Just in time to prevent progressive Wisconsin voters from getting too cocky about ridding their state of rightwing Republican Gov. Scott Walker, Brian Hagedorn, an extremely disturbing state Supreme Court candidate, appears to have eked out a narrow victory.
It was an ugly wake-up call after last April’s election of respected Justice Rebecca Dallet to the court and November’s Democratic sweep by Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Attorney General Josh Kaul.
Democrats had high hopes of continuing to restore Wisconsin’s reputation as a reliably progressive state ahead of the 2020 presidential election when Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer’s opponent turned out to be Walker’s former legal counsel Hagedorn, who expressed contempt for same-sex relationships and considered gays the equivalent of people engaging in sex with animals.
Traditional business organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association, who contributed millions to elect previous conservative court candidates, were so repelled by Hagedorn they withheld their support. Hagedorn’s campaign smeared his opponents as “anti-religious zealots,” insulting every religious person who doesn’t hate LGBTQ individuals.
But with only a quarter of eligible voters participating, the final reported tally had Hagedorn leading by 5,960 votes, about a quarter of a percentage point. Republicans have long held an edge in low-turnout, off-year elections. That’s why they concentrate on voter suppression tactics such as voter ID laws, reducing hours for voter registration and purging voting rolls. Unless a recount reverses the result, those anti-democracy measures will have another vote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The Wrong Side of History
There’s no reason a razor-thin result has to be any more than a temporary blip in Wisconsin’s return to political respectability. Hagedorn and Donald Trump—who immediately congratulated his fellow hater in Wisconsin—are both on the wrong side of history. In 2016, there was a reason so many of us were surprised by the size of the hateful minority that responded to Trump’s political demagoguery and inflaming bigotry in every imaginable form. Candidates openly espousing racism and religious bigotry weren’t supposed to win U.S. elections in the 21st century.
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They still aren’t. It has nothing to do with political correctness. It violates human decency. That’s why there was such an immediate backlash to Trump’s election in the midterms of 2018. Shocked at the election of a vile, cruel president, the overwhelming majority of decent voters in this country voted to protect affordable health care, to expand educational opportunities and basically to treat each other with kindness. When good people vote in large numbers, hatred moves back to the fringes where it belongs.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court, under conservative Republican control since 2008, became a prototype for Trump’s White House Island of Misfit Toys. The openly partisan court legalized every questionable action by Republicans under Walker to destroy public employee unions and routinely disregarded Republican violations of campaign finance laws. It even ordered state prosecutors to shut down a criminal investigation into Walker’s administration.
Hagedorn’s election would end the hope of that unethical majority losing control of the court next April when a court race coincides with Wisconsin’s Democratic presidential primary. But make no mistake about it, Wisconsin will be one of the key states next year determining whether Trump is remembered as a horrible, one-term accident or the winner of four more years to continue using the presidency to fill his own pockets while cruelly attacking everyone he wakes up hating.
Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were the three northern industrial states whose long histories of voting Democratic in presidential elections were rudely interrupted when support for Trump’s hateful rhetoric in small towns and rural areas gave him narrow victories in all three states. Those same voters gave the small-minded Hagedorn an even tinier win.
Energize the Voters
But presidential elections, even more than midterm gubernatorial and senatorial races, bring out an entirely different electorate. Energized anti-Trump voters elected Democratic governors and senators in all three northern battleground states in November. After a year of intelligent debate by a large and diverse field of attractive Democratic presidential candidates, we should expect an unusually large voter turnout looking for new leadership in 2020.
Nobody can be surprised any longer that someone so offensive and incapable of governing as Trump can actually be elected. We know there are people among us who support the ugly rhetoric of Trump and Hagedorn, whether they express it out loud or not, and there are Republicans who are embarrassed by their sleazy, ignorant president who will vote for him anyway to maintain their grip on power.
Everyone who wants to put the nation back on a path of treating everyone decently and improving life for all Americans, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation or level of income, knows exactly what we have to do: find a national leader most Americans can believe in again and do everything we possibly can to elect him or her.
