Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel speaks with reporters after an event Feb. 26. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
At an event hosted at Marquette University earlier this month, a member of the audience told Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate for state Supreme Court, that she was “a bit afraid” of him being elected.
The woman said she’d been sexually assaulted when she was 19 and was grateful that at the time she was able to “control whether my body and life were upended with an unwanted pregnancy.”
Throughout the campaign, Schimel, a former Republican state attorney general, has been attacked for his position on the legality of abortion — an issue that is likely to come before the Court after the election on April 1.
A currently pending case before the Court will determine the validity of an 1849 law that conservatives say bans abortion in the state. The ban is now on hold after a circuit court judge said it doesn’t apply to medical abortions, but at an event last summer, Schimel said he supports the idea that the 1849 law bans abortion.
When abortion comes up during the campaign, Schimel acknowledges his own anti-abortion views, which he says are informed in part by becoming an adoptive father to two daughters, but he says the issue should be decided by Wisconsin’s voters, not a judge.
“Because of our circumstances, we treasure life even when it’s not planned,” he told reporters Wednesday. “But judges don’t make the law. This decision belongs in the hands of the voters, and I will respect the will of the voters of Wisconsin, period. When I put on the robe my personal opinions no longer matter.”
At some campaign events, Schimel has said the voters should decide the issue through a referendum, but Wisconsin doesn’t have a process that allows its voters to change state law through referenda. The only route is through the constitutional amendment process, which requires a proposal to be passed in two consecutive legislative sessions before going to the ballot.
More than once — including in his budget proposal this year —Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has pushed the Legislature to a referendum process that would allow voters to weigh in on abortion. Republicans in control of the Legislature have stymied that effort.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election is set to break campaign finance records. In the 2023 race, the most expensive so far at the time, liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz defeated conservative Dan Kelly to clinch a 4-3 liberal majority on the Court. That race generated about $50 million in spending. Experts say this year’s election could top $70 million in campaign spending.
Both Schimel and his opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, have received support from billionaire political donors. Crawford has gotten donations from George Soros and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker while Schimel has gotten support from Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks, Illinois billionaire Liz Uihlein and millions in outside support from Elon Musk.
“It’s going to be worse,” Schimel said about the influx of money at the Wisconsin Counties Association conference Wednesday morning.
The winner will decide the ideological tilt of a Court that, in addition to abortion rights, is likely to hear cases on the fate of Wisconsin’s congressional maps, the role of state government in regulating polluters and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.
But Schimel, a career Republican official, told the audience of county government officials Wednesday that politics are irrelevant.
“One of the best things about being a judge is there aren’t politics,” he said.
He decided to run because he disapproved of the campaign rhetoric in the 2023 race, he told the county officials.
At the Marquette event earlier this month, Schimel said there’s a difference between a judicial conservative and a political conservative and that he’s an “originalist.”
“You interpret law when you have to, but you apply the law as it’s written,” he said. “When there are ambiguities in the law, well, now you’re going to be forced to try to interpret the meaning of the ambiguity, but you try to stay as faithful as possible to the intent of the Legislature.”
“I’m also an originalist when it comes to the Constitution and the amendments,” he continued. “That they’re to be viewed in terms of the perspective of those that ratified the document or the amendments.”
Schimel’s exposition of his judicial philosophy has shifted when he speaks to different audiences.
Speaking to law students and Milwaukee voters at the Marquette event, when asked about federal judges’ role in thwarting Trump’s executive orders to end birthright citizenship, give Musk access to massive troves of personal data and stop congressionally appropriated funds from being disbursed, Schimel said it’s a judge’s role to define the limits of executive authority.
“When there’s a dispute about whether that exercise of power is legitimate or not, well, then it may have to be the court that resolves that dispute,” he said.
However, in a radio appearance with right wing host Vicki McKenna, he accused federal judges of “acting corruptly” for issuing temporary restraining orders against the dismantling of federal agencies.
The April election will be one of the first tests nationwide of the voting public’s mood after Trump was sworn in last month, Musk began his work, the White House attempted to freeze all federal spending and Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a budget that includes massive cuts for programs such as Medicaid.
In recent years, Democrats and liberal candidates have performed better in off-cycle elections, midterms and special elections when the electorate is made up of more highly engaged voters. At the WCA event, Schimel acknowledged he knows he needs to do a lot to re-engage the coalition of voters that narrowly swung the state for Trump in November.
“3.4 million people turned out for Nov. 5,” he said. “If we get 2 million for April 1, that’s going to be a huge, huge turnout. Well, that means about a million and a half will fall off and don’t come and vote again. I need to convince those voters that this is important.”
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