Wisconsin judicial contenders chosen

Milwaukee jurist, former justice secure spots in April’s general election

MILWAUKEE — The general election for the swing seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, a momentous contest that will determine whether Republicans maintain or lose their iron grip on the state’s politics, will feature a liberal Milwaukee County judge against a conservative former justice of the state’s high court.

Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal from the Milwaukee suburbs, and Daniel Kelly, a former Supreme Court justice who lost his seat in a 2020 election, advanced in a Tuesday primary to the April 4 general election, according to The Associated Press.

The winner of the race, the most consequential American election on the 2023 calendar, will serve a 10-year term.

While Protasiewicz sailed to a first-place finish in the officially nonpartisan primary, Kelly placed second, ahead of Jennifer Dorow, a Waukesha County judge known for presiding over the trial last fall of a man who killed six people by driving through a 2021 Christmas parade.

Late Tuesday, Protasiewicz had about 46% of the vote, Kelly had 24% and Dorow had 22%.

If Protasiewicz prevails in six weeks, it will tip the balance of the state’s seven-member Supreme Court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008.

The court would have a four-member liberal majority that would be likely to overturn the state’s 1849 law forbidding abortion in nearly all cases, redraw Wisconsin’s heavily gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps, and influence how the state’s 10 electoral votes are awarded after the 2024 presidential election.

“Everything we care about is going to be determined by who wins this election,” Protasiewicz told supporters in a victory speech Tuesday night.

If Kelly wins, abortion is certain to remain illegal in nearly all cases. He also said in an interview on Monday that he had no intention to revisit the maps adopted by Republican legislators.

“When a map gets challenged in court, the responsibility of the court is to fix the legal defects, not the political defects,” he said in Sheboygan. “Our courts are not built to decide political issues, just legal issues.”

Kelly has condemned Protasiewicz for telegraphing how she would rule in key cases expected to come before the court on abortion and gerrymandering. But he has hardly been shy about signaling his own politics.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that Kelly had since 2020 been on the payroll of the Republican National Committee to work on “election integrity issues.”

During his victory remarks Tuesday, Kelly said Protasiewicz represented an “assault on our Constitution and our liberties.” If she wins, he said, “we will lose the rule of law and find ourselves with the rule of Janet.”

Republicans split between Kelly, who lost a 2020 election for a full term after being appointed in 2016 by Gov. Scott Walker, and Dorow, whom Walker appointed to the Waukesha court.

The race is certain to become the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history, topping the $15 million spent on a 2004 race for the Illinois Supreme Court. Already, more than $8.7 million has been spent on television and digital advertising in the Wisconsin contest, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.

Officials in both parties expect tens of millions more to be spent by each side during the six-week general election.