Wisconsin progressives have maintained their majority on the state supreme court after Judge Susan Crawford won a contentious election against conservative Brad Schimel on Tuesday night.
The high-stakes race, which was officially nonpartisan, attracted national attention from political figures such as Elon Musk, former President Barack Obama, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) as well as enormous outside cash flow. Combined, the two candidates and parties supporting them spent more than $81 million on the off-year race — reportedly making it the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.
Which party holds ideological control of the battlegrounds state’s highest court will be crucial as the court weighs upcoming cases that concern congressional redistricting, abortion, election rules, and public sector unions.
A Dane County circuit court judge with experience representing Planned Parenthood and a teachers’ union, Crawford’s victory ensures that the state court’s liberal stronghold will lead litigation in upcoming legal battles. Crawford was supported financially by a host of liberal donors, including George Soros, Reid Hoffman, and Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker.
Crawford will replace retiring liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and serve a ten-year term.
Schimel, the state’s former attorney general and a current circuit court judge in Waukesha County, received an endorsement from key GOP players such as Musk, who poured $20 million into the race, gave away some $1 million checks to Wisconsin voters, and headlined a 2,000-person rally in Wisconsin on Sunday.
“What’s happening on Tuesday is a vote for which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives — that is why it is so significant,” Musk said over the weekend, in reference to potential redistricting in the state. “And whichever party controls the House to a significant degree controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect the entire destiny of humanity, but I think it will.”
Although conservatives “didn’t get how the court could damage us as a state,” Schimel said in a recent interview with National Review, President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory in Wisconsin gave Republicans a reason to pay attention to state supreme court cases. Schimel offered the current court’s recent decision to overturn Wisconsin’s legislative maps as an example of the type of judicial overreach conservatives should work to defeat.
“This liberal court is taking away that stability where people can predict what the law will be tomorrow based on what it is today, because we have a court that’s flipping it back and forth based on their political agenda,” he said.