Progressive Janet Protasiewicz prevails in high stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court contest

The elec­tion of a pro­gres­sive jus­tice to the Wis­con­sin State Supreme Court has bro­ken a Repub­li­can stran­gle­hold on the Bad­ger State, pos­si­bly set­ting up the over­turn­ing of an 1849 law ban­ning almost all abor­tions plus invit­ing a legal chal­lenge to the most ger­ry­man­dered state leg­isla­tive maps in the nation.

Mil­wau­kee Coun­ty Judge Janet Pro­tasiewicz defeat­ed right wing rival Dan Kel­ly, a for­mer jus­tice appoint­ed by Scott Walk­er, by a 170,000-vote mar­gin in an elec­tion that drew more than 1.7 mil­lion vot­ers and saw more than $45 mil­lion spent.

It was the most expen­sive judi­cial elec­tion in Amer­i­can history.

Kel­ly was a con­sul­tant to the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee and state Repub­li­can Par­ty dur­ing Don­ald Trump’s attempt to over­turn results of the 2020 elec­tion, in which Pres­i­dent Biden car­ried the Bad­ger State by a 20,000-vote margin.

The Wis­con­sin vic­to­ry by Pro­tasiewicz cre­ates a 4–3 pro­gres­sive major­i­ty on the court, which is offi­cial­ly non­par­ti­san but has been con­trolled by con­ser­v­a­tives since 2008. She will serve a ten-year term, last­ing through the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion as well as redis­trict­ing in the next decade.

The elec­tion saw a con­tin­u­a­tion of last year’s elec­tion trends, in which vot­ers across the coun­try reject­ed ultra MAGA Repub­li­can extrem­ists and embraced pro-choice can­di­dates. “Abor­tion cuts ice in Wis­con­sin,” emailed David Lawsky, a long­time Reuters polit­i­cal reporter now retired and liv­ing in near­by Chicago.

As well, the pro­gres­sive trend among under-thir­ty vot­ers was evi­dent, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Dane Coun­ty, home to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin. “Abor­tion rights and vot­ing rights are too impor­tant for us to stand idly by, and young peo­ple will stop at noth­ing to pro­tect the future we believe in,” Cristi­na Tzintzun Ramirez, pres­i­dent of the nation­al group NextGen, said in a statement.

Pro­tasiewicz would not say now she would vote in spe­cif­ic cas­es but made no secret of her values.

She described the Wis­con­sin Leg­is­la­ture as “rigged” and “unfair,” adding: “Wis­con­sin has prob­a­bly the most ger­ry­man­dered maps in the entire country.”

On abor­tion, she has been equal­ly blunt: “My per­son­al val­ue is that a woman has a right to choose.” With the Supreme Court’s vote to over­turn Roe v. Wade, there revived on the books an 1849 Wis­con­sin law ban­ning almost all abor­tions.” The law was enact­ed sev­en­ty years before Amer­i­can women won the right to vote.

Wis­con­sin is an even­ly divid­ed state: Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates have car­ried the state in every elec­tion since 1988, except for Trump’s nar­row 2016 vic­to­ry. The state was home to ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry pro­gres­sive Sen­a­tor Robert LaFol­lette, but also to the 1950s red-baiter Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy.

John F. Kennedy’s road to the White House began with his 1960 wins in New Hamp­shire and Wis­con­sin. Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son announced in 1968 that he would not seek reelec­tion, know­ing he would like­ly lose the Wis­con­sin pri­ma­ry the fol­low­ing Tues­day to Viet­nam War crit­ic Sen­a­tor Eugene McCarthy.

As recent­ly as the end of the 2000s, Democ­rats had a tri­fec­ta in Wis­con­sin, with Gov­er­nor Jim Doyle and Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­isla­tive majori­ties in both chambers.

Yet, fol­low­ing the elec­tion of mil­i­tant Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Scott Walk­er (Doyle’s suc­ces­sor) in the 2010 midterms, the state began shift­ing sharply to the right.

Walk­er and Repub­li­cans in the Leg­is­la­ture gut­ted the pow­er of pub­lic employ­ee unions. The state enact­ed a fire-at-will law. Bal­lot drop box­es were banned.

The Wis­con­sin Supreme Court lat­er took up a Trump motion to dis­qual­i­fy 200,000 votes from Mil­wau­kee and Dane Coun­ties, both of which Joe Biden won big.

In the words of Jef­frey Man­dell of Law For­ward, a pro­gres­sive legal group: ““Pret­ty much every­thing in Wis­con­sin flows from the gerrymandering.”

Democ­rats cap­tured more than fifty-three per­cent of the vote for leg­isla­tive can­di­dates in one recent elec­tion, only to see Repub­li­cans hold more than six­ty per­cent of seats. Vot­er analy­sis has shown the Repub­li­cans could hold the Wis­con­sin Leg­is­la­ture with as lit­tle as forty-four per­cent of the vote.

Six of eight U.S. House mem­bers from Wis­con­sin are Republicans.

A legal chal­lenge to the ger­ry­man­der is expect­ed to be filed on August 1st, the date when Jus­tice-elect Pro­tasiewicz takes office.

Abor­tion was the top­ic of about thir­ty per­cent of the winner’s tele­vi­sion ads, heav­i­ly under­writ­ten by the Wis­con­sin Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

The mes­sage from one spot: “Judge Pro­tasiewicz believes in women’s free­dom to make their own deci­sions when it comes to abortion.”

The ultra MAGA move­ment has clear­ly played a role in loos­en­ing Repub­li­can dom­i­nance. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Tony Evers unseat­ed Walk­er in 2018 and won reelec­tion last year. But the Repub­li­can-run leg­is­la­ture stripped the gov­er­nor and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Josh Kaul of many of their powers.

Kaul is work­ing on a chal­lenge to the 1849 abor­tion law.

The Repub­li­cans’ dom­i­nance was built on the so called “WOW” sub­ur­ban coun­ties around Mil­wau­kee — Wauke­sha, Ozau­kee, and Washington.

Repub­li­can Mitt Rom­ney car­ried them by a near­ly two-to-one mar­gin in 2012. They were still going for Kel­ly last night, but by a much nar­row­er margin.

Ex-Jus­tice Kel­ly was not gra­cious in defeat.

He told sup­port­ers on elec­tion night: “I wish that I’d been able to con­cede to a wor­thy oppo­nent, but I do not have a wor­thy oppo­nent.” Dur­ing the cam­paign, he decried “the ran­cid slan­ders that were launched against me.”

Three pro­gres­sive Supreme Court jus­tices showed up to cel­e­brate at Protasiewicz’s vic­to­ry par­ty. “Today’s results mean two very impor­tant and spe­cial things,” she told the crowd. “First, it means that Wis­con­sin vot­ers have made their voic­es heard. They have cho­sen to reject par­ti­san extrem­ism in this state. And sec­ond, it means our democ­ra­cy will always prevail.”