After a liberal blowout in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, this year’s conservative candidate, Brad Schimel, says his campaign won’t make the same mistakes.
Schimel, the state’s former Republican attorney general, is embracing politics in ways the last conservative who ran for the court did not. He’s accepting money from the state Republican Party, getting help from Elon Musk and has presented the stakes of the race in more than just legal terms, framing it as part of a battle between good and evil.
Supreme Court races are nonpartisan, but in a wink and nod sort of way. The state Democratic and Republican parties have already funneled millions of dollars to their preferred candidates through direct transfers ahead of the April 1 election.
That wasn’t the case two years ago, when former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly refused direct support from the Wisconsin GOP while his opponent, former Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, accepted around $10 million from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Protasiewicz went on to defeat Kelly by 11 percentage points, flipping the court to liberal control for the first time in 15 years.
Schimel, who is now a Waukesha County judge, has said Kelly was “running a race from 30 years ago” and things are different now.
“The idea that court races are completely without any partisan influences, that’s gone,” Schimel told WPR ahead of a Waukesha Rotary Club pancake breakfast last month.
He said he respects Kelly’s decision not to accept direct GOP contributions on principle, but it put the former justice “in a position where he couldn’t compete.”
“If these rules are available to the other side, you should utilize them as well,” Schimel said.
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‘Expelling the serpent’
Schimel is a career prosecutor who served eight years as Waukesha County district attorney before winning the 2014 race for Wisconsin attorney general. He served at the same time as former Gov. Scott Walker, and both men were narrowly defeated by Democrats in 2018. Before they left office, Walker appointed Schimel as Waukesha County judge.
At the time, conservatives had a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court that included Kelly, whom Walker appointed to fill a vacancy. But Kelly lost his first election in 2020 and lost again when he ran for an open seat in the 2023 election.
Since then, the court’s liberal majority has struck down Republican-drawn state legislative voting maps as unconstitutional and reauthorized absentee ballot drop boxes. The court is expected to weigh in on cases that could expand abortion rights in Wisconsin, and could hear a challenge to Act 10, the landmark law that decimated public employee unions.
In his current race against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, Schimel has used stark terms to describe the court’s current majority. At a La Crosse County Republican Party caucus, Schimel said he agrees with supporters who’ve asked whether this “is the battle between good and evil.” He then referenced his Catholic Archbishop’s Bible reading for the day about God expelling the serpent from the Garden of Eden.
“I thought, you know, there’s a metaphor that is not ancient history,” Schimel said. “That’s right now. It’s that serious. That’s how high these stakes are.”
Schimel told the crowd about a “scary time,” before President Donald Trump was reelected in November, describing it as America walking to the “edge of the abyss.” He accused federal judges blocking Trump’s executive orders of engaging in “lawfare” and channeled some of the president’s moxie when he called the Supreme Court’s liberal majority the most “dangerous body in state government” because liberal justices prejudge cases against Republicans.
“If we don’t restore that object objectivity to the court, then our justice system is dead. It’s over,” Schimel said. “People will have lost their case before they even made an appearance in court, and then there’s no point to it. And if our court system fails, then our republic fails. We have to save our state by restoring that objectivity. That’s why I’m in this race.”
‘An incredibly strong candidate’
Republican strategist Mark Graul, who ran conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Anette Ziegler’s successful 2007 campaign, told WPR Schimel’s fundraising prowess, record as a prosecutor, judge and former attorney general make him “an incredibly strong candidate.” What’s more, Graul said Schimel avoided the same kind of bruising conservative primary Kelly faced two years ago.
Graul said Wisconsin Democrats have brilliantly “co-opted” what used to be a successful GOP strategy in Supreme Court races by running female candidates who have experience as prosecutors and judges. Along with Protasiewicz, Democrats have backed liberal Justices Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky since 2018. Protasiewicz and Dallet were both prosecutors and then judges in Milwaukee County while Karofsky held the same jobs in Dane County.
“So, they’ve co-opted much of the messaging that conservatives used for years to be successful,” Graul said. “And for some reason on our side, conservatives continue to put up candidates who are much more concerned about high-minded thinking than they were about some of the meat and potato issues that people care about.”
Graul said Schimel is breaking that mold. His campaign has focused on crime, safety and making sure people are treated fairly in the courtroom with an eye on “common sense values.”
“I believe this is going to be a very close race. But Brad Schimel gives conservatives an opportunity to win that the previous candidate did not,” Graul said of Kelly.
Schimel’s record on rape kit backlog, abortion, under spotlight
With his political experience, Schimel also brings a long record that Crawford’s campaign, the Democratic Party and liberal groups are using to paint him as extreme on issues like safety, abortion and health care.
Crawford’s attack ads accuse Schimel of letting “6,000 rape kits sit untested for two years” when he was attorney general, referencing the backlog of kits that existed during the first half of his term. Schimel has called the attack “utter garbage,” noting he eventually cleared the backlog and put a system in place to prevent it from happening again.
Schimel’s record opposing abortion is long. He defended a law, signed by Walker, aimed at restricting access to abortion in Wisconsin by requiring doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The law was overturned, and while Schimel appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, it declined to hear the case, and the restrictions were never enforced.
When he was district attorney, Schimel signed onto a white paper authored by Wisconsin Right to Life anticipating the U.S. Supreme Court could strike down the federal abortion protections guaranteed by Roe v. Wade. It asserted if that happened, a pre-Civil War state law would make abortion illegal in Wisconsin. The court struck down Roe in June 2022, and a lawsuit challenging the Wisconsin law is being considered by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
During his campaign, Schimel has told Republicans he doesn’t see anything wrong with the 19th century abortion law and it would be a “sham” if the liberal majority rules that the state constitution provides a right to abortion. Instead of the court deciding abortion policy, Schimel has echoed a call for a statewide referendum on the issue that was first proposed by Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson.
When asked if voters could assume they know how he would rule on abortion cases, Schimel told WPR he has opinions, but they don’t follow him into the courtroom. He said he defended laws he didn’t agree with while he was the state’s top lawyer.
“I apply the law the way it’s written, without regard to my personal opinions,” Schimel said. “That’s the commitment every person who puts on the robe should make.”
Beyond abortion, during Schimel’s tenure as attorney general, he also signed on to federal lawsuits that sought to overturn the Affordable Care Act, carbon emission rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and a directive from former President Barack Obama regarding bathroom and locker room facilities for transgender students.
Turnout key for GOP hopes of retaking Supreme Court
A key question facing both Schimel and Crawford is which party will drive more supporters to the polls for an off-year election. Around 3.4 million Wisconsinites voted in the Nov. 5 presidential election, but Schimel says he expects “a million-and-a-half are going to fall off for April 1.” That would put turnout at close to 2023 levels, when 1.8 million voters cast ballots in the Supreme Court race.
At the La Crosse County GOP gathering, Schimel laid out the mission for his fellow Republicans: “Get most of our people to come back and do it again.”
The Republican Party and conservative groups like Americans For Prosperity-Wisconsin have heeded the call and been canvassing neighborhoods around the state.
During a Kenosha County Republican Party “Super Saturday” event, around 30 volunteers were writing postcards and packing plastic bags with campaign flyers in between coffee and sweets.
Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Shelly Grogan fired them up by criticizing the Supreme Court majority’s rulings, and said it’s deciding fewer cases while giving its staff a large raise. Grogan borrowed from Trump campaign themes to drive home her point, telling the volunteers to “fight, fight, fight!”
“What we need here is an extreme court makeover,” Grogan said. “We need to elect Brad Schimel to get rid of the broken court and restore our court and make our court great again!”
Along a quiet and chilly Kenosha cul-de-sac, Angela Kretchmer walked quickly from house to house handing residents campaign flyers for Schimel and local Republican candidates, asking residents whether they plan to vote in the upcoming election. Several said they would, and that they support Schimel, while some said they’re still thinking about it.
A smartphone app showed a map of the city with markers on homes where “soft Republicans” live.
“So, in other words, they vote in elections, but not every election,” Kretchmer said.
She said conservatives typically get to the finish line in elections, but some “think that Nov. 5 was the finish line.”
“So we just have to remind them,” Kretchmer said. “Yes, we took our federal government back. It’s now time to focus on local.”
Will Elon Musk and Trump boost GOP in lower-turnout election?
If history is any guide, turnout could easily top 50 percent in the April election, which is high for a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, but nowhere near the levels seen in presidential elections. In November, for example, Wisconsin’s turnout was well above 70 percent.
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Political Science Professor Anthony Chergosky said he thinks Democrats have a built-in edge when it comes to mobilizing votes in lower-turnout elections. He said that’s because the party has increasingly attracted voters who have gone to college and are more likely to vote.
“So, I think that the low-turnout environment of a spring election would tend to advantage the Democratic Party and would tend to advantage the more liberal-leaning candidate, Crawford,” Chergosky said. “However, we also know that Elon Musk is now getting engaged in this race.”
Indeed, the world’s richest man has gotten behind Schimel in a big way. His political action committee, America PAC, has poured more than $4.2 million into the race in less than a month, according to a filing with the state. A nonprofit with ties to Muk, Building America’s Future, has spent more than $2 million. The groups have run TV and digital ads attacking Crawford’s record in addition to spending millions on canvassing operations. Musk himself has shared posts on his social media platform X calling on Republicans to support Schimel.
With Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race being the first statewide election since Republicans won control of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate and the presidency, it’s viewed as a kind of barometer for how the nation feels about the Trump presidency.
Trump stayed out of the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election — Kelly said he “was not really looking for endorsements from political actors.” Schimel has taken a different approach in 2025, saying he would welcome Trump’s support.
Chergosky said Trump’s endorsement would shake things up in an off-year election, when many of the president’s supporters might be otherwise inclined to stay home.
It would also be consistent with the trend of escalating partisanship and escalating politicization of these elections,” Chergosky said.
Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2025, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.
