Rebecca Dallet (r) won election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, easily defeating her conservative opponent for the open seat, Michael Screnock.
Wisconsin voters on Tuesday sent a stinging rebuke to the state Republican Party, rejecting its hand-picked candidate for state Supreme Court as well as an effort to eliminate a key watchdog position.
By a margin of 56-44, an unusually high spring turnout of one million voters elected liberal Milwaukee County Judge Rebecca Dallet over conservative Sauk County Judge Michael Screnock. The election shifts the court’s ideological balance, leaving conservatives with just a 4-3 edge instead of a 5-2 domination.
Wisconsin voters also rejected, by a 61-39 percent margin, a constitutional amendment supported by Republicans to eliminate the office of state treasurer. Both developments suggest that Wisconsin may have been jarred back into being a blue state after playing a pivotal role in delivering the presidency to Donald Trump.
“People are engaged, they are hungry for change,” Dallet told supporters at an election night victory party in Milwaukee. Dallet had championed her determination to stand up for Wisconsin values, including those she said were being “attacked” by Trump.
“There was just great motivation on the part of people who were not comfortable with the status quo,” says Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin. “It demonstrates a strong pull in the direction that Wisconsin could be headed in the fall election.”
The state’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, grumpily tweeted: “Tonight’s results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI. The Far Left is driven by anger & hatred -- we must counter it with optimism & organization. Let’s share our positive story with voters & win in November.”
Screnock ran for office following a playbook that has worked well for conservative state Supreme Court candidates in the past. He camouflaged his own political leanings while accusing his opponent of being a judicial activist, then he waited for outside special interests to pour oodles of money into the race on his behalf.
Republican operatives ran Screnock’s campaign, and fully 40 percent of the $1 million he raised for his own coffers in the officially nonpartisan race came from the state Republican Party. He was endorsed by the National Rifle Association and backed by the business lobby Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which reportedly spent $1.6 million on ads painting Dallet as someone who protects child rapists. (She’s actually one of the harshest sentencers in the state.)
One attack ad, aired endlessly by the business group, identified a grandfather as a molester who supposedly got off lightly in Judge Dallet’s court because of her fondness for child rapists. Not mentioned was that she imposed the sentence recommended by the prosecution. The family of the victims, who were effectively identified when the grandfather was named, pleaded with the group to stop running the ad. It refused to do so, and Screnock uttered not a peep of protest.
“WMC set a new low, violating the privacy of children who were the victims of sexual abuse. And then they refused to take down their despicable ad when the victims’ family publicly pleaded with them to stop,” says Scot Ross, executive director of the liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now. “The voters have spoken, overwhelmingly rejecting these tactics.”
Screnock was appointed to the bench in 2015 by Walker, after having served eight years as a private attorney, during which he defended the governor’s anti-union law against legal challenge and legislative Republicans redrawing of voter boundaries to their own advantage. The U.S. Supreme Court is now weighing whether the extreme gerrymandering that took place in Wisconsin violated the Constitution.
The proposed constitution amendment on the state treasurer’s office, which voters shot down on Tuesday, had already passed two consecutive sessions of the state's GOP-controlled legislature, with bipartisan support. Only voter ratification was needed to eliminate the office, which has existed since before Wisconsin became a state. The office has in recent years been shorn of much of its duties, but defenders have argued that it still serves an essential oversight role and could, with committed leadership, recover some of its lost strength. (The office’s current occupant, a Republican, argued for its elimination.)
Earlier this month, Walker and legislative leaders abandoned plans to leave two state legislative seats vacant through the end of year, after three judges ruled in separate decisions that this violated state law.
“We know of no law that allows us to disregard the [statute],” declared appeals court Judge Paul Reilly. “Representative government and the election of our representatives are never ‘unnecessary,’ never a ‘waste of taxpayer resources,’ and the calling of the special elections are, as the governor acknowledges, his ‘obligation.’ ”
Walker’s transparent purpose in seeking to block the elections was that he feared Democrats would win. In a special election in January that made national news, Democrat Peggy Schachtner won in a district that had previously been considered safely Republican.
Walker’s transparent purpose in seeking to block the elections was that he feared Democrats would win.
After the judges ruled against Walker, legislative Republicans planned to hold an extraordinary session to rewrite the law that the governor was breaking, and thus still keep the elections from happening. But this plan was abandoned under pressure.
“I think they realized that that would not go over well with the voting population,” says Heck of Common Cause. “And Walker wisely just said, ‘I’ve got to bite the bullet.’ ”
Heck thinks the special elections, now planned for June, will be highly competitive and that voters’ enhanced motivation will probably last into the fall, when Walker himself faces re-election.
Bill Lueders is managing editor of The Progressive.