison sentence.
Did Schimel try to repeal the Affordable Care Act?
As Waukesha County’s district attorney, Schimel offered a plea deal to a man charged with possession of child pornography. In the year before Schimel won the state attorney general’s election, in 2014, the man’s lawyer made monthly contributions to Schimel’s campaign totaling $5,500. In exchange for the man pleading guilty to the charge, in 2015, Schimel agreed not to file more charges and recommended the mandatory minimum three-year prison sentence, which is what was imposed.
Did Wisconsin taxpayers pay $1.6 million over an abortion restriction law that was ruled unconstitutional?
Legal fees totaling $1.6 million were paid to Planned Parenthood and others who sued over a 2013 Wisconsin law that was ruled an unconstitutional restriction on abortion access. Schimel was responsible for some of the costs. He became state attorney general in 2015 and pursued appeals of the ruling.
Crawford was among attorneys who sued seeking to overturn the 2011 law, which effectively ended collective bargaining for most Wisconsin public employee unions. Act 10 spurred mass protests for weeks in Madison and has saved taxpayers billions of dollars.
Crawford was one of three lawyers in a 2011 lawsuit challenging the requirement, which the state Supreme Court rejected. In 2016, she said the law would be “acceptable” if voters could sign an affidavit swearing to their identity rather than providing proof of identification. In 2018, she called the law “draconian.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel has said he supports presidents using pardons, but that violent rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, should not have been pardoned.
Schimel’s opponent in the April 1 election, Susan Crawford, claimed Schimel “went so far as to say he had no objection” to President Donald Trump’s “blanket pardons” for the rioters.
On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump pardoned, commuted prison sentences or vowed to dismiss cases against all 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the riot, including people convicted of assaulting police.
On Jan. 27, Schimel told reporters “I don’t object to (presidents) utilizing that power.” Later that day, he said “anyone convicted of assaulting law enforcement should serve their full sentence,” but didn’t say Trump shouldn’t have issued the pardons.
In a subsequent interview, Schimel said anyone who committed violence Jan. 6, “I don’t think, on a personal level, they should have been pardoned.”
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
There’s no readily available evidence Susan Crawford has supported stopping deportations of illegal immigrants or protecting sanctuary cities, as a Republican attack ad claims.
Sanctuary communities limit how much they help authorities with deportations.
Crawford, a liberal, faces conservative Brad Schimel in the nonpartisan April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
The attack on Crawford was made by the Republican State Leadership Committee, a national group that works to elect Republicans to state offices.
The group provided Wisconsin Watch no evidence to back its claim. A spokesperson cited Democratic support for Crawford and Democratic opposition to cooperating with deportations, but nothing Crawford said on the topics. Searches of past Crawford statements found nothing.
The ad also claims Crawford would “let criminals roam free,” referring to a man convicted of touching girls’ private parts in a club swimming pool. Crawford sentenced the man in 2020 to four years in prison; a prosecutor had requested 10 years.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
With years of continued gridlock between the Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic governor, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has become the arbiter over some of the most heated election rule debates — from redistricting and drop boxes to the status of the state’s top election official.
That’s what makes April’s Supreme Court election a race to watch. It features two candidates with a stark ideological divide, competing for the seat of a retiring liberal justice and the chance to secure a majority in the current 4-3 liberal court. And it could determine how voters cast ballots in elections for years to come.
Conservative Brad Schimel is a Waukesha County judge and former Republican attorney general. Liberal Susan Crawford is a Dane County judge and former assistant attorney general under a Democratic administration. While the court is technically nonpartisan, both candidates are running with the support of their respective state parties, with partisan politicians providing endorsements on both sides.
“We don’t know what cases are going to come forward or what the facts or the arguments would be,” said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor and founder of the Elections Research Center. “But Crawford versus Schimel being on the court does send it in a different ideological direction.”
There are several election-related disputes the new justice may help settle. Fights over electronic voting, Wisconsin’s membership in the multistate Electronic Registration Information Center, and election officials’ ability to access citizenship data are brewing in lower courts.
More lawsuits may yet be filed if conservatives retake control of the court. Since liberals gained a majority in 2023, they have overseen a case that led the Legislature and governor to redraw the state’s previous Republican-drawn legislative maps in a way that didn’t give either party a built-in advantage. They also legalized drop boxes, which the conservative court banned in 2022.
A victory for Crawford would probably give liberals the final say on election issues for the next two years. That’s because the next two seats up for grabs — one in 2026 and one in 2027 — are both currently held by conservatives.
A Schimel victory would give conservatives the majority, but not as much security. One of the justices providing that majority would be Justice Brian Hagedorn, a sometimes swing voter whom Burden called “the least predictable justice.”
So a court with Schimel wouldn’t be “as reliably conservative as a 4-3 liberal majority would be reliably liberal,” Burden said.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court could have an outsized role in the coming years given the apparent willingness of President Donald Trump’s administration to defy some federal court orders, said Eileen Newcomer, voter education manager at the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin. That dynamic could send more issues to state instead of federal court, Newcomer said.
One of the most crucial roles the winning candidate may have during his or her tenure is participating if the court settles disputes over election results. In 2020, the then-conservative court narrowly rejected Trump’s lawsuit to overturn that year’s presidential election, which he lost.
Two candidates diverge on election law
The clearest difference between the candidates on election law is their stance on requiring photo IDs for voting. Crawford was among the lawyers to represent the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Network in its challenge to the requirement soon after it became law in 2011. She later called the law “draconian.”
If voters approve the question — which is likely given widespread support for the law and a muted campaign against the ballot measure — overturning the requirement would be all but impossible. Still, experts say, the court or Legislature may still be able to provide some exceptions to the requirement. That means the Supreme Court’s majority could decide just how broad those exceptions could be.
If voters elect Schimel and approve the measure, Burden said, the requirement would be secure. But if voters reject the proposal and elect Crawford, he added, “it’s very likely that some group brings a challenge to the voter ID law.”
Cases that the justices may weigh in on
One lawsuit that appears headed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court is over whether voters with disabilities should be allowed to receive, mark and return ballots electronically. Currently, that privilege is reserved for military and overseas voters. Voters with disabilities in Wisconsin allege that their lack of access to electronic voting violates their rights.
Another issue that could come before the court is the legality of ballot drop boxes. The court under a conservative majority banned them in 2022, but liberals lifted the ban after they took over the court. A conservative group could bring a case seeking to ban them again if Schimel wins, Burden said.
“They seem very willing to entertain new arguments about the same issue,” Burden said.
Newcomer, from the League of Women Voters, said revisiting settled issues and reversing precedent a third time would “undermine people’s confidence in the court.”
Still more battles are taking place over noncitizen voting, an issue that Republicans are seeking to draw attention to, despite scant evidence that it actually happens in any widespread manner. As part of their campaign, Republicans have been seeking access to Department of Transportation data showing the citizenship status of registered voters. Much of the department’s information is outdated, but some conservatives have sued for access nonetheless to understand the scale of noncitizen voting in the battleground state.
“If that’s what conservatives want, they’re going to be dissatisfied,” Burden said. “But they might still go to the court and try to get some kind of relief or action if they feel like a bunch of officials around the state are not doing all they can to weed out noncitizens from the voting rolls.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
In 2020, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford sentenced Kevin D. Welton to four years in prison after a prosecutor requested 10.
Welton was charged with touching a 6-year-old girl’s privates in a club swimming pool in 2010 and with twice touching a 7-year-old girl’s privates in the same pool on one day in 2018.
Welton was convicted of three felonies, including first-degree sexual contact.
Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel are running in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
An ad from an Elon Musk–funded group said Crawford could have imposed 100 years.
A 100-year maximum wasallowed, but highly unlikely, given the prosecutor’s request. Welton’s lawyer requested probation.
Crawford said the crimes occurring years apart made Welton a repeat offender, requiring prison, but were less serious than other sexual assaults, and 10 years was longer than needed for rehabilitation.
Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate in Wisconsin’s April 1 Supreme Court election, has supported Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law but also says voters should decide abortion questions.
The liberal candidate, Susan Crawford, claimed Schimel “wants to bring back” the law, which bans abortion except to protect the mother’s life.
Wisconsin abortions were halted, due to uncertainty over the 1849 law, after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in 2022, but resumed in 2023 after a judge’s ruling.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is deciding whether the 1849 law became valid with Roe’s reversal, said Marquette University law professor Chad Oldfather.
Schimel has campaigned supporting the law, asking “what is flawed” about it. He recalled in 2012 supporting an argument to maintain the law, to make abortion illegal if Roe were overturned.
Schimel said Feb. 18 Wisconsinites should decide “by referendum or through their elected legislature on what they want the law to say” on abortion.
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Wisconsin’s Democratic-backed incumbent state schools leader will face a Republican-supported challenger after both advanced in Tuesday’s three-person primary.
The winner in the April 1 general election will guide education policy in the battleground state during President Donald Trump’s second term.
Jill Underly, currently serving her first term as state superintendent, and Brittany Kinser, an advocate of the state’s private school voucher program and public charter schools, both advanced in Tuesday’s primary. Jeff Wright, a rural school superintendent, was eliminated.
Jill Underly
Underly was first elected to head the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction in 2021 with the support of Democrats and teachers unions. She has tried to position herself as the champion for public schools.
She said her win shows that voters “love their public schools.”
“They are also committed to making sure their public schools stay viable and every kid has these opportunities to be successful,” Underly said.
She was endorsed by the Wisconsin Democratic Party, which also has given her campaign $106,000 this month, and a host of Democratic officeholders.
Brittany Kinser
But the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the statewide teachers union, did not endorse a candidate in the primary. The political action committee for the union had recommended Wright be endorsed.
Wright, a two-time Democratic candidate for state Assembly, tried to cut into Underly’s base of support. He won the endorsements of the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators and the Middleton-Cross Plains teachers union.
Kinser, an education consultant, invited Wright’s backers who were unhappy with Underly’s leadership to back her.
“I’m welcoming Jeff and his supporters to come and join our campaign so we can restore high standards for all children in Wisconsin,” Kinser said.
Wright is going to “take some time to think” before he endorses anyone, his spokesperson Tyler Smith said.
Kinser is backed by Republicans, including the state party, which has given her campaign $200,000 so far.
Underly accused Kinser of being “focused on expanding vouchers, and these policies put our public schools in a dangerous race to the bottom.”
Kinser countered that her campaign is focused on bolstering achievement for all students, no matter what type of school they attend.
Wisconsin is the only state where voters elect the top education official but there is no state board of education. That gives the person who runs the Department of Public Instruction broad authority to oversee education policy, which includes dispersing money to schools and managing teacher licensing.
Whoever wins will have to manage Wisconsin’s relationship with the Trump administration as it seeks to eliminate the federal Department of Education, which supports roughly 14% of public school budgets nationwide with an annual budget of $79 billion.
CLARIFICATION: The Associated Press updated this story to make clear that Kinser is an advocate for the state’s private school voucher program and public charter schools.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Overshadowed by the state Supreme Court race, the Feb. 18 primary for Wisconsin’s top education official could significantly affect the future of K-12 schools but lacks a candidate with a traditionally conservative background — despite Republican sentiment that voters are trending rightward on education issues.
Three candidates are jostling to be state superintendent of public instruction. Incumbent Jill Underly, who was elected in a landslide four years ago, is seeking a second term in the job. She faces two challengers: Jeff Wright, superintendent of the Sauk Prairie School District, and Brittany Kinser, an education consultant from Milwaukee. The top two vote getters on Feb. 18 will advance to the April 1 general election.
The superintendent leads the state Department of Public Instruction, serving as Wisconsin’s top education official. A constitutional officer, the superintendent has uniquely broad authority: Wisconsin is the only state that elects its top education official but lacks a state board of education, according to the conservative Badger Institute. That means whoever leads the department “reports to nobody except the voters every four years.”
Underly drew fire after DPI last summer changed the threshold for what is considered proficient performance on state tests. Republican lawmakers and her opponents accused her of “lowering” standards. She stood by the changes in an interview, arguing they better reflect what students are learning in Wisconsin classrooms.
Jill Underly
Underly has the backing of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and wants to continue being “the number one advocate for public education in Wisconsin,” she said. To do so, she said she’ll continue to “set the standard” on issues like funding — DPI requested a $4 billion boost in state aid in the state’s next budget — because “this is what our public schools need.”
The state also needs a seasoned leader to grapple with the wave of changes coming out of Washington, Underly argued. “Do (voters) want somebody who has been proven to be able to manage this work?” she said. “Or do they want somebody to come in (that) has no idea what they’re doing and have to build a team and then meanwhile we’re getting bombarded with all these actions from the federal government?”
“I think that there’s something to be said for a strong incumbent and continuity,” Underly said.
Unusually, she faces a challenger from both sides.
Jeff Wright
Wright, who hails from battleground Sauk County and has twice run for the state Assembly as a Democrat, is stressing his ability to work with both parties. The political action committee of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, has recommended supporting Wright, though it has stopped short of a full endorsement. “I don’t have a political establishment with me,” he told CBS58. “But I have a lot of the state’s educators with me.”
Wright’s campaign didn’t respond to multiple requests to schedule an interview for this story.
Brittany Kinser
Kinser, meanwhile, is touting her support for school choice programs as she tacks to the right. She has worked as a special education teacher in Chicago during the early 2000s and the principal of a public charter school in Milwaukee and, until January 2024, served as CEO of Milwaukee education nonprofit City Forward Collective.
She has previously called herself a “Blue Dog Democrat” and donated to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s 2024 reelection campaign. But last week, she described herself on “The Benjamin Yount Show” as a moderate. “It shouldn’t matter what party we’re in,” she said. “We need to be focusing on teaching our kids how to read, write and do math.” Kinser’s campaign also did not make her available for an interview.
But how can the race lack a clear conservative candidate in 2025 — especially as Republicans feel like voters are trending toward them on education issues?
The simplest explanation: the stakes of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, one conservative education reform advocate told Wisconsin Watch.
Recruiting a high-quality candidate to run for statewide office without guarantees of financial support is challenging, said the advocate, who works closely with policymakers and was granted anonymity to offer a candid evaluation of the race. And with the outcome of the court race determining ideological control of the court, Republican donors are focusing their resources elsewhere.
More clear-cut conservative-aligned candidates, like Deb Kerr in 2021 and Lowell Holtz in 2017, have been on the ballot in past cycles. But just because the race lacks a prototypical conservative doesn’t mean conservatives are giving up on it.
Kinser herself has been running to the right as the campaign has picked up. She addressed Republican Party chapters throughout the state and, more recently, on at least two occasions spoke at events alongside conservative state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel. That could help give her the political base she needs to advance from the primary, the advocate said.
“If you’re talking about a three-person primary and there’s two lanes, and Underly and Wright are basically fighting over one of the lanes and the other lane is wide open, it makes sense to me to go talk to as many people as you can,” the advocate added.
And just because Kinser isn’t a traditional conservative candidate doesn’t mean she can’t appeal to conservatives, said CJ Szafir, CEO of the Institute for Reforming Government, a conservative think tank. He added that she “is right on all the issues and she’s aligned with conservatives and the conservative base.
“I don’t think there’s any real daylight between what conservatives want in the DPI and what Brittany wants to do at the DPI,” he said. “Brittany’s the one candidate that … is very focused on being pro-child, focused on the core issues and how to overhaul the DPI to better address the concerns of parents.”
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The liberal candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court participated in a briefing with Democratic donors billed as a “chance to put two more House seats in play,” a move that Republicans say shows that she is committed to redrawing congressional districts to benefit Democrats.
The event is just one of many partisan gatherings the candidates in the nonpartisan-in-name-only race have attended. Both candidates are also accepting large donations from partisans, including the Democratic and Republican parties, as both sides fight for control of the court in the battleground state.
Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general, faces liberal Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford in the April 1 election. The race will determine whether liberals maintain their 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court or it flips to conservative control.
The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which was also for ideological control of the court, was the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history. This year’s race is shaping up to be even more expensive and has already garnered national attention from multibillionaire Elon Musk, a Donald Trump loyalist.
The possibility of redrawing Wisconsin’s congressional district boundaries is just one of several major issues the court could tackle, in addition to abortion rights, election laws and union rights. The liberal-controlled court in December 2023 ordered new legislative maps, which Democrats credited with them gaining seats in November.
Now Democrats are hoping the court will redraw congressional lines. The state Supreme Court in March declined to take up a congressional redistricting case brought by Democrats.
The Wisconsin Republican Party on Wednesday accused Crawford of “selling two of Wisconsin’s seats” in Congress because of her participation in an event with Democratic donors organized by the liberal group Focus for Democracy. The email invitation to the Jan. 13 event billed it as a “chance to put two more House seats in play for 2026.”
The New York Times first reported on the event, saying it was organized by California billionaire and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler, who is running for the Democratic National Committee chair, appeared at the event with Crawford.
“In an appeal to entice out-of-state billionaires, Susan Crawford said the quiet part out loud: she is begging to be bought and paid for,” Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming said in a statement Wednesday.
Schimel’s campaign said Crawford sees the Supreme Court seat “as a political weapon used to undermine the Wisconsin people and deliver favors to out-of-state, liberal elites.”
“Susan Crawford has proven she will do anything in her pursuit of power, even offer congressional seats for support of her campaign,” the Schimel statement said.
Crawford’s campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement that Crawford is running to be a “fair, impartial, and common sense justice.”
“She has not publicly or privately commented on congressional redistricting at any time and was on this call briefly to share her background and why she’s running,” Honeyman said.
Honeyman pointed to partisan events that Schimel has attended, including an inaugural gala for Trump in Washington, D.C. Schimel also traveled the state talking with county Republican parties and other conservative groups. Schimel has said he expects conservative outside groups to spend between $10 million and $15 million on the race.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party has given $1 million to Crawford’s campaign. Democrats also spent millions last year trying to flip two of the state’s congressional districts but were unsuccessful.
Democrats have long targeted the 1st Congressional District in southeast Wisconsin held by Republican Rep. Bryan Steil and western Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District held by Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Dueling ads in Wisconsin’s high-stakes Supreme Court election focus on a backlog of criminal cases that took place during one candidate’s stint as the state’s top lawyer.
Sexual assault kits — often referred to as rape kits — are collections of DNA and other evidence taken from an assault survivor that can help identify or prosecute an assailant. But in some cases, the evidence is collected and then goes unprocessed, creating what some advocates have described as a national backlog of hundreds of thousands.
In Wisconsin, that backlog was about 6,000 when Brad Schimel, the Republican-backed candidate for Supreme Court, took office as Wisconsin’s attorney general in 2015. He served until 2019, and in a recent campaign ad he claimed that his office cleared 4,000 sexual assault kits during that time.
This week, his Democratic-backed opponent, Susan Crawford, released a competing ad that focused on the early years of Schimel’s time as attorney general.
“He let 6,000 rape kits sit untested for two years,” the ad states.
Crawford’s ad refers to a statistic from midway through Schimel’s tenure. As of early 2017, his office said the state had cleared just nine of those 6,000 backlogged tests, according to reporting by the Green Bay Press-Gazette at the time.
That came after the U.S. Department of Justice and the New York County district attorney’s office sent $4 million in grant funds to Wisconsin to assist with the process. A Schimel spokesperson at the time said the DOJ was following proper protocols for respecting survivors and adhering to requirements of the grant money.
A year and a half later, much of the backlog had been cleared. Schimel announced in September 2018 that all but five of the eligible tests had been cleared, using about $7 million total in grant funding.
That announcement came ahead of his reelection campaign against Democrat Josh Kaul, who criticized Schimel’s handling of the backlog and ultimately bested him that November. Schimel said at the time that there was no political motivation behind the announcement.
All told, Schimel said at the time that his office had cleared about 4,154 kits, in which survivors consented to the testing. Some of those incidents dated back to the 1980s.
Now, sexual assault kit testing is once again a subject of political debate — this time in a battle for a seat on Wisconsin’s high court, which has no say in how the state manages its DNA testing.
But being able to hold up a record in addressing crime — or suggesting that one’s opponent is soft or slow to respond to crime — is standard messaging in these races, said Damon Cann, a political scientist at Utah State University who has written extensively about judicial elections.
“Rape kits are crime-related, and crime tends to be the No. 1 issue for voters in judicial elections,” Cann said. But, he added, “the big money and the most influential cases that the courts decide that have the most policy consequences are almost never criminal cases.”
Schimel and Crawford are both running to replace outgoing liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in an election that will determine whether the high court maintains its 4-3 liberal majority or flips to a conservative majority.
Brad Schimel reached a plea bargain with a criminal defendant whose attorney made donations to Schimel’s election campaign.
An attack on Schimel, the conservative candidate in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, was made by Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate. Schimel has considerably more front-line criminal prosecution experience.
In June 2013, Schimel’s Waukesha County district attorney’s office charged Andrew Lambrecht with felony possession of child pornography.
In May 2014, Lambrecht’s lawyer, Matthew Huppertz, wrote a letter to Schimel, filed in court. Schimel had said that if Lambrecht pleaded to the charge, he would not file more charges and would recommend the mandatory minimum three-year prison sentence.
In January 2015, Lambrecht, who had no prior record, pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to three years.
Schimel announced his run for state attorney general in October 2013. From December 2013 until Schimel won the election in November 2014, Huppertz made monthly contributions to Schimel’s campaign totaling $5,500.
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Wisconsin has long had a photo ID requirement for voting on its books — one of the strictest in the nation. This year, voters will decide whether to make it harder to weaken that requirement.
The April 1 ballot contains a proposal that would enshrine the photo ID requirement in the state’s constitution. Republican lawmakers backed the proposed constitutional amendment in an effort to prevent the ID policy, passed in 2011, from being gutted in court.
Approval of the amendment wouldn’t affect the current ID requirement, experts say; rather, it would prevent or at least complicate future efforts to undo it.
The ballot question coming before voters on April 1 will ask whether the Wisconsin Constitution should be amended to “require that voters present valid photographic identification verifying their identity in order to vote in any election, subject to exceptions which may be established by law.”
The amendment would state, in part: “No qualified elector may cast a ballot in any election unless the elector presents valid photographic identification that verifies the elector’s identity.”
Voters can vote “yes” if they want the proposal in the constitution and “no” if they don’t. Whichever way the amendment goes, Wisconsin would continue to have a photo ID requirement for voting because it’s already state law.
The amendment appears likely to pass. Most constitutional amendment proposals in Wisconsin pass when they come before voters, and 74% of Wisconsin residents polled in 2021 supported the photo ID requirement. The Assembly and the Senate both passed the amendment proposal in January on party line votes, with Republicans in favor and Democrats against.
Making the policy a constitutional requirement, and not just a state law, makes it far less likely that a court could strike it down, said Bree Grossi Wilde, executive director of the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. It also means a future Legislature can’t remove the requirement by simply repealing the statute, she said, though it would allow lawmakers to modify the requirement to some extent by creating exceptions.
It’s unclear how far those exceptions could go before they would effectively “gut the requirement” in violation of the constitution, Wilde said. Some states, for example, allow people without photo IDs to cast a ballot if they sign a legal statement affirming their identity.
“Maybe there is still wiggle room on the part of the Legislature to provide relief from the requirement in certain circumstances,” she said. “Whether you could say, ‘If you don’t have an ID, you don’t have to provide it,’ that might be too far. A court might not protect that.”
What’s the history behind photo IDs for voting?
The law that the amendment would enshrine was enacted in 2011 but faced court challenges that limited its implementation for several years. Republican proponents said it would make elections more secure by protecting against voter impersonation, something that research has shown is rare. Opponents of the law filed lawsuits alleging that the policy made it too hard to vote.
Its first use in a presidential election was in 2016, and the requirement has remained in place ever since.
The law requires voters to present their photo ID when they vote. If they can’t show ID, they can cast a provisional ballot and would have to present their photo ID afterward to have that ballot count.. Acceptable photo IDs include driver’s licenses, military IDs, IDs issued by federally recognized Native American tribes, U.S. passports, some university IDs, free voting IDs issued by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, and some other types.
Wisconsin is among nine states that have “strict photo ID” laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In these states, voters must have a photo ID when they vote, or have to vote via provisional ballot and then provide photo ID later — either to poll workers on Election Day or to the local election clerk within days of the election — for their ballots to count. Other states either have strict non-photo ID laws, less stringent ID requirements or no ID requirement at all.
Researchers have found that Wisconsin’s law had a disenfranchising effect.
In the 2016 presidential election, an estimated 4,000 to 11,000 eligible people in Dane and Milwaukee counties didn’t vote mainly because they lacked an eligible photo ID, a study concluded, based on survey responses from nearly 300 registered nonvoters. The study, by then-University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer, estimated that for 8,000 to 17,000 people in those heavily Democratic counties, lack of photo ID was one of many reasons they didn’t vote.
People who were Black, who earned lower incomes and who had less formal education were less likely to have eligible photo IDs, the study states.
Republicans widely criticized the study over its sample size and methodology. Republicans have also criticized Democrats for simultaneously arguing that photo IDs are too hard for some people to get while alsosaying, in their effort to encourage voting, that free voter IDs are easy to get.
The IDs are indeed free, but getting to a Division of Motor Vehicles office to obtain one isn’t, said Lauren Kunis, CEO and executive director of VoteRiders, which helps voters obtain the identification they need to vote.
“Convenience matters when we’re talking about voting,” she said. “Some of us think about voting all day, every day, and we’ll make it a priority to get your ducks in a row and get everything you need well in advance of any deadlines. But that is not the case for the average eligible voter in the United States, and we need to design policies and systems that think about that voter.”
The law’s specifications about which IDs are acceptable make it more complicated, said Jake Spence, VoteRiders’ Wisconsin coordinator.
For example, standard IDs issued by some big state universities, including UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, aren’t suitable for voting. The state’s strict criteria for student ID used for voting requires including the date the card was issued, the student’s signature and an expiration date no later than two years after its issuance. The standard student IDs issued at those universities don’t meet those requirements, though students can ask for compliant IDs.
Across Wisconsin, Kunis said, VoteRiders staff and volunteers have encountered not only people who couldn’t vote because they didn’t have an appropriate ID but also people who had appropriate IDs but didn’t vote because they were confused by the law, sometimes unaware that their ID met the requirements.
What should I know about the proposed amendment?
Republican proponents say they want to put the law in the constitution to keep the liberal-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court from striking down the photo ID requirement, especially if liberal candidate Susan Crawford, who argued against the ID rule in court, wins a seat on the high court in April’s election.
“I cannot say for certain how (the) Wisconsin Supreme Court would rule on voter ID laws, but I’m also not willing to risk the Wisconsin Supreme Court, unburdened by precedent and the Wisconsin Constitution, declaring voter ID laws unconstitutional,” Republican Sen. Van Wanggaard said at a hearing on the proposal.
Democratic legislators and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers ardently opposed the proposed amendment, saying it has a disenfranchising effect.
“This is about voter suppression,” said Rep. Christine Sinicki, a Milwaukee Democrat, adding that there were people in her neighborhood who can’t get a photo ID to vote.
The measure passed nonetheless in the GOP-majority Legislature. Evers doesn’t have the power to veto constitutional amendment proposals, which must pass two successive legislatures before they can appear on the ballot.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
Wisconsin’s photo ID requirement for voting would be elevated from a state law to a constitutional amendment under a proposal approved Tuesday in the Republican-controlled Assembly with no support from Democrats.
The proposed constitutional amendment will appear on the April 1 ballot for voter consideration. It would need to be approved by voters before the constitution would be amended. Even if voters reject it, the voter ID requirement that has been in state law since 2011 will remain in place.
Republicans, citing Wisconsin polls that showed broad support for voter ID requirements, hailed the measure as a way to bolster election security and protect the law from being overturned in court.
But Democrats said photo ID requirements are often enforced unfairly, making it more difficult for people of color, people with disabilities and poor people to vote. Democrats argued that lawmakers should focus instead on other issues such as gun control, clean water, affordable housing, and expanding access to child care.
If voters agree to place the photo ID requirement in the constitution, it would make it more difficult for a future Legislature controlled by Democrats to change a law they’ve long opposed. Any constitutional amendment must be approved in two consecutive legislative sessions and by a statewide vote of the people.
Wisconsin is one of nine states where voters must present a photo ID to cast a ballot, and its requirement is the strictest in the country, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Thirty-six states have laws requiring or requesting that voters show some sort of identification at the polls, according to NCSL.
Other states have taken similar steps in recent years to put voter ID requirements in their constitutions, with mixed success. Voters approved it in Mississippi in 2011 and North Carolina voters in 2018, while Minnesota voters rejected it in 2012.
The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature first passed the state’s voter ID law in 2011. It took effect briefly in 2012, but courts that year put it on hold until 2016 after state and federal courts allowed it to take effect.
The Legislature last session approved the voter ID constitutional amendment for the first time. The measure was the first proposal considered by the Legislature this year. The state Senate passed it last week along a party line vote, with all Republicans in support and Democrats against.
The Assembly on Tuesday gave it the final approval needed, also on a party line vote, sending it to the ballot for voter consideration.
It will be the sixth ballot measure the Legislature has placed on the ballot over the past year. Amending the constitution puts questions before voters and avoids potential vetoes by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
Evers this month proposed giving citizens the ability to put measures on the ballot through a referendum process. Evers on Tuesday renewed that call, which Republicans oppose.
“If Republican lawmakers are going to continue ignoring the will of the people and legislating by constitutional amendment, then they should give the people of Wisconsin the power to pass the policies they want to see at the ballot box,” Evers said in a statement.
Lawmakers moved quickly because of a Jan. 21 deadline to get the issue on the April 1 ballot.
Control of the state Supreme Court also hangs in the balance in that April election. The race for an open seat will determine whether liberals maintain control for at least the next three years. The Democratic-backed candidate, Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, was the lead attorney in a 2011 lawsuit challenging the voter ID law.
There are no pending legal challenges to voter ID.
Even if the amendment is approved, lawmakers could still decide what types of photo IDs are acceptable. Voters without a photo ID could still cast a provisional ballot, as they can now. The ballot is counted if the voter returns later with a photo ID.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
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The April 1 state Supreme Court election is expected to pit liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford against conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel.
If liberals win, they will retain control of the court through at least 2028. If conservatives win, it will re-empower Justice Brian Hagedorn as the critical swing vote on the court.
Under the first year of liberal control of the court, the justices decided only 14 cases, a significant drop from previous terms. Only four of those cases were split 4-3 along ideological lines.
In the previous four years since Hagedorn was elected, there were 61 4-3 decisions, and the conservative swing justice was in the majority in 50 of those cases, far more than any other justice.
Wisconsin is hurtling toward another nationally watched, pivotal state Supreme Court election.
The April 1 race has two possible outcomes: a guaranteed liberal majority until 2028 or a 3-3 split with Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative-leaning swing vote, again wielding outsized influence.
Longtime Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is retiring after 30 years on the high court. She has anchored the court’s liberal majority for the past two years after serving for decades without being in a clear-cut majority.
The contest seems poised to pit Susan Crawford, a Dane County judge endorsed by the court’s four current liberal members, against former Attorney General Brad Schimel, a Republican who now serves as a Waukesha County judge. If Crawford wins, liberals will lock in their majority for at least three more years, with chances to expand it in 2026 and 2027, when Justice Rebecca Bradley and Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, both conservatives, will be up for reelection.
Outside groups are already mobilizing to boost their candidates in the ostensibly nonpartisan race. In November, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin endorsed Crawford, boasting that the Madison judge “will always protect Wisconsinites’ core freedoms.” Meanwhile, conservative groups, like Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin, have come out for Schimel, saying he’s the candidate “who will restore balance and reestablish trust in our state’s highest court.”
So what will voters get from either outcome? The court’s recent terms provide clues.
Liberal majority moving slowly
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is at the center of state politics. For the past two years, Justices Rebecca Dallet, Jill Karofsky, Janet Protasiewicz and Walsh Bradley — who collectively make up the court’s liberal majority — have flexed their influence and remade Wisconsin’s political landscape.
Two cases in particular stand out. In the first, the liberal majority threw out the state’s Republican-gerrymandered voting maps, breaking a GOP vice grip on the Legislature. As a result Democrats picked up 14 seats in the Assembly and state Senate in a good Republican year nationwide. In the other, the liberal bloc expanded voting access, reversing a conservative-authored decision from just two years earlier that banned the use of unstaffed absentee ballot drop boxes.
But in other cases, the liberal justices have proceeded more cautiously than their allies would have hoped. They didn’t rule that partisan gerrymandering violated the state constitution, instead tossing the skewed maps on a technicality. The majority also declined to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional districts, despite being prompted by a Democratic-aligned law firm. They rejected another case asking them to boot Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein from November’s ballot, and in a fourth case, they allowed a long-shot challenger to Joe Biden on the primary ballot despite objections from other Democrats.
In fact, of the court’s paltry 14 decisions last term, only four cases were settled 4-3 along ideological lines, and that includes the legislative maps and ballot drop box cases. In the third, the court’s liberal majority ruled that the Catholic Charities Bureau did not qualify for a religious exemption from contributing to Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance system. In the fourth, they ruled a Door County village could use eminent domain to seize a sliver of land from a business owner to build a sidewalk.
From left, Wisconsin Supreme Court justices Jill Karofsky, Rebecca Dallet and Ann Walsh Bradley — three of the court’s four liberal members — are shown on Sept. 7, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. Walsh Bradley is retiring at the end of this term, setting up an open seat election for April 1. If the liberal candidate wins that election, the bloc will control the court until at least 2028. (Andy Manis for Wisconsin Watch)
In other cases, they built consensus with their conservative colleagues.
In one political case, Gov. Tony Evers challenged a law giving the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee the ability to veto certain conservation projects, arguing it was a separation of powers violation. The four liberal justices, Hagedorn and Bradley agreed.
“Maintaining the separation of powers between the branches is essential for the preservation of liberty and a government accountable to the people,” the justices declared in a Rebecca Bradley-authored opinion.
In another case, the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court ruling rejecting an effort from an Ashland County mother to have her partner, whom she is not married to, adopt her child. In another Rebecca Bradley-authored opinion, the justices relied on a literal reading of a state statute requiring a stepparent to be married to a child’s parent in order to be eligible to adopt the child.
While constitutional claims weren’t considered, a concurring opinion from Dallet suggests the liberals could be open to broad interpretations of the Wisconsin Constitution.
The Wisconsin “constitution was written independently of the United States Constitution and we must interpret it as such, based on its own language and our state’s unique identity,” Dallet wrote.
The state constitution states: “All people are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
That clause is at the crux of a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin seeking affirmation the Wisconsin Constitution protects abortion access. The high court has not yet scheduled that case for oral arguments.
Hagedorn wields powerful swing vote
If Schimel triumphs on April 1, the court will revert to being conservative-leaning, with Hagedorn, who is the swingiest member of the court, wielding immense influence.
Consider the three court terms prior to the liberals taking the majority from 2020 to 2023. During those three terms, the court settled 61 cases 4-3. Hagedorn was among the four-justice majority in 50 of them, or 82% of all 4-3 cases. The next closest justice was Karofsky, who appeared in the 4-3 majority 36 times.
During that same period, Hagedorn sided with his conservative or liberal colleagues in an equal number of 4-3 cases, voting with each bloc 24 times.
His impact was even more profound in political cases: Among the 16 political cases settled 4-3 during those terms, he was in the majority in all but one case.
Justice Brian Hagedorn hears oral arguments in the Wisconsin Elections Commission v. Devin LeMahieu case at the Wisconsin State Capitol on Nov. 18, 2024, in Madison, Wis. From 2020 to 2023, Hagedorn was in the 4-3 majority 50 out of 61 times, more than any other justice. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Where Hagedorn lands in certain cases isn’t always predictable. In a lawsuit Donald Trump filed to tip the 2020 election results in his favor, Hagedorn joined his three liberal colleagues, holding that Trump took too long to file his claims.
On legislative redistricting Hagedorn initially joined his conservative colleagues in endorsing a “least-change” approach to drawing new maps after the 2020 Census, ensuring previously Republican gerrymandered maps would continue. But then he sided with his liberal colleagues in selecting maps drawn by Evers. When the U.S. Supreme Court rejected those maps because of potential Voting Rights Act violations, he returned to the conservative bloc and implemented maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Hagedorn’s swings also happen in non-political cases. In a criminal case from June 2023, Hagedorn, writing for his conservative colleagues, held that a Marshfield man’s Fourth Amendment rights weren’t violated during a traffic stop. In that case a police officer pulled over Quaheem Moore for speeding. After smelling “raw marijuana,” she and another officer removed him from his car and conducted a search, finding other drugs and ultimately arresting Moore. The court held the officers had probable cause to believe Moore had committed a crime, over the objections of their liberal colleagues.
A few years later, in the case of a drunk driver who wasn’t demonstrating any signs of impairment, Hagedorn joined the four liberal justices and Bradley in a 6-1 decision holding the driver’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated. The court determined the Plymouth police officer who arrested Michael Wiskowski after he fell asleep in a McDonald’s drive-thru committed an unconstitutional search when he tested his sobriety and ultimately arrested him. The court determined the officer didn’t have probable cause Wiskowski had committed a crime.
Hagedorn’s willingness to work with both ideological blocs has drawn criticism from other conservatives. After Hagedorn sided with the liberal justices in one 2020 case, Republican former state Rep. Adam Jarchow tweeted that “conservatives have been snookered” by the justice. The justice rebutted that, saying in 2020 he “will apply the law as written, without fear or favor, in every case before me.”
In April 2022, former Justice Daniel Kelly — who has twice failed to win a 10-year term after being appointed to the bench — declared Hagedorn to be “supremely unreliable in his commitment to following what the law says.”
Hagedorn is up for re-election in 2029.
Political discord empowers court
The April 1 election will represent the first time in decades — if ever — voters will have the opportunity to assess the performance of a liberal majority on the court.
A major theme ahead of the 2023 election was that a Protasiewicz victory would give liberals a majority for the first time in 15 years. But that assertion was misleading, according to Alan Ball, a Marquette University history professor who closely tracks the court.
Between the 2004-05 and 2007-08 court terms, there were three reliably conservative justices — David Prosser, Patience Roggensack and Jon Wilcox, who was replaced in 2007 by Ziegler — and three reliably liberal justices — Shirley Abrahamson, Ann Walsh Bradley and Louis Butler. Justice Patrick Crooks was a swing vote. In non-unanimous decisions during that period, he sided with the liberals 44% of the time and with the conservatives in 48% of cases, according to an analysis from Ball.
“Perhaps the Butler years came to appear liberal in retrospect because conservative dominance of the court grew so pronounced during the ensuing decade,” Ball wrote in a blog post the day after the 2023 election, pointing to the additions of Justice Michael Gableman, Rebecca Bradley and Daniel Kelly to the court.
In April, voters will decide what direction the court will shift as more and more issues land before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, giving it even more influence than the already powerful institution has had in previous terms, legal experts told Wisconsin Watch.
“The court is powerful, to a large degree, as a byproduct of the fact that the more traditionally political branches aren’t playing well with each other right now,” said Chad Oldfather, a professor at Marquette University Law School. “In America, all questions tend to become legal questions eventually, and that process probably gets accelerated in times like this.”
The state Supreme Court’s influence in recent years has been most profound on checking the power of the Legislature, University of Wisconsin Law School professor Robert Yablon said.
“Over the past decade or more, I think you can make the case that it’s the Legislature that was the most powerful branch (of government),” he told Wisconsin Watch in an interview.
But now the court has pushed back on the Legislature’s power, he said, and it may view its rulings as a way to restore balance among the three branches of government.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford was among attorneys who sued seeking to overturn Act 10, a 2011 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most Wisconsin public employee unions.
The law spurred mass protests for weeks in Madison.
At the time, Crawford said the law violated Wisconsin’s Constitution and was “aimed at crippling public employee unions.”
In 2014, the state Supreme Court upheld Act 10, calling collective bargaining “a creation of legislative grace and not constitutional obligation.”
Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, Crawford’s conservative challenger in the April 1, 2025, election, made the claim about Crawford Dec. 1, 2024. Crawford is a Dane County judge.
On Dec. 2, Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost struck down Act 10 in a lawsuit in which Crawford is not listed as an attorney.
An appeal notice was filed the same day. Appeals are likely to reach the Supreme Court, which has a 4-3 liberal majority.
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