Photo: Republican Party of Wisconsin - wisgop.org
Donald Trump endorsing Daniel Kelly
Donald Trump endorsing Daniel Kelly at his Keep America Great rally in Milwaukee on Jan. 14, 2020.
There are two Republican candidates, Daniel Kelly and Jennifer Dorow, running in the primary election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court this week. Either Republican would continue the tradition of rightwing justices on the court of twisting the law to benefit their own party.
Wisconsin has had a corrupt, rightwing, Trumped-Up Supreme Court for a decade and a half, long before Donald Trump created a new majority on the U.S. Supreme Court to destroy our Constitutional rights. Let’s start court reform at home.
We’ve stopped pretending state Supreme Court elections are non-partisan. MAGA Republicans support Kelly and Dorow who are running to the extreme right of Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell who are supported by Democrats and independents.
Kelly vs. Democracy
Photo: Justice Daniel Kelly - Facebook
Daniel Kelly
Daniel Kelly
We now know Kelly played a major role in Wisconsin’s participation in Trump’s attempt to overthrow American democracy. Kelly was “special counsel” advising former Wisconsin Republican chairman Andrew Hitt when the party created 10 fake Republican electors submitting fraudulent government documents claiming to be Wisconsin electors casting electoral votes for Donald Trump after Joe Biden won the state. But that doesn’t mean Dorow would be any better to sit on the Supreme Court. She welcomed the destruction of women’s abortion rights by Trump’s Supreme Court and is eager for it to abolish more Constitutional rights, especially for LGBT Americans.
Hitt testified to the House Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection he hired Kelly to advise him on election issues because he was skeptical about Trump’s illegal scheme to create fake Trump electors. Hitt met with Kelly on Dec. 7, 2020, and they “worked our way through the issue.”
Hitt didn’t discuss Kelly’s advice, but his actions speak for themselves. A week later Hitt and nine other state party officials met secretly in Madison’s Capitol to sign fraudulent documents falsely claiming they were “duly elected” to cast the state’s electoral votes for Trump.
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On Jan. 6, 2021, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson was still trying to hand deliver those fraudulent electoral votes to Vice President Pence presiding over the counting of electoral votes, but he refused to accept them. That’s when Trump unleashed his angry, armed mob of supporters to attack Congress.
Destroying Our Fundamental Values
Now Republicans in Wisconsin and six other states won by Biden, once respected leaders and elected officials in their communities, are facing the possibility of felony prosecution by the Justice Department for attempting to defraud the government punishable by large fines and time in prison.
Trump has made lying, corruption and the destruction of America’s fundamental values so acceptable within the Republican Party every election is another battle for our democracy. That’s especially true of this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has been controlled by unethical, extreme rightwing Republicans for the past 15 years. The turning point was an openly racist campaign by Michael Gableman in 2008 defeating African American Justice Louis Butler. It abolished the nationally respected progressive Wisconsin court that existed for 12 years under Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.
Gableman’s election created a new Republican majority that refused to act on charges by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission that Gableman’s vile campaign had violated judicial ethics. Instead, it approved a new judicial ethics code proposed by Gableman that was written by corporate lobbyists. It allowed justices to decide cases directly benefitting corporations and law firms that contributed millions of dollars to their election campaigns. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has been one of the most corrupt in the nation ever since.
Clean Up the Court
This year is the first opportunity voters have had to clean up their corrupt court by regaining a majority of ethical, independent justices to uphold constitutional rights and protections. That’s because voters defeated partisan Republican candidates by double digits in the last two judicial races. Justice Rebecca Dallett defeated Michal Screnock when Gableman left the court in 2018. Then Justice Jill Karofsky soundly defeated Kelly in 2020 four years after Gov. Scott Walker appointed him to the court.
Kelly and Dorow are on the wrong side of the most important issues that are likely to come before the new court. That includes the legal challenge by Gov. Tony Evers and Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul to protect abortion rights as Republicans attempt to ban nearly all abortions by enforcing an archaic 1849 law.
The other major issue that should come before the court is voting rights. The current court has just approved another decade of using corruptly gerrymandered voting maps that guarantee lopsided, two-thirds Republican majorities in the legislature even when Democratic legislative candidates win more votes than Republicans.
On top of that, the current court continues to endorse every voting restriction Republicans pass to suppress voting by Democrats. A Republican member of the Wisconsin Election Commission recently bragged in an email that Republicans had succeeded in reducing voting in the midterms by 37,000 votes in Milwaukee’s Black and Brown neighborhoods.
Vote for a Wisconsin Supreme Court that protects equal rights under the Constitution for all Americans again.
