Watch Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates give post-election speeches
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidates Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar addressed their supporters on election night.
- Liberal candidate Chris Taylor defeated conservative Maria Lazar, giving liberals a 5-2 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
- Taylor’s campaign raised significantly more money than Lazar’s, with a reported $6.2 million to $1.2 million.
- Conservative Justice Annette Ziegler’s decision not to seek re-election in 2027 creates an open race with no conservative candidate yet announced.
- The loss has prompted concern among Republicans about fundraising and strategy ahead of future elections.
MADISON – In 2017, Democrats did not bother to field a candidate for that year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race after suffering a string of losses, including one that cemented a robust conservative majority on the state’s highest court.
A decade later, it’s the Republicans who have lost control of the court and do not yet have a conservative candidate waiting in the wings to try to keep the liberals’ 5-2 majority from expanding in 2027.
“We’re basically giving up on the court. Which is a horrible decision to make, because it’s going to have huge ramifications, and it may not matter who’s governor, or who controls the Legislature, if the court is controlled by liberals for the next 10 to 15 years,” Mark Graul, a longtime GOP operative who previously ran campaigns for Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler, said about the dearth of spending on behalf of conservative candidate Maria Lazar in her race against liberal candidate Chris Taylor.
Taylor, a state Appeals Court judge and former Democratic member of the state Legislature, defeated conservative fellow appellate judge Lazar Tuesday by a stunning 20 points.
The defeat gives liberal justices a 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court and a chance to expand the majority even further in 2027, when Democrats have at least two judges considering campaigns and for which Republicans have not yet floated a name.
It was Ziegler’s 2017 re-election race that marked a low point for Democrats, when Ziegler ended up running unopposed after Democratic candidates lost the 2016 races for state Supreme Court, U.S. Senate and president.
Ten years later, Ziegler is creating an open race in 2027 with her decision not to seek re-election.
“Maria Lazar was a good candidate, she’s an appeals court judge, she won her elections as a circuit judge, and then as appeals judge, and she didn’t get the kind of support and resources that you would expect somebody in her position to receive,” Graul said.
“It’s incredibly problematic. It’s something that needs to quickly be addressed, because next April is going to come very quickly.”
Taylor raised five times more money than Lazar in 2026 campaign
Campaign finance reports filed early last week showed Taylor had raised about $5.6 million in the race to replace conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, who announced last year that she was not seeking reelection. Lazar reported raising about $900,000 since she got in the race in October.
Totals posted online on Wisconsin’s Campaign Finance Information System on April 6 were slightly higher, showing Taylor had raised about $6.2 million and Lazar had brought in about $1.2 million. Those totals include monetary and in-kind contributions.
“You really did have, in addition to the gross imbalance of financial resources for the court race, you also had an especially negative national environment for Republicans,” Marquette University Law School poll Charles Franklin said. “And I think that both held down Republican energy and turnout, but it also surely boosted Democratic turnout yesterday.”
Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker urged his party to get serious about reducing the fundraising advantage Democrats have before the fall elections when U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is on the ballot in the open governor’s race.
“Looking ahead to November, conservatives have to figure out how to inspire donors – big and small alike – to get behind Tom Tiffany’s campaign,” Walker said in a social media post on April 8. “Winning in Wisconsin requires a strong message, manpower, and money. Right or wrong, if you don’t have enough money, the message and manpower doesn’t matter.”
Republican Tiffany says he’s building a campaign to ‘stand on its own’
Tiffany said Wednesday he is building a campaign “that can stand on its own” and won’t need to depend on the strength, or lack thereof, of the state GOP.
“Well, we got our butts kicked last night, right? There’s no doubt about it, and we should acknowledge that,” Tiffany told reporters at a press conference in Madison. “But the election that’s coming up this fall, in November, is a new election, and … every election is unique, and I have built a campaign − money, manpower, messaging − we’re going to compete on all fronts.”
“We will paint the clear contrast,” he said. “Here in Wisconsin, we see where Democrats stand. They do not stand with the working class people of the state of Wisconsin. We will paint that clear contrast every day from here to November, and that is how we will win.”
Tiffany said it’s up to “party leadership” to decide whether Republican Party of Wisconsin chairman Brian Schimming should keep his job after another tough spring election loss.
“When you go all the way back to when I was running in the state Legislature, I always made sure that I was independent of the other operations. … I never wanted to count on someone else to make sure that our campaign was running on all cylinders,” Tiffany said.
“It’s the same with the governor’s campaign. We are building out a campaign that can stand on its own and will be successful as we go into November.”
Taylor won every congressional district as a voting bloc except for the 5th Congressional District in the counties northwest of Milwaukee.
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a Republican incumbent in the state’s swingy 3rd Congressional District, said Wednesday the results show “conservatives just don’t vote on the regular.”
“If does not change, and change soon, we will be living in Minnesota,” he said in a post on X.
Schimming did not respond to a request for an interview about Tuesday’s election results but in a statement, he said Republicans “must stay united and continue fighting for our Conservative values.”
Democratic strategist said Republicans ‘didn’t even try’
Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki said he believes Tiffany will have more resources at his disposal than were in place for Lazar but said the disparity in the court race foretold a tough race for Republicans in the fall.
“It says a lot that Republicans did not spend what it was going to take to communicate a message to voters,” Zepecki said. “They have the financial resources, right? MAGA world is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Zepecki added, “And the fact that they didn’t even try, that tells me they know they are in for a calamitous November.”
He said that he thinks Republicans like Tiffany and vulnerable GOP members of Congress will have more resources at their disposal.
“And it will be a much fairer fight, but that will not change the rage that Democratic voters are feeling, and the disgust that independents and a growing number of Republicans have with an administration and a Congress that is incapable of delivering what they said they were going to,” Zepecki said.
Democratic candidates for governor are tying Taylor’s win to their own race.
State Rep. Francesca Hong, who is leading the Democratic primary race for governor in polling, said the results of Tuesday’s spring election mean voters “are telling us across the state that they’re ready for progressive, bold leadership, that they’re dissatisfied with the status quo, and that bold, universal policies like our platform has.”
“Folks are ready for leadership that wants bold change and not incremental tweaks.”
Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who also is running for governor in the Democratic field, said the results showing swings toward Democrats in Waukesha County are helpful for her candidacy because of her ties to the area.
“What we need is somebody who’s going to be able to pull in some of those swing voters, those independents, maybe even lean a little bit Republican, and because we are a purple state, so coming from Waukesha County,” she said.
Franklin, the director of the Marquette University Law School poll, said “the national environment was particularly bad” on Election Day for Lazar.
President Donald Trump recently record-setting net negative approval ratings in the latest Marquette poll, and 61% of people in that poll said they disapproved of the attacks on Iran.
“And of course, we voted on the day that he was threatening to destroy Iranian civilization forever,” Franklin said.
He said Taylor’s win was the biggest blowout in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race since 2000, when former Justice Diane Sykes won about 65.5% of the vote, defeating her opponent Louis Butler.
Franklin added that while Trump won 34 counties with 60% of the vote or more, Lazar won only three counties with 60% of the vote or more – just Washington, Taylor and Florence.
He noted that Taylor won Ozaukee and each of the key Fox Valley “BOW” counties (Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago).
“Those are really substantial wins,” Franklin said.
The next race for state Supreme Court is less than a year away.
On the Democratic side, Clark County Circuit Judge Lyndsey Brunette and State Appeals Judge Pedro Colón have been floated as potential contenders.
“This week Wisconsinites sent a clear message that they want a fair and impartial state Supreme Court,” Brunette said in a statement. “As a mom, former elected district attorney, and judge who cares deeply about keeping families safe and defending our fundamental rights and freedoms, I’m seriously considering the best way to continue serving the people of Wisconsin.”
Reporters Laura Schulte and Jessie Opoien of the Journal Sentinel contributed to this article.
Molly Beck and Mary Spicuzza can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
