Wis. GOP targets justice in voting fight
Party threatens impeachment to save districts
MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin Republicans have enjoyed outsize control of the Legislature in one of the most closely divided states for a dozen years. Maintaining that power is now at the heart of a drama involving the state Supreme Court that has national political implications.
A new liberal tilt to the court is driving Republican fears of losing their large legislative majorities, which were built under some of the most gerrymandered political maps in the country. Republicans have threatened to impeach the justice who was elected earlier this year and flipped the court to a 4-3 liberal majority, unless she withdraws from any case involving redistricting. The GOP is citing concerns about her campaign statements and fund-raising.
Democratic leaders have decried that threat as “political extortion” and are mobilizing voters to pressure Republicans in districts won by the new justice and to back down.
“Impeachment is an act of pure power politics,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “It’s a desperate gambit to avoid accountability to voters who choose their state representatives, their state senators, and their Supreme Court justices.”
Altering the makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme Court also holds the potential to affect the 2024 presidential election in the perennial battleground.
Four of the past six presidential contests in the state have been decided by less than a percentage point. In 2020, the state Supreme Court, then controlled 4-3 by conservatives, came within one vote of overturning Democrat Joe Biden's nearly 21,000 vote victory over then-President Donald Trump.
Wisconsin Republicans, who hold majorities of 64-35 in the state Assembly and 22-11 in the Senate, are squarely focused on their own futures. The political maps they drew that helped them win near veto-proof supermajorities are at risk of being overturned under the left-leaning Supreme Court.
Two lawsuits challenging the gerrymandered maps as unconstitutional were filed the first week after the new justice was seated. The Supreme Court has yet to decide whether it will take either case.
Republicans, and even Democrats the last time they had majority control of the Legislature 14 years ago, have resisted moves to give up their power to draw electoral district boundaries.
States that have shifted responsibility for redistricting from partisan legislatures to independent commissions generally have seen a reduction in gerrymandering, in which lines are drawn in a way that expands or cements one party's grip on power. Districts drawn by independent commissions generally result in election outcomes more closely aligned with the will of voters.
In Wisconsin, it is impossible to change the redistricting process unless lawmakers voluntarily relinquish their power. That’s because Wisconsin is among 26 states that do not allow citizens to bypass their legislature through ballot initiatives.
The result is that Wisconsin continues to operate under legislative districts shaped by Republican lawmakers, who have built lopsided majorities that do not reflect the state’s overall political leanings.
The election of Janet Protasiewicz in April delivered the long-sought majority on the state’s highest court that Democrats have fought to win back over the past 15 years.
Protasiewicz made her position on redistricting clear during the campaign, calling the GOP maps approved by the conservative-controlled state Supreme Court “unfair” and “rigged.” The Wisconsin Democratic Party donated nearly $10 million to her campaign. She won by 11 percentage points during an April election and took her seat in August.