“This is for all the marbles”
There’s an election coming up in what is arguably the most important swing state in the country. And the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Abortion. Union rights. Gerrymandering. Fair elections.
Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much in Wisconsin, the nation’s most important and arguably its most polarized swing state. But they agree that their state’s ongoing Supreme Court election is the most important in a generation.
“The Supreme Court race is for all the marbles,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler told VICE News.
Conservatives concur. They’re even using the same description.
“This is for all the marbles,” Brandon Scholz, a veteran Wisconsin Republican strategist and lobbyist who has managed previous supreme court races, told VICE News.
The April 4 election will determine whether liberals or conservatives have a majority on the state Supreme Court.
That balance of power couldn’t be more important. The court will soon decide whether abortion is legal for the state’s 6 million people. It will likely reconsider whether the aggressively gerrymandered maps that have kept Republicans mostly in control of the swing state for more than a decade will remain in place through 2030. And it will play a crucial arbiter of how the state’s elections are run in 2024, when Wisconsin could once again decide who wins the presidency.
Early voting has already begun for the February 21 nonpartisan primary, and the top two vote-winners will advance to an April 4 runoff election.
The race has centered heavily around abortion. When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion last year, an 1849 law banning abortion in Wisconsin went back into effect (it was written just one year after Wisconsin became a state, and more than a half-century before women gained the right to vote). Wisconsin Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul is challenging the law, and whoever wins this race will likely be deciding vote on how that case goes.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Judge Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal who is expected to advance to the general election, has campaigned hard on abortion rights and told VICE News that “a woman should have a right to choose.” Her two conservative opponents, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow, have been slightly less explicit about the issue—but both have endorsements from Wisconsin Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion rights group.
But abortion isn’t the only crucial issue at stake in this race.
Wisconsin was the tipping-point state in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, has been ground zero for fights over gerrymandering and fair elections in recent years. Its makeup will be crucial in future democracy fights.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court race will shape the future of American democracy,” said Wikler.
Conservatives have had a majority on Wisconsin’s highest court for more than a decade, and during that time have largely sided with Republicans on a bevy of hot-button issues.
Before the 2022 election the court banned absentee ballot drop boxes; in 2014 it upheld a Republican-crafted voter identification law that studies indicate has suppressed the Black vote; and in 2011 it allowed Republicans’ deeply controversial law that gutted public-sector unions.
The justices narrowly ruled 4-3 against considering a Trump lawsuit that aimed to overturn his 2020 election loss in Wisconsin—but in most other cases the court has sided with the GOP. That includes a decision that ended Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ COVID-19 emergency order early in the pandemic, as well as decisions that stripped him of other powers.
And voting rights will continue to come up. A conservative group is suing to ban mobile and alternate voting facilities in order to limit access to voting; the Democratic National Committee intervened in the lawsuit this Monday in a case that will likely wind up decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and will likely hinge on who wins this race.
But conservative Justice Patience Roggensack’s decision to retire has given liberals their best chance in a generation to win back control.
“Everything is at stake, and I mean everything: Women’s reproductive rights, the maps, drop boxes, safe communities, clean water,” Protasiewicz told VICE News. “Everything is on the line.”
Read the whole thing for the details. It’s an astonishing race considering how much this could affect all of is.
If you read nothing else about this important election, read this about Everett Mitchell, one of the progressive judges running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. What an inspiring story. Any high court would be lucky to have someone with a life story like his on the bench.