Tag: Wisconsin

Surprise lesson from Wisconsin: Abortion may not be panacea for Dems

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“We were careful to create a narrative early on about who Janet was, what was at stake in this election and who Dan Kelly was, and abortion fit within that,” Guarasci said. “Our paid media ends with ‘he’s an extremist that doesn’t care about us.’ Everything related back to that.”
The insights from Protasiewicz’s campaign team offers a note of caution — and a roadmap — to Democrats who think abortion has transformed the electoral landscape in their favor. Broadly speaking, the issue plays in their favor, but the experience in Wisconsin suggests that it will take a nuanced strategy to fully reap the political benefits.
Protasiewicz’s team clearly believed it had the right formula to make abortion work as an issue after their 11-point, 200,000-plus-vote win.
Over 35 percent of general election TV spots from her and her allies mentioned the topic, according to data provided to POLITICO by the ad tracking firm AdImpact. But it wasn’t a “one-size-fits-all message” on abortion rights, Nuckels said. Their messaging on abortion rights played into the larger campaign strategy of painting their opponent, conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly, as an extremist more broadly.
Focusing on abortion was a message that “encouraged turnout and persuaded voters, particularly suburban voters,” in regions like Madison, Milwaukee and La Crosse, he said.
But, notably, the reaction was regional. “In Green Bay,” said Nuckels, “it wasn’t a factor there.” In fact, he said, the campaign believed a broad advertising push on abortion in and around Green Bay would motivate more people to vote for Kelly over Protasiewicz. The campaign did not run a single broadcast television spot on abortion in the Green Bay media market.
“We didn’t want to drive out voters for our opponent or solidify them behind him,” Nuckels said. “We needed to have much more targeted communication in places like Green Bay.”
Instead, the campaign relied on targeted cable and satellite ads, along with digital and social media, to reach the most pro-abortion rights voters residing in the Green Bay market, an area that is still heavily Republican and remains key in any Republican turnout machine. According to data compiled by Daily Kos, Trump won over 57 percent of the vote in that market in 2020 — and Kelly won by a smaller margin, taking 53 percent of the vote.

Protasiewicz’s team also attributed its success to a strategy to advertise early in a race where the two candidates started with fairly low name identification; “Define early, don’t play defense, be aggressive,” as Guarasci put it.
They were able to adopt that aggressive posture in large part because they had a war chest that was basically unheard of for a down ballot statewide election. The campaign spent $15 million on TV ads alone, an unprecedented amount for a judicial race, and the campaign and state party combined to spend over $600,000 just on research efforts.
The campaign made an effort to reach voters beyond Democratic diehards. Guarasci said it was important to reach all voters where they were, from expansive broadcast buys to even advertising on conservative radio to — in part — needle Kelly. That also meant moving off of abortion when needed. Protasiewicz’s campaign talked about crime and public safety early and often.
In fact, crime was the top issue that Protasiewicz and her allies mentioned in TV ads, according to AdImpact data. Over 60 percent of total TV ads from her camp were about crime. Until recently, Republicans have viewed the issue as a key advantage they have over Democrats.
“For us, abortion was the single largest driving factor for most of the state. For the Republicans, for Dan Kelly, it was crime,” Nuckels said. “And so part of our early strategy was not to give Dan Kelly a free ride on public safety and crime.”
Protasiewicz was attacked relentlessly by Republicans on the issue — over 90 percent of their ads mentioned crime, often targeting her as a soft on crime jurist who gave too lenient sentences — but aides say their early advertising start helped inoculate her.
Her ads often highlighted her history as a prosecutor and a judge, saying she knows what it takes to keep a community safe. Her campaign also attacked Kelly for never overseeing a criminal case and for some clients he defended as a private attorney.
“A top line for me is do not cede public safety,” Guarasci said. “We knew that they were going to try to run up the score on that point, and if we could kind of neutralize it or not lose that issue overwhelmingly, we knew that people would hear us on abortion and all these other issues.”
The advice that Protasiewicz team gave to Democrats heading into 2024 was, ultimately, not to be afraid to go after Republicans as too extreme — and not just on abortion. Democrats win, they said, when they establish an overarching media strategy about tying the campaign to a fight against extremism.
“The extremism of the right is rejected by American voters writ large,” said Guarasci. “Don’t be afraid to point out this and label it an extremist agenda.”
The campaign also benefited, they said, from having the airwaves to themselves early in the general election. Kelly’s campaign was absent on the airwaves in the early goings of the general election, while Protasiewicz went up almost immediately.
That is not an advantage most Democrats will have in 2024. While this year’s state Supreme Court race had over $45 million of spending — the most for any judicial race in American history — that amount of money will be a small drop in the bucket next year.
Still, Protasiewicz’s aides said, there are valuable lessons for Democrats here.
“It’s what the electorate wanted. They wanted normalcy, they wanted common sense,” Verdin said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 13, 2023
Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin announces reelection bid

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Sen. Tammy Baldwin became Wisconsin’s first woman senator and the country’s first openly gay senator with her election in 2012. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin announced Wednesday that she is running for a third term as Democrats look to hold onto control of their slim Senate majority.
“I’m committed to making sure that working people, not just the big corporations and ultra-wealthy, have a fighter on their side. With so much at stake, from families struggling with rising costs to a ban on reproductive freedom, Wisconsinites need someone who can fight and win,” Baldwin said in a statement.
Baldwin’s reference to reproductive freedom in the state comes as liberals flipped the ideological makeup of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court earlier this month. The new 4-3 majority is much more likely to strike down a controversial 19th-century abortion ban in the state.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 12, 2023
No Wisconsin wake-up call: Republicans go full steam ahead on abortion restrictions

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DeSantis, Donald Trump’s chief rival in the Republican presidential primary, has said he will sign the bill. Once he does — and if North Carolina Republicans act, too — abortion would be largely illegal throughout the South. It will all but guarantee that the topic will become a defining point in the 2024 campaign.
“It’s obviously a bad issue for Republicans,” said Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who has conducted extensive focus groups with Republican voters.
Republicans know by now that the politics of abortion in the post-Roe v. Wade era are unfavorable to them. They have since seen the stunning defeat of an anti-abortion measure in heavily-Republican Kansas last year, and continuing through a less-than-red-wave midterm.
On the issue of abortion, “we are at a disadvantage, 100 percent,” said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist in Wisconsin who oversaw George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign in the state.
But even as Donald Trump himself has said the party went too far with abortion restrictions, there has been little appetite in the broader GOP for pulling back. Public opinion overall favors abortion rights, with even many Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying the procedure should be legal in most cases. But among the activist base — including many Republicans who spent decades laboring to overturn Roe — the issue remains a litmus test that features prominently in GOP primaries. The 15-week bans that seemed extraordinarily aggressive just one year ago now are considered half-measures.
“The majority of [state] representatives are in safe seats, so they’re more worried about primaries where social issues play to the base,” said former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat last year. “They’re not really worried about those people running statewide.”
“It’s a very selfish game,” he added.
If Wisconsin is any indication, it may also prove to be enormously destructive to the GOP. In that swing state on Tuesday, liberals flipped the ideological balance of the Supreme Court with Janet Protasiewicz’s lopsided victory over conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly.

Abortion wasn’t the whole story. Money and candidate quality may have mattered more, Graul said. But it was a big part of it — in a state that has a controversial, 19th-century abortion ban on the books, and where Protasiewicz campaigned heavily on abortion rights.
Some Republicans looking ahead to 2024 are already sounding the alarm.
Earlier this week, Jon Schweppe, policy director at the American Principles Project, a conservative think tank, warned on Twitter that “Republicans need to figure out the abortion issue ASAP. We are getting killed by indie voters who think we support full bans with no exceptions.”
He urged them to “suck it up” and unite behind Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposed 15-week abortion ban, hoping to blunt Democrats’ criticisms of more restrictive measures.
“I want to ban abortion,” Schweppe said in an interview on Thursday. “That’s a long-term goal. I think almost every pro-lifer will tell you that’s the case. We believe it’s murder. But you know, you’re not going to get there overnight, and you’re not going to get there by doing something that’s against the will of the American people.”
He added: “If the pro-life movement doesn’t get their shit together, ultimately, Republicans are going to say, ‘Well, we have to get elected, and the pro-life movement is a liability.”
Longwell’s focus groups would appear to bear that out. Abortion, she said, is often the first example voters raise when explaining why they view a candidate as “extreme.” And as Donald Trump’s loss in 2020 and the midterms laid bare, that designation is deadly in a general election.
“The gap between what base voters demand on abortion, on election denialism, on fidelity to Trump — the gap between that and what swing voters are up for has gotten very wide,” Longwell said. “You always had to do a general election pivot, but it’s turning from a pivot into a massive leap.”
For Democrats, it’s becoming an ongoing political gift — a cudgel they will use to hit Republicans in the run-up to 2024.
Citing what he called Wisconsin’s experience with “the nightmare that Republicans want to inflict on the entire country,” Ben Wikler, the state Democratic Party chair, said, “the political impact of it represents a tectonic shift.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 7, 2023
Wisconsin and Chicago elections expose liabilities in GOP case for ’24

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Similarly, Brandon Johnson, a Chicago union organizer, was hammered by his rival for previously leaning into the “defund the police” movement. But he stressed that his opponent Paul Vallas was not actually a Democrat, forcing him to repeatedly defend his credentials.
Both Protasiewicz and Johnson prevailed.
“Voters showed that they understand public safety to be much more nuanced than the way the Republicans try to frame it. That this is not just about having adequate law enforcement on the streets to promote public safety, but also about investing in mental health and substance use treatment and addressing poverty,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in an interview with POLITICO. “There are not just the short-term efforts to address crime, but also the long-term efforts.”
While both of Tuesday night’s races were nonpartisan, they did each contain a left vs. right ideological contrast that offered a temperature reading as to where voters stood on key issues. Johnson emphasized taxes on the ultrarich, while Protasiewicz played up protection for abortion rights as well as voters’ concerns about threats to U.S. democracy.
The through-line issue, however, was crime.
It wasn’t lost on state or national officials that had Johnson lost the race, they would have been forced to push back hard on the narrative that his “defund” position cost them the keys to City Hall. Instead, while concerns over crime did indeed dominate the race, voters weren’t buying solutions that simply called for adding more police. And they rejected the controversial police union that went hard after Johnson.
“The narrative coming out of the first election was that voters were scared out of their wits,” said Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist and pollster. “Now, after the last election, the story is that while voters are scared, they aren’t out of their wits.”
Pritzker, who helped raise critical money for TV ads in Protasiewicz’s race, said the GOP tactic to paint Democrats as soft on crime was also used in the midterms, and didn’t work then in Illinois and several key battleground states, either.

“We all got attacked on the simplistic vision of Republicans and we all are folks who believe you’ve got to address public safety in a nuanced and multifaceted fashion. We’ve said that to the voters and they responded,” Pritzker said.
“We saw it over and over again,” he added, pointing to the 2022 Democratic victories of Govs. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tony Evers of Wisconsin as well as his own in Illinois.
In Pritzker’s race last year, his conservative opponent, Darren Bailey, hammered the governor over Chicago’s persistent crime problem. Pritzker said polling showed crime was “an important issue” to voters, “but that didn’t mean they wanted to choose the more conservative or Republican candidate. That bore itself out.”
The same thing happened in Tuesday’s mayoral election in Chicago, said Pritzker, who did not endorse in the race that saw Mayor Lori Lightfoot shut out after the first round of voting. Her administration’s handling of crime was attacked by the eight candidates she faced in the first round, including Johnson and Vallas.
Vallas, a former public schools chief, latched on to people’s fears about carjackings in neighborhoods that hadn’t experienced it to the extent they do now. He proposed ramping up police officers on the streets and talked about opening schools for alternative programming for young adults.
Johnson, who had previously said defunding police was “a goal,” insisted during the race that he wasn’t suggesting taking funds away from police. He said he supported adding 200 detectives to solve crimes and funding social services programs that get to the heart of the crime problem.
The attention on Chicago and its handling of crime was on the radar of the national Democratic Party, too, with Biden weighing where the 2024 Democratic convention should be held. Chicago is a finalist, as are New York and Atlanta.
Pritzker called the Midwest “a blue wall” for Democrats, adding, “that was proven out last night. I do think that this puts us in the pole position to win the convention.”
Some in the Chicago contingent pushing their DNC bid had worried that Vallas winning the mayor’s race would complicate their efforts given critical remarks he had made about Chicago itself and a slew of top elected leaders, including Pritzker. They were heartened by the fact that Biden and DNC officials waited until the mayor’s race was over to decide.
For Biden, however, the greater impact is likely in Wisconsin, a state that’s central to his chances in 2024. On Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre connected the string of Democratic wins on abortion rights since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
“Americans want the freedom to make reproductive health care decisions without government interference,” Jean-Pierre said. “Yet, though, you see that Republican elected officials are more committed than ever to attack those fundamental freedoms that Americans should have.”
Brian Stryker, a Democratic strategist who conducted polling for Protasiewicz, said the state’s 1849 abortion ban was very much top of mind for voters in Wisconsin. As were questions about whether the elected officials there would certify future contests. That Protasiewicz performed so well in suburban counties should serve as a potent signal to Democrats across the region, he said.
Garin agreed, but went even further.
“Wisconsin is evidence of a backlash against the MAGA power-grab and their assault on democracy and the rule of the people,” he said. “And Democrats in 2024 would be wise to tap into that.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 6, 2023
5 takeaways from liberals’ big election-night win in Wisconsin

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Here are five takeaways from the biggest election of 2023 (so far).
A new era for Wisconsin Democrats
Although Tuesday’s election was technically nonpartisan, the biggest winner on Tuesday night was likely the state Democratic Party.
Democrats invested bigly into Protasiewicz’s campaign — they were the single largest contributor — and the win is a payoff for the state party’s now-formidable organizing machine.
Perhaps the biggest impact will be in the state’s legislative and congressional delegations. Despite the close-to 50/50 makeup of the state, Republicans have a near-supermajority in both legislative chambers, as well as a solid hold on the congressional delegation.
Tuesday’s election could be the beginning of the end of that. Protasiewicz regularly called the state’s political maps unfair on the trail, and Democratic-aligned groups are likely itching to bring a case looking to challenge them as illegal political gerrymanders.
A win for liberals isn’t a panacea — there are major questions in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on what role state judiciaries can play in federal redistricting, and Democrats have some geographic challenges as well in the state — but it could open the door, at least, for a case.
“I think it’s entirely possible that there might be” challenges to the map ahead of 2024, Ben Wikler, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, said before the election. But, he noted, the timeline stretches far beyond that. Protasiewicz “is going to be in office in 2031, when the next redistricting process happens. So we’re talking about the maps through 2041.”
WOW oh WOW
The counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington — collectively known as the WOW counties — have been the centerpiece of any Republican victory in Wisconsin for decades.

But they brought mostly bad news for Republicans on Tuesday.
The counties, which surround Milwaukee, have been emblematic of the shift in the state during the Trump era. They collectively have not voted for a Democrat for president since Lyndon Johnson, but have gradually trended more Democratic over the last decade.
On Tuesday, former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly was still on track to win all three of those crucial counties. But the margins continue to shrink for Republicans there — a bright red, flashing warning side for the GOP ahead of the 2024 elections.
Notably, Protasiewicz came dangerously close to outright winning in Ozaukee County, trailing Kelly by roughly five points in a county that Mitt Romney won by roughly 30 points a decade ago.
And perhaps even more concerning for Republicans: A special election for a red-leaning state Senate seat in the WOW counties on Tuesday is a nailbiter. Should Jodi Habush Sinykin, the Democratic candidate, eventually pull off the win, it would flip the seat for Democrats — and prevent Republicans from picking up a supermajority in the state Senate.
Tuesday’s election brought even more good news for Democrats elsewhere in the state.
Dane County, which is home to Madison, is one of the fastest growing regions. The area saw incredibly high turnout on Tuesday for a spring off-year election — and Protasiewicz won the county by a lopsided margin. The area is quickly turning into Democrats’ mini blue wall in the state.
We haven’t seen the end of Dobbs’ impact on elections yet
Protasiewicz’s win is a big sign that abortion is still a significant motivating factor for voters to show up — albeit in low-turnout, off-year elections — and to pull the lever for liberals.
Wisconsin has a 19th-century law on the books right now that bans abortion in nearly all circumstances in the state, and providers have stopped performing the procedure.
Protasiewicz’s campaign and her Democratic allies in the state heavily emphasized this message; roughly a third of the TV ads from her side mentioned abortion, according to data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
A heavy rotation of ads highlighting the issue means that voters aren’t turned off by this message — at least not yet.
Turnout for the race was also tracking through the roof on Tuesday, and has a chance of setting a record.
Protasieiwicz’s victory “is sending a clear message: don’t attack our rights as Wisconsinites,” said Sarah Godlewski, the state’s recently-appointed Democratic secretary of state who hosted rallies on abortion rights in the state.
Godlewski argued that Tuesday’s results showed that the issue on abortion rights “has only gotten stronger” as a motivating issue for voters in the state. “If anything, we are seeing how the attack on abortion and on reproductive freedom is really only strengthening people’s resolve to fight and use their voice and vote,” she said.
What happened to Republicans’ electoral advantages?
The pre-Trump Republican coalition was reliable. Voters showed up to vote no matter what — in the presidential, in midterms, and in off-years.
But bigger shifts in the composition of the parties — accelerated by Trump — indicate that may no longer be true.
Liberal judges have now won three of the last four state Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin, and broadly the party has overperformed expectations in the previous two midterms. Suburban voters nationally have gone from solid Republican voters to more than Democratic Party-curious. As a result, Republicans may be losing at least some of their stranglehold in some key swing states.
“The faithful, traditional Republican who votes in every election, some of those people are the type that’s turned away from the party and stayed home,” one former Walker aide admitted. “In Wisconsin, we’ve been able to resist that because of a strong state party.”
Another challenge for Republicans is that the rank-and-file has largely abandoned voting in any way other than in-person on Election Day.
At least 435,000 people voted early for this election — either via the mail or with in-person absentee voting — and that group is expected to lean heavily Democratic. Party officials estimated that Protasiewicz banked at least a 100,000 vote lead from those early voters.
That puts Republicans in a major hole well before most of their voters headed to the polls. That is a psychological and financial disadvantage for Republicans — the Democratic Party doesn’t have to spend last-minute resources to turn voters out, and can use those resources instead to target lower propensity voters.
The Wisconsin state GOP has been trying to flip that trend in the state, with a page on their website practically begging for their supporters to vote early. But Tuesday’s election shows they still have a long way to go.
Big money is here to stay in state elections
Spending in Tuesday’s election came in truckloads, and it wasn’t particularly close. Some $45 million has been spent on the contest as of late last week, according to WisPolitics.com, roughly tripling the previous state judicial race record.
Big money in federal races is nothing new, but that has increasingly trickled down into downballot contests. During the midterms, secretaries of state contests saw a record amount of spending, which is now making its way even further down the ballot.
It looks like state Supreme Courts are next.
The spending in Wisconsin “is more than every state Supreme Court election that occurred in 2018 combined,” said Douglas Keith, who tracks Supreme Court races for the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice.
Keith argued that the increased spending in Wisconsin “is a direct response to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have made clear how important state high courts are,” noting that the nation’s top court have punted issues like abortion back to the states.
Another test of big spending in state Supreme Court races will likely come this year in Pennsylvania. There, the court has a 4-2 Democratic majority, with one vacant seat. There are primaries in May for a November general election for that vacant seat.
And while that race won’t determine the majority of the court, it will still likely attract a significant amount of attention given the state’s role as a perennial swing state.
“This election makes all past cycles and state Supreme Court elections seem quaint by comparison,” Keith said of Wisconsin. “I think what this race suggests is that we are really in a new era for judicial elections.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 5, 2023
Liberals take over Wisconsin Supreme Court — with major implications for abortion

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The race was the most expensive state judicial race in American history. As of late last week, over $45 million has been spent on the contest, according to WisPolitics.com.
That is roughly three times the previous record.
The election will have wide-sweeping effects on the state, including, in the nearest-term, access to abortion in Wisconsin. The state has a 1840s law on the books that bans abortion in nearly all instances in the state. State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, has brought a lawsuit challenging that law in state court that is widely expected to eventually land in front of the state Supreme Court.
But in the interim, abortion providers have stopped performing the procedure in the state.
That was an animating factor for Protasiewicz’s campaign, whose advertising regularly spoke about abortion rights. On the trail, she has repeatedly said “my personal value is that a woman has a right to choose,” while stressing that she is merely speaking about her values and not prejudging any particular court case.
The race court could have a significant impact on election laws in the state, which has regularly ruled on contentious election issues since the 2020 election.
Perhaps most notably, the state Supreme Court turned away then-President Donald Trump’s attempts to throw out the 2020 election results in the state.
Its 4-to-3 vote came only after Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative who sometimes served as a swing vote, joined the liberal bloc to reject the case.

Protasiewicz’s win also makes Democrats much more likely to bring challenges to the state’s congressional and legislative lines.
Republicans have near-supermajorities in both legislative chambers and a 6-2 split of the congressional delegation in a state that routinely votes close to 50-50 on a statewide level.
Similarly to her comments about values on abortion, Protasiewicz has said that it is clear the maps in the state are unfair.“
Wisconsin has probably the most gerrymandered maps in the entire country,” she said in an interview with POLITICO in February. “I anticipate that it’s possible that some type of litigation in regard to fair maps could come before the Supreme Court.”
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#Liberals #Wisconsin #Supreme #Court #major #implications #abortion
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 5, 2023
Liberals take over Wisconsin Supreme Court — with major implications for abortion

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Kelly acknowledged his loss on Tuesday evening, but savaged the now-justice elect in his concession speech. “I wish in circumstances like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent, but I do not have a worthy opponent,” he said, calling Protasiewicz’ campaign “beneath contempt” that launched “rancid slanders.” He said she would damage the integrity of the court.
Protasiewicz struck a more optimistic tone. “It means that our democracy will always prevail,” she said at her victory night party. “Too many have tried to overturn the will of the people. Today’s result shows that Wisconsinites believe in democracy and the democratic process.”
The race was the most expensive state judicial race in American history. As of late last week, over $45 million has been spent on the contest, according to WisPolitics.com.
That is roughly three times the previous record.
The election will have wide-sweeping effects on the state, including, in the nearest-term, access to abortion in Wisconsin. The state has a 1840s law on the books that bans abortion in nearly all instances in the state. State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, has brought a lawsuit challenging that law in state court that is widely expected to eventually land in front of the state Supreme Court.
But in the interim, abortion providers have stopped performing the procedure in the state.
That was an animating factor for Protasiewicz’s campaign, whose advertising regularly spoke about abortion rights. On the trail, she has repeatedly said “my personal value is that a woman has a right to choose,” while stressing that she is merely speaking about her values and not prejudging any particular court case.
The race court could have a significant impact on election laws in the state, which has regularly ruled on contentious election issues since the 2020 election.

Perhaps most notably, the state Supreme Court turned away then-President Donald Trump’s attempts to throw out the 2020 election results in the state.
Its 4-to-3 vote came only after Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative who sometimes served as a swing vote, joined the liberal bloc to reject the case.
Protasiewicz’s win also makes Democrats much more likely to bring challenges to the state’s congressional and legislative lines.
Republicans have near-supermajorities in both legislative chambers and a 6-2 split of the congressional delegation in a state that routinely votes close to 50-50 on a statewide level.
Similarly to her comments about values on abortion, Protasiewicz has said that it is clear the maps in the state are unfair.“
Wisconsin has probably the most gerrymandered maps in the entire country,” she said in an interview with POLITICO in February. “I anticipate that it’s possible that some type of litigation in regard to fair maps could come before the Supreme Court.”
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#Liberals #Wisconsin #Supreme #Court #major #implications #abortion
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 5, 2023
Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Results 2023: Live Updates & Analysis

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The race between Dan Kelly, a conservative, and Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal, has been the most expensive judicial race in American history.

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#Wisconsin #Supreme #Court #Election #Results #Live #Updates #Analysis
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 5, 2023
Indian-American held for fire-bombing Wisconsin building

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Washington: An Indian-descent man has been arrested for alleged involvement in the fire-bombing of in an office building in the US’ Wisconsin state last May.
Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury, a 29-year-old resident of Madison, Wisconsin, was arrested at Boston’s international airport on Tuesday, according to court papers.
He is charged with one count of attempting to cause damage by means of fire or an explosive. If convicted, he faces between 5 and 20 years in prison.

It’s a rare occurrence for the Indian American community, which is considered a model minority in the US, with the highest levels of education and mean household income. There have been few, if any at all, instances of their Involvement in crime or activism-related criminal offences.
Law enforcement officials had found a slogan painted on a wall at the fire-bombing site, which could point to Roychowdhury’s motivation: “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either” and, on another wall, a large letter “A” with a circle around it and the number “1312” (which is a numerical rendition of the acronym ACAB – “All Cops Are B**tards)”, a slogan used by protestors around the world and increasingly by extreme-left activists in the US in response to police killings).
The US Justice Department said Roychowdhury was given away by DNA he had left on an unfinished burrito (a Mexican cuisine roll), which, after a laboratory test, matched DNA he had left on a lighter that was found by law enforcement personnel at the site of the fire-bombing.
“According to the complaint, Mr. Roychowdhury used an incendiary device in violation of federal law in connection with his efforts to terrorize and intimidate a private organization,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
The Justice Department said on Mothers Day on May 8, 2022, law enforcement responded to a fire call at an office building in Madison, Wisconsin. Officials found two mason jars at the fire site — one with a missing screw-top lid and the other with the lid, with a piece of cloth tucked into it; it was also half-filled with a clear liquid, which could have been used as an accelerant. They also found a lighter that could have been used to set off the fire bombs.

By March 2023, investigators had come to zero in on Roychowdhury as a suspect. Local police officers in Boston picked up a leftover burrito he had thrown into a trash bin, along with related items. A lab test found a DNA match on the leftovers and the lighter.
Roychowdhury was arrested at the Boston Logan International Airport with a one-way ticket to Guatemala City.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

April 2, 2023
Battle for control of Wisconsin Supreme Court sees liberal and conservative advance to final round

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“I can’t tell you how I’ll rule in any case, but throughout this race, I’ve been clear about what my values are,” Protasiewicz said during her victory speech, pointing to her support for abortion access, voting rights and public safety.
The eventual winner will help decide major cases that are likely to come before the court. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and state Attorney General Josh Kaul sued to overturn a more than century-old state law banning most abortions, which could make its way to the state Supreme Court later this year. The court may also be poised to have a say on election laws, as it has in the past.
The race — a down-ballot contest in an off-year — brought in millions of dollars. From the beginning of the year through the primary election, ad spending reached over $9 million on television, digital and radio, per AdImpact. The top spender was Fair Courts America, a super PAC linked to GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein, which has put in around $2.8 million in support of Kelly. Last year, the group said it intended to spend “millions of dollars” on Kelly’s candidacy.
Not far behind Fair Courts America was Protasiewicz, who aired a robust ad blitz backed by a $2.3 million spend. She raised more than $725,000 from the beginning of the year through Feb. 6 — more than all of her opponents’ combined fundraising in that period. Her campaign said it raised more than $2 million since she entered the race in May, a record-breaking sum for a spring primary candidate in Wisconsin.
A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund — the same group that spent close to $4 million on the governor’s race in support of Evers last election — spent $2.2 million on advertisements hitting Dorow. Dorow spent over $600,000, and outside groups made up the rest of the spending.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 22, 2023