High court rivals face off
Rebecca Dallet and Michael Screnock spar in their final debate Friday.
MADISON - State Supreme Court candidates Rebecca Dallet and Michael Screnock in their final debate Friday battled over campaign spending and a controversial ad that a victim’s family has asked to have taken off the air.
The debate, broadcast live by Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio, gave voters one of their last looks at Dallet, a Milwaukee County judge who is courting Democrats, and Screnock, a Sauk County judge backed by the state Republican Party.
The winner in Tuesday’s election will replace Justice Michael Gableman for a 10-year term on the court. Gableman is part of the court’s 5-2 conservative majority.
The two argued over President Donald Trump, called each other activists and accused one another of being beholden to special interests.
Screnock declined to criticize a TV ad by the state’s largest business lobbying group, Wisconsin Manufac-
turers & Commerce, that focuses on Dallet sentencing a man in 2011 to two years in prison for attempted sexual assault of a child when the maximum penalty was 20 years behind bars.
The ad provides details that make it easy to identify child victims, prompting family members to call for removing the ad from the air.
Screnock said he empathized with the family but would not join the call for WMC to alter its ad.
“That’s their choice,” he said of WMC’s decision to run the ad. “I don’t ask them to do anything differently partly because I’m a judge and as a judge I don’t tell people what to do outside of the courtroom.
“I don’t weigh in on issues of public interest because that’s not the role of a judge.”
Dallet said Screnock didn’t seem to appreciate how harmful the ad was to the victim and family.
“It makes me think he just doesn’t understand either morally or doesn’t have the experience to understand the impact of all of that,” she said.
The man at the center of the ad was released from prison in July and then returned there in December for violating the terms of his community supervision.
He was released again this month but failed to meet with his Department of Corrections agent on March 21, according to the department.
He was arrested Thursday for failing to meet the terms of his community supervision and will remain incarcerated while the agency investigates the matter.
Dallet and the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee are running ads criticizing Screnock for sentencing a man to eight months in jail for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl.
Those ads do not provide information that makes it easy to determine who the victim is.
They don’t mention that Screnock went along with the recommendation of prosecutors and gave a sentence that was close to the nine-month maximum.
In an unusual debate segment, the candidates spent more than six minutes — without being interrupted by the moderators — discussing why each thought the other was an activist.
Dallet said she expected Screnock to be an activist judge because of his support for gun rights and his two arrests in 1989 for blocking access to a Madison abortion clinic.
“Those are extremist views,” Dallet said of his views on abortion. “Those are views that are activist.”
Screnock said Dallet had shown she would be an activist because she had talked so much in the campaign about values, which he said amounted to a liberal agenda.
He returned to that sentiment in his closing statement.
“My opponent has spent the last month courting East Coast politicians and West Coast money in order to bring San Francisco values to the Badger State and she stands poised to advocate for her liberal activist agenda from the bench,” he said.
His mention of San Francisco was a reference to Dallet holding a fundraiser there this month and telling the crowd “your values are our Wisconsin values that we’ve lost along the way.”
Screnock went after Dallet for collecting donations from lawyers who appear in her court, noting she had gotten $10,000 in February from Mark Thomsen, a Milwaukee lawyer and the chairman of the state Elections Commission.
He questioned whether Dallet used her court calendar as a fundraising tool, an accusation she denied.
“It almost gave the appearance of a bidding war,” Screnock said of Dallet’s donations from attorneys.
Dallet said she was backed by the people of the state and accused Screnock of being a tool of business interests, the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association.
Both candidates were asked about Trump, whom Dallet criticized in one of her ads.
“We are at a moment in time right now where our values have been under attack,” Dallet said in explaining why she had used Trump in her ad.
Screnock said Trump was “not relevant to this race.” He criticized her for touting the endorsements of out-ofstate politicians, such as former Vice President Joe Biden.