Supreme Clash

Rivals battle for control of the court by accusing each other of being a threat to public safety

by

Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel, the two candidates vying for a 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, agree on one thing: The person they are running against is not just woefully unfit but dangerous.

Crawford, a liberal circuit court judge in Dane County, has labeled Schimel, a conservative circuit court judge from Waukesha County, a “right-wing extremist” because of his support for a 1849 state law banning abortion in nearly all cases. Schimel’s campaign, in turn, has pegged Crawford as “a radical in a robe with an extreme and dangerous agenda.”

Both characterizations are a bit of a stretch. While Crawford has affiliated with Democrats and worked to defend reproductive rights, workers rights and voting rights, there is nothing alarmingly leftist about her. And while Schimel has held office as a Republican and repeatedly sided with conservative causes, including anti-abortion advocacy, he is no more extreme than other court conservatives or other morally compromised Republicans in the age of Donald Trump, whose endorsement Schimel has coveted.

The April 1 election to replace longtime liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is expected to be the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with Nick Ramos, executive director of the watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, forecasting total spending of between $70 million and $80 million. The previous record was set in the state’s last Supreme Court election, in 2023, in which more than $51 million was spent, mostly by outside interest groups including political parties. In that election, liberal Janet Protasiewicz bested conservative Dan Kelly, giving liberals a majority on the court for the first time in decades.

Now the court’s ideological balance is again up for grabs. If Crawford wins, liberals will retain control until at least through 2028. If Schimel wins, conservatives will rule for at least a year, with liberals having chances, in 2026 and 2027, to win back the majority. Everything from reproductive freedom to workers rights to election rules hangs in the balance.

While there are significant and even sharp ideological differences between Crawford and Schimel, the campaign messaging coming from both sides is more extreme than are the candidates. That is a disservice to Wisconsin voters — but one that will likely be a feature of state Supreme Court elections for some time to come.

One ad aired by the Crawford campaign features a gravelly voiced male narrator intoning that Schimel, in his four-year stint as state attorney general, failed to address a backlog of untested rape kits “while rapists walked free and victims waited for justice.” The ad pictures a woman holding her head in her hands, an apparent indictment of Schimel’s indifference toward rape victims. Left unmentioned is that Schimel, unlike his predecessors, eventually did make substantial progress toward eliminating his office’s rape kit backlog.

Meanwhile, a Schimel campaign ad has a female narrator asserting, in a shocked hushed voice, that Crawford, in her former role as the state Justice Department’s head of criminal appeals, “didn’t bother filing the appeal” of an overturned rape conviction, “letting the rapist walk free.” The goal of this ad, which uses an admittedly doctored photo of Crawford, is to insinuate that Crawford is ardently pro-rapist, and will do everything in her power to protect them. In fact, it was others in the office who miscalculated a filing deadline, which led to a plea deal that included no additional prison time. Then-state Rep. Scott Walker pronounced it an isolated incident and Crawford took steps to prevent similar mishaps.

The campaigns’ messaging, which will continue to spew at firehose intensity in the run-up to the April 1 election, aided by outside players including Elon Musk, is meant to appeal to what they consider to be the most important voters — the ones who are barely paying attention and whose votes can be manipulated by efforts to misinform and frighten them. The ads’ focus on violent crime and unsafe communities has little to do with what the job of state Supreme Court justice actually entails.

Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, attributes the polarization and demonization that has become integral to the state’s purportedly “nonpartisan” judicial elections to heavy spending by outside groups. In recent years, he says, “any pretense of nonpartisanship is gone. It has become a left versus right, progressive versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican battle.”

And as these contests have gotten more partisan, they have also gotten nastier, with each side “at each other’s throats.” Heck fears the current election could out-ugly the 2008 race in which Michael Gableman ousted the court’s first and only Black justice, Louis Butler, by running ads so racist and dishonest that Gableman drew a Wisconsin Judicial Commission ethics charge, which his fellow court conservatives blocked from resulting in disciplinary action.

Crawford, in an interview, says she thinks the court needs justices “who look at the law as a tool for protecting people.” She promises that, if elected, “I’ll use common sense, I’ll make sure that I get the facts right, and I’ll apply the law fairly and impartially in making decisions. I’m also not going to prejudge any decision.” She says this is in sharp contrast to Schimel, who has expressed his view that the state’s 1849 abortion ban is valid, an issue that the court has agreed to decide.

While Schimel, as attorney general, did not play a role in defending Act 10, Gov. Walker’s dismantling of the union rights of most public employees, his campaign bashed a Dane County judge who ruled against the law, calling it “the latest instance of the Left using the justice system to satisfy their donors and dismantle laws they don’t like.” The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of that ruling.

Will he recuse from these cases?

Isthmus tried to get Schimel’s perspective on this and other matters (see “Questions we would have liked to ask Brad Schimel”) but his campaign, through spokesperson Jacob Fischer, ignored repeated interview requests. Nor would it comment on a recent state appellate court ruling rebuking his handling of an open meetings case (see “Schimel’s mixed record on open government”).

It’s part of a pattern: “Schimel’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment” (Wisconsin Examiner, 1-22-25); “Schimel’s campaign did not respond to an email seeking clarity on his comments” (Associated Press, 1-27-25); “Schimel’s campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment” (Daily Cardinal, 2-13-25). Evidently, Schimel’s handlers feel there is nothing to be gained by helping the press delve more deeply into his record. It’s a legitimate concern.

As state attorney general from 2015 to 2019, Schimel repeatedly used his office to advance highly partisan issues unrelated and in some cases contrary to the interests of Wisconsin citizens. He signed onto a brief backing Exxon Mobil in a lawsuit over whether it had suppressed information about climate change, falsely claiming the scientific debate on this issue “remains unsettled.” He argued, unsuccessfully, that a pipeline company should not face liability for a massive gas spill in South Carolina. He used the resources of his office to oppose gun laws in Washington, D.C., and teacher-tenure laws in Indiana.

But perhaps Schimel’s most questionable exertion of power was his full-blown advocacy against the Affordable Care Act, which has benefitted hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. He spearheaded a lawsuit filed by 20 states challenging the act’s constitutionality and, when part of the law was struck down, he gleefully posted on social media, “Our case to eliminate Obamacare once and for all is headed to victory!”

Crawford says this is just another example, along with his opposition to reproductive choice, of “Brad Schimel’s history of working to take rights away from people.” During the 2018 election that he lost to Democrat Josh Kaul, 45 former Wisconsin assistant attorneys general signed a letter faulting Schimel for having “blatantly politicized” his office. Schimel, on a conservative radio show last year, seemed to go with this flow, facetiously boasting that “we sued the Obama administration every 10 minutes when I was AG.”

Schimel’s campaign website presents him as a tough-on-crime hardliner waging war against runaway wokeness. “From opening the border to releasing criminals on our streets, rogue judges across the nation are putting their radical agenda above the law,” it alleges. “Brad Schimel will take back the Wisconsin Supreme Court and end the madness.” It also warns that if “the Left” wins in April, they will “end parental rights,” “turn their backs on law enforcement” and “force biological males into girls’ bathrooms,” among other scary things.

Crawford, on her campaign website, strikes a less strident tone, touting her “deep understanding of our justice system” and taking credit for having, in her past role as an attorney in private practice, “protected voting and workers’ rights, and represented Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin to defend access to reproductive health care.”

Asked to respond to Schimel’s website assertion that “dramatic overreach” by the court’s current liberal majority “is leading our state to destruction,” Crawford responds: “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I believe that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has been making decisions in the last couple of years that look to protect the rights of Wisconsinites. And I don’t necessarily agree 100% with the interpretation of the majority of justices on the Supreme Court in every single case, but I think that they are working hard to make fair, impartial decisions that protect Wisconsinites, and that’s certainly what I would do on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”

Crawford, in a statement announcing her candidacy, framed the election as a choice between two sides in an ideological divide. “For the first time in years, we have a majority on the court focused on getting the facts right, following the law, and protecting our constitutional rights,” she said. “We can’t risk having that progress reversed.”

Schimel’s endorsements lean heavily to law enforcement — which is a bit baffling, considering his expressions of sympathy for the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol at Trump’s instigation on Jan. 6, 2021, as well as his refusal to criticize Trump’s decision to pardon those who assaulted police. Crawford’s website catalogues the endorsements she’s received from more than 150 past and current judges, including all four of the court’s current liberals and Louis Butler.

No matter how the election turns out, the problem posed by unlimited spending in judicial races co-opted by special interests remains. What’s needed, Heck says, is fundamental reform, whether it comes from passing stronger recusal rules, limits on campaign spending, or having justices be picked by governors, legislators or some process of merit selection, as happens in half the states. The Wisconsin State Journal has also long championed changes in how Supreme Court justices are chosen.

“Judicial elections turn our best judges into the worst of politicians,” says Scott Milfred, the State Journal’s opinion editor, affirming the paper’s ongoing support for merit selection. “We also have been open to other potential improvements to encourage more judicial independence, such as single, longer terms.”

The April 1 election will kick off six consecutive years of state Supreme Court elections. And, Heck says, “each of those elections is going to be as high stakes and as vicious and nasty as this one. So it’s going to be a difficult number of years ahead. And, I’m afraid, it’s going to get much worse before it gets better.”

Susan Crawford

Age: 60

Current job: Elected as a Dane County circuit court judge in 2018; reelected in 2024.

Education: Graduated from Lawrence University (BA), Indiana University Bloomington (MA) and University of Iowa (JD).

Resume: Worked as a prosecutor with the state Justice Department; held leadership positions in several state agencies; served as chief legal counsel to Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. 

Family: Lives in Madison, married to UW-Madison lecturer and noted nonfiction author Shawn Francis Peters; the couple has two adult children.

Fun fact: Worked in the dishroom at the dining hall at Lawrence University to help pay her college expenses.

Brad Schimel

Age: 60

Current job: Appointed as a Waukesha County circuit court judge by Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2018; elected to a six-year term in 2019.

Education: Earned his bachelor’s degree and his law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Resume: Elected as a Republican to serve as Waukesha County district attorney from 2007 to 2015, and as state attorney general from 2015 to 2019.

Family: Lives in Waukesha County with wife, Sandi, and their two daughters.

Fun fact: Plays bass guitar in 4 on the Floor, a classic rock and pop tunes band.

Schimel’s mixed record on open government

On July 2, 2015, GOP lawmakers in Wisconsin sneakily approved sweeping changes to the state’s open records law, largely exempting the Legislature from its reach. Then-Attorney General Brad Schimel, now a circuit court judge running for state Supreme Court, was among the first to speak out in opposition. “Transparency is the cornerstone of democracy,” he said, blasting the changes as moving the state “in the wrong direction.”

The lawmakers promptly caved in response to the pushback they received (including from me, in my role as president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council). Schimel made openness a key focus of his tenure as attorney general, hosting an all-day summit on the topic, creating a state Office of Open Government and advising that records custodians should be charging much less for copies.

But perhaps these engagements were simply ways to capitalize on deep public support for transparency in government, because Schimel’s overall record on the subject is mixed. His office fought to block the release of training videos that may have captured questionable comments he made when he was the Waukesha County district attorney, getting the Wisconsin Supreme Court to overrule two lower courts that said the videos should be public. And in 2017, Schimel tried to shield records regarding his participation in a conference of a Christian legal advocacy group at which his colleague, Wisconsin Solicitor General Misha Tseytlin, presented a strategy for overturning the federal right to reproductive choice.

But most troubling is an open meetings case that Schimel handled as a Waukesha County circuit court judge, where he ruled in a way that was contrary to the law and protective of official misconduct. At issue was a 2020 meeting by the Elmbrook school board in which the board president conducted an illegal secret email ballot to fill an open board seat and then lied about the results to leverage the outcome he desired. An unsuccessful applicant sued over this rather blatant violation of the state’s open meetings law.

Schimel dismissed the case, saying he could not conclude that there was “some intent to hide something” because emails showing what the board president had done were subsequently released. He also agreed with defense arguments that the passed-up applicant was not a proper plaintiff because she had a “personal interest” in the outcome.

On Feb. 5, the state’s conservative District 2 Court of Appeals unanimously overturned Schimel’s ruling, saying the defendants’ arguments — which Schimel bought hook, line and sinker — amounted to “grasping at straws” and were “stunningly” inappropriate. Complying with the records law, the court said, does not “immunize” officials against consequences for violating the meetings law. Moreover, it noted dryly, “it would be a unique case indeed in which a person with no interest in the outcome of a government action brought an open meetings law challenge in an attempt to void the action.”

Tom Kamenick of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, a law firm devoted to open government litigation, says Schimel “botched this one badly.” The wrongfulness of the board president’s actions “should have been obvious to anyone with a passing understanding of the meetings law.”

Schimel campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer did not respond to a detailed request for comment.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court regularly decides important cases regarding the state’s transparency laws. If elected, Schimel will have many more opportunities to either hold public officials accountable for violations or, as in this case, fail to do so.

—B.L.

Questions we would have liked to ask Brad Schimel

While Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford readily agreed to an interview for Isthmus’ coverage of the race, the campaign of her opponent, Brad Schimel, refused to respond to repeated requests for even a 15-minute phone conversation. Here is a partial list of the questions we would have posed. 

You have said, with regard to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, that “anyone convicted of assaulting law enforcement should serve their full sentence.” President Donald Trump pardoned hundreds of people convicted of assaulting law enforcement. Was he wrong to do so, yes or no?

Who won the 2020 presidential election?

Do you consider yourself pro-life and, if so, how does that impact how you will decide cases having to do with abortion?

You have repeatedly argued that the state’s 1849 abortion law remains valid, a question now before the Supreme Court. Your campaign has criticized a judge who ruled against Act 10, which undercut public employees’ union rights. Won’t this make it impossible for you to fairly decide cases regarding these issues?

You posted in 2017 that it was an “honor” to be part of a case called Planned Parenthood vs. Schimel, where you defended a Republican effort to make it harder for women in Wisconsin to obtain an abortion. Are you still proud of this role?

Are there any cases from which you would recuse yourself because of your past stances and involvements? 

You state on your website: “The dramatic overreach of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is leading our state to destruction.” Do you really believe that the court’s liberal majority is seeking to destroy the state?

—B.L.