Voters set to decide Wisconsin Supreme Court race and Georgia runoff for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat
Voters in Wisconsin and northwest Georgia head to the polls Tuesday to decide a pair of races that will provide further clues about how the political environment is shaping up heading into this fall’s midterm elections.
Subscribe to read this story ad-free
Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.
In battleground Wisconsin, liberals are aiming to further expand their majority on the state Supreme Court and extend their recent winning streak. And in the runoff election in Georgia’s conservative 14th Congressional District, Republicans are favored to hold on to former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat, while Democrats are hoping to at least make it competitive.
Tuesday’s contest between the Democratic-backed Chris Taylor and the Republican-backed Maria Lazar to fill a seat held by retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley has flown under the radar nationally compared to last year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, when the majority was at stake. That election ended up as the most expensive state judicial race in history after tech billionaire Elon Musk, who was an adviser to President Donald Trump at the time, poured in millions of dollars.
Taylor has held significant fundraising and ad spending advantages over Lazar throughout the campaign. A Marquette University Law School poll last month showed Taylor leading Lazar among likely voters, but that a plurality was undecided. Still, Democratic leaders in the state have said that early voting data, as well as the fact that the liberal candidate has won the last three Supreme Court races by double digits, has left them feeling optimistic.
A win by Taylor, an appeals court judge who was formerly a Democratic state legislator and a policy director for Wisconsin’s Planned Parenthood group, would expand the liberal majority on the technically nonpartisan court to 5-2, and put conservatives out of reach of the majority for years to come. Taylor has largely focused her campaign on her support for reproductive rights, as well as economic issues such as rising costs and cuts to food assistance programs.
Lazar, an appeals court judge who worked in the administration of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, has defended her anti-abortion positions and has focused on contrasting her judicial career with her opponent’s history as a Democratic lawmaker.
But Democrats are once again looking to capitalize on anti-Trump fervor in a nonpresidential election. Democratic and Democratic-backed candidates have won 18 of the last 23 statewide races in Wisconsin, though Trump won the state narrowly in both 2016 and 2024.
The Marquette University poll showed that 56% of registered voters in Wisconsin disapproved of Trump’s job performance, the highest share it recorded during the president’s two terms in office.
To help boost turnout down the stretch, Democrats brought in former Attorney General Eric Holder last week to campaign for Taylor, who spent her final week barnstorming across the state. In addition, former President Barack Obama endorsed Taylor.
In an interview last week, Taylor summarized her closing pitch to voters by saying that, “I don’t think it’s ever been more important in my lifetime to have a strong court that’s going to stand up for our rights and freedoms, stand up for our democracy, our elections, and make sure that we are resisting this overreach we’re seeing from the federal government.”
When asked why she’d emphasized issues like abortion rights so frequently on the campaign trail, she replied that, “voters deserve to know what my values are.”
Lazar, who’s also spent the last few weeks crisscrossing the state, acknowledged during an interview last week that she’d known the race for her “was an uphill battle,” but added that, “I just honestly believe that people in my state really want a an independent and good justice on this court, and that’s what I will be.”
“I think the key here is that you’re electing a judge, not a politician,” Lazar said.
Democrats are hoping another state Supreme Court victory will provide a jolt of momentum heading into a governor’s contest this fall. A crowded field of Democratic candidates is competing to succeed Gov. Tony Evers, who is retiring, and take on GOP front-runner Rep. Tom Tiffany in November.
Polls close in Wisconsin at 9 p.m. ET.
Georgia’s 14th Congressional District
Republican prosecutor Clay Fuller and Democrat Shawn Harris advanced to a special runoff election for Greene’s deep-red Georgia seat after no candidate in the crowded all-party primary field earned a majority of the vote last month.
Harris earned slightly more of the vote in that first round, but the total Republican vote was split among 17 candidates. Altogether, those Republicans got about 60% of the vote in the March election, and Fuller enters the Tuesday runoff as the favorite in a district Trump carried by 37 percentage points in the 2024 presidential race.
Shawn Harris; Clay Fuller.Getty Images
Harris, a retired Army brigadier general and cattle rancher, raised $6.4 million this election cycle and launched ads knocking “out of touch politicians” from both parties who “don’t understand how difficult things are for hardworking Georgians.”
Fuller pitched himself as the best choice for those who “100% support President Trump,” touting his endorsement on the airwaves and appearing with the president at an event in the district.
Greene, initially one of Trump’s closest allies in the House, resigned in January after she broke with the president over his handling of the release of files related to the investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The winner of Tuesday’s runoff will fill the seat for the remainder of Greene’s term, ending in January 2027. Both Harris and Fuller have filed paperwork to run in the regular primary and general elections this May and November.
Polls close in Georgia at 7 p.m. ET.
