A pair of jurists vying to be Wisconsin’s next Supreme Court justice sparred Wednesday night ahead of the first major statewide race in a battleground since the 2024 election.
The tense one-hour debate in Milwaukee between liberal judge Susan Crawford and conservative judge Brad Schimel focused in large part on reproductive rights and the millions of dollars being spent on the race by high-profile billionaires and outside groups in what’s technically a nonpartisan election scheduled for April 1.
The contest will determine the court’s ideological balance for the second time in two years — and possibly the future of several issues related to abortion rights, unions and congressional maps.
Crawford is a state judge in Madison who worked earlier in her career in the Democratic administration of then-Gov. Jim Doyle. Schimel, also a state judge, in Waukesha County, previously was the state’s Republican attorney general.
Liberals have a 4-3 majority on the seven-person court after they won a 2023 election that flipped control to the left for the first time in 15 years. But liberal justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s retirement has again put that control up for grabs.
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In their only debate before the election, the candidates took most of their shots at the other’s backing from uber-wealthy mega-donors. Liberal billionaire George Soros and outside groups with ties to Elon Musk have already spent millions in a race that’s on pace to become the most expensive state Supreme Court campaign in U.S. history.
Crawford repeatedly criticized Schimel over the involvement of groups associated with Musk, the architect of the President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In the most climactic line of the night, Crawford intentionally misnamed Schimel and claimed that her campaign had received numerous out-of-state donations because of people disliking Musk.
“I have support from all over the country — and it is because Elon Schimel is trying to buy this race, and people are very upset about that,” she said.
Earlier, Schimel had been asked whether he embraced Musk’s support of him on X. He replied that he was “looking for the endorsement of the Wisconsin voters” and that “outside help that comes is not something I control.”
He also repeatedly slammed Crawford over the donations Soros had made to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, calling him a “dangerous” person to accept donations from.
Soros gave $1 million to the Wisconsin Democratic Party in January. Other liberal billionaires have donated, too, including Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Wisconsin campaign finance laws allow the state parties to transfer cash to a candidate’s committees, which both sides have done during this campaign.
Crawford acknowledged that she’d received “generous contributions” through the Democratic Party of Wisconsin while arguing that Musk was more “dangerous,” citing some of the cuts DOGE has made or recommended to various federal agencies.
“He has basically taken over Brad Schimel’s campaign,” she said.
A huge chunk of the GOP spending in the race has come from two Musk-aligned groups — Building America’s Future and America PAC — that together have spent more than $8 million to boost Schimel. Building America’s Future isn’t required to disclose its donations, but Reuters and The Wall Street Journal have reported that Musk helped fund the group in the past. It has spent more than $2.4 million on ads in the race so far, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
America PAC, a Musk-funded super PAC, has pumped more than $4 million into the race, mostly on canvassing and political mailers.
Musk has used his X platform to boost Schimel, writing in January that it’s “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!”
The post came shortly after Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, filed a suit in Wisconsin challenging a state law banning carmakers from owning dealerships. The case could end up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Crawford drew attention to that possibility Wednesday night.
“It is no coincidence that Elon Musk started spending that money within days of Tesla filing a lawsuit in Wisconsin,” she said. “He’s trying to buy access and influence by buying himself a justice.”
Both sides have spent heavily, painting the other’s billionaire backers as monsters.
The candidates were asked repeatedly during the debate whether they’d recuse themselves from issues and cases related to any big donors.
Crawford said she’d recuse herself from cases involving the Wisconsin Democratic Party if she felt she “cannot be fair and impartial.”
Asked whether he’d recuse himself in the Tesla case if it made it to the Supreme Court, Schimel replied, “I don’t know the answer to that.”
Meanwhile, reproductive rights and the fate of the state’s 1849 abortion ban is the other hot topic of the race. Each candidate tried to paint the other as already having made up their mind on all cases related to abortion rights.
The state Supreme Court heard a challenge to the ban in November and is widely expected to overturn the law — but there is still some pending litigation. While abortion providers in the state resumed the procedure in 2023 after a judge ruled that the 175-year-old law didn’t apply to consensual medical abortions, the state Supreme Court is reviewing whether to entirely invalidate the law. There is also a separate case in which Planned Parenthood has directly asked the court to establish whether the state constitution established a right to an abortion.
Both candidates represented groups and causes earlier in their careers that would seem to outline their positions on the issue.
Crawford attacked Schimel on Wednesday over his comments in July that the 1849 law was “valid” and that “there is not a constitutional right to abortion in our state constitution.”
Schimel reiterated that the ban is “a validly passed law” but said he did “not believe that it reflects the will of the people of Wisconsin today.”
Crawford, who as an attorney earlier in her career represented Planned Parenthood, refused to take a position on the cases Wednesday, saying they remain “an open question that “will be decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.” Still, she slammed the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
The two at various other points jostled over other issues that are likely to appear before the court — including the fate of the landmark legislation signed by former Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, that eliminated collective bargaining for most public workers, as well as cases challenging the state’s congressional maps, which favor Republicans.
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