Importance Score: 65 / 100 🔴
Democracy is on Wisconsin ballots Tuesday — because it’ll get rolled back if the Democratic candidate wins the state Supreme Court race.
Yes: If Judge Susan Crawford beats Republican ex-Attorney General Brad Schimel, the court will have the liberal votes to order (partisan) congressional redistricting and impose a raft of rulings that supersede laws passed democratically.
The gerrymandering could net two congressional seats for Democrats, boosting their drive to regain control of the House in 2026 and block President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Crawford’s backers openly vow that her victory could “put two more House seats in play for 2026.”
So much for “democracy.”
They’d also paint it as a sign the nation opposes the Trump agenda and disapproves, in particular, of Elon Musk — who’s donated heavily to Schimel in response to hefty giving to Crawford from George Soros and other wealthy lefties.
Plus, the left has its eye on overturning at least one key law, Act 10 — which bans collective bargaining for public employees — since it can’t get the Legislature to rescind it via democratic means.
For Democrats, that’s a tried-and-true tactic: If voters and their representatives won’t adopt the Dem position, just get liberal-leaning courts to impose it.
That’s why they called for packing the Supreme Court when Joe Biden was president.
And why, in New York, they installed a reliably liberal chief judge, Rowan Wilson, who — along with other Court of Appeals libs — dutifully tossed out a perfectly fair congressional district map in 2023 and ordered a new one drawn up.
In the Badger State, the pro-union left has been trying (and failing) to roll back Act 10 ever since it passed in 2011.
That law produced critical cost savings that helped Wisconsin close a multibillion-dollar budget gap. And voter support for it is a big reason why Republicans control both the Wisconsin state Senate (18-15) and Assembly (54-45).
So Dems are again looking to the court to bypass popular will.
Crawford actually boasts of how she’s “fought against Act 10.” (Another top-court justice, Janet Protasiewicz, refuses to recuse herself, even though she’s marched against the law.)
The longer Act 10 stands, the national left worries, the bigger the chances that other states will take notice and rein in their own state-employee unions.
The high stakes help explain why more than $80 million has poured into the campaigns, a huge amount for a state judicial race.
Feel some sympathy for Wisconsinites, who suffered from incessant advertising as a swing state last year and now have been inundated by yet another round of “battleground” treatment.
We just hope enough sensible voters still show up at the polls to side with democracy and against the court-stackers.