Photo courtesy Janet for Justice
Janet Protasiewicz
Janet Protasiewicz
February Primary Elections
Spring elections are local elections for city, village, town, or county elections along with judicial elections, school board elections and any special elections to fill vacancies. These are non-partisan elections meaning that candidates run as individuals and not on a party ticket. The top two vote getters in the primary election in February then move on to the general election in April. If only two candidates are running, they are not on the primary ballot but automatically move to the April election.
This February primary is a very important election. The State Supreme Court election will determine the direction of Wisconsin for the next 10 years. After the retirement of one of the far-right justices this year, the court will have three conservative and three progressive justices.
The winner of the April 4 State Supreme Court race will determine if women in Wisconsin will be able to control their reproductive decisions and whether Wisconsin will continue to have what a conservative three-judge federal judicial panel declared as unconstitutionally gerrymandered legislative districts.
Our unconstitutionally extreme gerrymandered districts enable one party to win the vast majority of the legislative races even when they received less than half of the total statewide votes for legislators. This is why Wisconsin, which had a national reputation for being a smart, forward-looking state, has fallen toward the bottom of the lists along with Alabama and Mississippi in such areas as education, fair taxation, equal opportunity to vote and protecting our children and senior citizens. These extreme gerrymandered districts enables the legislators to ignore the wishes of their constituents since it is virtually impossible for them to lose in their gerrymandered districts.
Judge Janet Protasiewicz for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice
The Editorial Committee of the Shepherd Express was unanimous in its endorsement of Judge Janet Protasiewicz for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice on the February 21, 2023 election. Her values are strong support for women’s reproductive rights and fair legislative districts, boldly stating that the current gerrymandered Wisconsin legislative districts are rigged. Spring elections are lower turnout elections, so it is important to vote. Supreme court elections are non-partisan, but the two sides certainly have their candidates.
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Right now, the seven-person court is divided 4-3 with the rightwing in charge. This conservative majority has, for example, condoned our extreme gerrymandered legislative districts, supported, at every opportunity, all the anti-choice abortion legislation, and supported the voter suppression laws pushed by Republicans denying our citizens an equal opportunity to vote.
Voters Can Change this on February 21
Wisconsin has a chance to change the direction of our extreme rightwing Supreme Court this Spring. One of the conservative four is retiring so the direction of the court is in the balance. This upcoming election is without question the most important election for Wisconsin to begin to return our state to the honest, decent, progressive state we grew up in.
Wisconsin was always viewed as a forward-looking state with a great education system from kindergarten through post graduate work. Wisconsin was a state that protected our natural environment, helped foster the creation of well-paying, safe, and decent jobs, and cost-effective laws that protected our most vulnerable.
So What Happened to Wisconsin?
That all changed over the past 15 years. The extreme rightwing Bradley Foundation along with an assortment of rightwing billionaires like the Koch Brothers decided to use Wisconsin as an experiment to turn our state into an ignorant, low wage, backward-looking state putting Wisconsin shoulder to shoulder with Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia.
One of the key parts to their strategy was to pump millions of dollars of dark money funneled through shell companies with very high-sounding patriotic names into the Wisconsin Supreme Court races. Unfortunately, it worked. Through false and negative ads and in the Gableman race, overtly racist ads, they were able to elect a majority of extreme justices who put their rightwing politics above the Wisconsin constitution.
Restoring Wisconsin’s Values
That could change this spring with the election of a smart, hardworking, honest judge to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Judge Janet Protasiewicz is Wisconsin. She worked her way through UWM and Marquette Law School. She chose public service over much higher paying private law firm positions. Judge Janet served as an assistant district attorney for 26 years and then eight years as a Milwaukee County Circuit Judge. She taught at the Marquette Law School as an adjunct law professor. We have watched her career for the past 34 years. We know her values and her respect for an honest interpretation of the state constitution, and we are totally confident that she would be a great Wisconsin Supreme Court justice.
Please vote for Janet Protasiewicz on Tuesday February 21.
Most of the remaining elections this spring have only two candidates running so they won’t have a primary. There are three Milwaukee aldermanic special elections with multiple candidates. Many of the candidates have not yet mounted visible campaigns at this time. This publication goes to the printer on January 23. Therefore, the Editorial Committee has decided to wait until after the primary to determine for which races we will do the research and endorsements for the April general elections.
