FREE WHITEWATER

Daily Bread for 2.7.23: A Possibility for the Wisconsin Supreme Court Primary

Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 40. Sunrise is 7:01 AM and sunset 5:16 PM for 10h 15m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 97.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM

 On this day in 2013, Mississippi officially certifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment was formally ratified by Mississippi in 1995.


 However improbable an outcome, Bill Lueders (writing in the subscription-required Bulwark) observes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court primary on 2.21.23 might produce two winners of the same ideology: 

Along with 37 other states, Wisconsin has its voters elect justices to its high court; as in 13 other states, its contests for the seats are nonpartisan. The February 21 primary election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court will decide which two of four candidates will advance to the April 4 general election. There are two conservatives, Daniel Kelly and Jennifer Dorow, and two liberals, Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell, on the ballot. All are serious contenders: It’s possible the vote will split evenly enough that either the two conservatives or the two liberals are the top two vote-getters.

That means the all-important question of the Wisconsin court’s ideological balance could be settled in the primary, when turnout can be as low as a third of the general election vote. This sliver of the electorate could decide whether liberals or conservatives have a majority as the court heads into a critical moment in its history.

See also The Wisconsin Supreme Court Race.

Possible, but improbable. It seems more likely that one conservative and one center-left candidate will break through, leaving the April 4th election as a right-left contest. For the primary to be so closely contested between the candidates that one ideological faction wins both seats would be quite the shock. 

Lueders hits on a probability, however, when he writes that 

If either liberal candidate makes it to the April 4 ballot, he or she will be targeted with a wave of attack ads. For Protasiewicz, these will likely focus on decisions she’s made in a quarter century of being a prosecutor and nearly nine years as a judge. Mitchell, meanwhile, has said some dicey things, like arguing, when he was a University of Wisconsin official and not a judge, that people who shoplift from big-box stores should not be prosecuted. There are also allegations of abuse his ex-wife brought forward during a custody dispute over their daughter in 2010; he denies the allegations, and she says she wants to leave them in the past.

A spring campaign between right and left would be expensive and ferocious. (More ferocious, although not more expensive, than 2022 gubernatorial race.) 


‘I’ll Keep on Dancing’: Shooting Survivors Return to Ballroom:

Subscribe
Notify of

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments