The New York Times is calling it “an election that carries bigger policy stakes than any other contest in America.”
Politico says it’s “the most important election nobody’s ever heard of.” And they’re not wrong: Wisconsin’s February and April elections will decide the future of reproductive rights, legislative maps, the governor’s powers, and maybe even the results of the 2024 presidential election.
You have the opportunity to change the direction of our state and our country. All you have to do is vote. Feb. 21 is the date of Wisconsin’s primary for a crucial state Supreme Court election, and the general election is on April 4.
While many people excitedly cast their ballots for charismatic politicians during November elections, the main race on the ballot this spring is among people whose faces you may not see for another decade: the judge who will serve a 10-year term on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. The person who wins that seat will make decisions that impact all of our lives for the next decade.
Here is where the four Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates stand on two of the most important issues.
Reproductive Freedom
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to hear a case challenging the state’s 19th-century law banning almost all abortions. Currently, Wisconsin abortion providers have stopped performing the procedure because the 1849 ban is so unclear.
Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz are running on the pro-reproductive freedom side of this issue. Both support women’s right to have autonomy over their own bodies– a right that was taken from Wisconsin women after the US Supreme Court reversed 49 years of Roe v. Wade precedent and the state’s abortion ban went back into effect. In an interview last week, Protasiewicz argued abortion should be “a woman’s right to choose.”
Running against abortion rights are conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, who was appointed to a spot on the court by then-Gov. Scott Walker in 2016 before losing a 2020 election for a full term, and Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow, who received a lot of media attention for her handling of the trial of the 2021 Waukesha Christmas parade attack. Both candidates do not believe women can be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies.
Democracy
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is also expected to decide major cases about election laws, voting rights, and legislative maps. Before and after the 2020 presidential election, the current conservative-leaning court made it more difficult for people to vote by banning all absentee drop boxes during a pandemic; struck down Governor Evers’ pandemic mitigation efforts; stripped regulatory powers from the democratically-elected state school superintendent; allowed political appointees of Evers’ Republican predecessor to remain in office long after their terms expired; and forced some public schools to pay for busing for parochial schools.
Simply put: the current court has made decision after decision that went against the will of you, Wisconsin voters.
Mitchell and Protasiewicz are on the pro-democracy side of these issues. If elected, Mitchell has promised to “revisit the maps,” calling the current GOP-drawn legislative district map lines “not fair.”
Meanwhile, both Kelly and Dorow have ties to former President Donald Trump. In 2020, Trump endorsed Kelly and praised him at a Milwaukee rally. And Dorow’s husband, Brian, was a security official for Trump campaign events throughout Wisconsin.
While neither has explicitly weighed in on what they think about the state’s current legislative maps, Dorow has leaned into Republican extremists’ conspiracies about the 2020 election results.
What’s Next?
The top two finishers in the Feb. 21 primary will face off in the April 4 general election. While it’s possible two ideologically similar candidates could advance to the general, most analysts don’t think that’s likely.
