The Next Big Election

Holding onto the Wisconsin Supreme Court

By Steve Schear

After the DNC selects its chair on February 1, the next big election will take place on April 1. Judge Susan Crawford will face MAGA candidate Brad Schimel for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Their race will determine whether Wisconsin Democrats can retain the pro-democracy court majority that produced the state’s first fair elections since 2010.

A Victory That Bred Victories

One of our lesser-known wins in November happened in Wisconsin. Despite the overall rightward swing of voters, Democrats gained ten seats in the State Assembly and four in the State Senate. Democrats now have a chance of winning control of one or both chambers in 2026.

The dramatic shift in the Wisconsin legislature was the result of another victory in 2023, the election of Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The victory gave liberals a 4-3 majority on the court.

Before the shift, Wisconsin likely had the most highly gerrymandered districts in the country. Back in 2010, when Republicans won control of the state legislature, they used “Redmap,” a new sophisticated statistical and mapping program, to create election districts that guaranteed their control of both state houses.

In the fall 2018 election, Democrats won every statewide race, and won 53 percent of the statewide legislative vote. But thanks to gerrymandering, they ended up with only 36 of the state’s 99 assembly seats. Wikipedia called the Republican redistricting in Wisconsin “one of the most successful partisan gerrymanders in the history of the country.”

Then in 2023, Janet Protasiewicz campaigned for a court seat by touting reproductive rights and getting rid of the rigged maps. The Chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party (WisDems), Ben Wikler, raised a huge amount of money to help Protasiewicz win. (Wikler is now running for the DNC Chair. He has been endorsed by The Grassroots Connector and many other grassroots organizations based on his proven track record of effective organizing.)

Fair Maps Led to Fair Elections

After Protasiewicz’s election, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the 2011 gerrymandered maps unconstitutional. The ruling forced Republicans to agree to a fair map submitted by Democratic Governor Tony Evers. And that map led to the Democrats’ big gains in the state legislature in 2024.

Crawford Must Win to Hold the Wisconsin Supreme Court

This year, one of the court’s four pro-democracy justices, Ann Walsh Bradley, is resigning, leaving an open seat. On April 1, Susan Crawford must win or else the Wisconsin Supreme Court will flip back to Republican control.

Crawford has excellent credentials. She worked as a prosecutor in the state Attorney General’s office and in a variety of state offices. She then went into private practice representing, among others, Planned Parenthood in its efforts to protect reproductive rights. She has been a Dane County judge for the past six years.

On the other hand, Crawford’s MAGA opponent, Brad Schimel, has strongly opposed the right to abortion. He also backed a lawsuit to kill the Affordable Care Act. Ben Wikler notes that Schimel “went to bat to protect the GOP’s obscene gerrymandered maps. It’s a safe bet that a Schimel-led MAGA majority would work to take up these issues again, reverse recent decisions, and drive the court to the GOP fringe.”

Although Protasiewicz won her 2023 race by a large margin, Crawford’s race will almost certainly be much closer. Schimel has much better name recognition than Crawford, an unknown to most Wisconsin voters. It is also likely that Republicans will flood the airwaves and social media with negative ads about Crawford in March.

The Grassroots Are Organizing!

Crawford needs national support with donations and volunteers to ensure that Wisconsin voters are not fooled into giving Republicans control of their highest court. Grassroots groups around the country have started to organize for the election. “This year, Markers For Democracy and other grassroots groups will be getting out our Sharpies to write postcards for Judge Susan Crawford,” says Ellen Bender, a Markers’ leader. “Markers has already hosted Judge Crawford on one of our morning postcarding Zooms and looks forward to writing postcards to voters soon.” Other groups are fundraising for Crawford, and the WisDems are launching canvassing operations all over the state that can be found here.

For more information on how you can support Crawford’s election, go to https://wisdems.org/ or https://www.crawfordforwi.com/

We’d like to hear from groups about their plans to win this election. Please let us know through a comment on this article or by emailing us at thegrassrootsconnector@gmail.com.