Photo: Janet Protasiewicz for Justice
Janet Protasiewicz portrait
Janet Protasiewicz
The historic turnout of nearly a million primary voters overwhelmingly nominating Judge Janet Protasiewicz for the Wisconsin Supreme Court reflects the fear of voters statewide that the current state court is a serious threat to their constitutional rights.
Their fear is legitimate. For 15 years, the state’s high court has been controlled by a rightwing Republican majority. Court candidates run without any partisan labels, but the court consistently twists the law to legalize anything rightwing Republicans want to do.
That’s never been more dangerous. At least a third of Republicans justify former President Trump’s attempted violent overthrow of American democracy after his election defeat. Trump left behind a radical rightwing U.S. Supreme Court that began abolishing constitutional rights with the destruction of reproductive rights for women.
Protasiewicz’s support for the constitutional rights of women to make decisions about their own health care and lives was a major reason she won 46% of that record primary vote. It was more than the combined amount of votes for second place Daniel Kelly and third place Jennifer Dorow. The general election between Protasiewicz and Kelly is on April 4.
Rights at Risk
With all our constitutional rights suddenly at risk, this isn’t a good time for Kelly to be campaigning for the court as an extreme opponent of abortion rights and voting rights. But those aren’t the only reasons Kelly is a terrible candidate. Wisconsin voters already threw Kelly off the court once.
Kelly served on the court for four years after Gov. Scott Walker appointed him in 2016 to fill the remainder of the unexpired term of a retiring justice. When Kelly faced the voters for the first time in April 2020 running for his own 10-year term on the court, Justice Jill Karofsky defeated him by 10 percentage points. It was the second election in a row an outside challenger replaced one of the court’s rightwing justices by double digits.
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Protasiewicz defeating Kelly on April 4 would finally end the unethical rightwing majority that has corruptly ruled the court for a decade and a half.
Preserving Democracy
And here’s the most important reason of all why voters should elect Justice Protasiewicz over Kelly. Electing Justice Protasiewicz will assure Wisconsin voters their votes will be counted.
Kelly says he’s running for the court again because Justice Brian Hagedorn, who usually sides with the rightwing majority, wouldn’t throw out all 3.3 million votes cast by voters in November 2020 in Biden’s victory over Trump. Instead, like more than 60 other courts throughout America including Trump’s own appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts, Hagedorn joined Karofsky and two other minority justices to reject the false claims by Trump and his supporters that Biden stole the election through massive vote fraud. Trump’s lies were never supported by any credible evidence.
Kelly accuses Hagedorn of being an unreliable conservative justice. Hagedorn, former legal counsel to Gov. Walker, actually is an extremely conservative justice. He was elected to the court as a virulent opponent of abortion rights and equal rights for LGBTQ Americans. But there’s nothing conservative about courts throwing out election results in a democracy because they don’t like them.
Wisconsin would have been the only state in the union to throw out the results of its presidential election so its corruptly gerrymandered Republican legislature could award the state’s electoral votes to the loser. Hagedorn wrote the opinion for the justices supporting the state vote declaring: “In these hallowed halls, the law must rule.”
In a bombastic dissent joined by the other rightwing justices, Rebecca Bradley, the most extreme, wrote in the style of Trump’s constant stream of provable lies the decision by Hagedorn and the other justices upholding the will of the voters was “a death blow to democracy.”
Dangerous Justice
Rebecca Bradley is now trying to regain a majority of justices who are willing to throw out future elections if Democrats win by campaigning to elect Kelly to the court. She introduced Kelly at his primary election night celebration. Kelly has made it clear he would have thrown out Trump’s 2020 defeat if he were on the court. That makes him a dangerous justice to have ruling on election laws going into 2024.
Ironically, Kelly accuses Protasiewicz of being a radical extremist who would put her thumb on the scales of justice for supporting women’s rights and opposing corruptly gerrymandered voting districts that make it nearly impossible for voters to elect a Democratic legislature even when Democrats win every statewide election.
Only in Kelly’s twisted view of democracy is it unethical for Protasiewicz to criticize courts for violating fundamental voting rights and equal rights under the law based on gender, race and sexual orientation just like Kelly’s eager to do if he’s elected.
It’s become a political cliché to say democracy is on the ballot in every election. But that will continue to be true until Republicans expel violent extremists from their party.
