Susan Crawford, Brad Schimel square off in debate for high-stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race

The two candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court met in Milwaukee on Wednesday night in their only debate for an election that’s already broken spending records and could set the direction of the court for years to come.

The tone between Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel was at times testy during the event, which was hosted by WISN-TV and Marquette University Law School. Both candidates referred to the other as “my opponent” rather than by name as they sparred over one another’s records on crime, relationships to donors and stances on high-profile issues like abortion. 

Sitting side by side at a table with moderators Gerron Jordan and Matt Smith, both Schimel and Crawford accused the other of attempting to politicize the nonpartisan court, even as both are benefiting from millions in outside spending.

While officially nonpartisan, the candidates reside in distinct ideological camps, with Crawford backed by liberals and the Democratic Party, and Schimel backed by conservatives and the Republican Party. 

The high stakes and high cost of the race prompted both candidates to argue during the debate that the other is too partisan to sit on the bench, while at the same time defending their own records.

“When I put on the black robe, I’m like an umpire in baseball. I’m not rooting for any team,” Schimel said.

Crawford said Schimel was good at paying “lip service” to the principles of impartiality and open-mindedness, but he had taken positions on cases pending before the court.

“And Brad Schimel is making those pronouncements not based on the law in that case or the facts or the arguments of the attorneys, but based on political consideration,” Crawford said.

Schimel said one reason he chose to run for the court was in response to the last high-profile high court race in 2023, when Justice Janet Protasiewicz was elected, a race which swung the court from a conservative to a liberal majority. He said her statements on the campaign trail — including expressing support for abortion rights and calling the state’s legislative maps “rigged” — had politicized the court.

“Justice is no longer blind on the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” he said. “We have to restore objectivity.”

Schimel said Protasiewicz should have recused herself from hearing cases where she had an interest.

Crawford said that justices follow the ethics rules of the court, which leave the decision of recusal almost entirely in an individual justice’s hands. But she said she would “welcome proposals to increase and improve the ethical standards for justices.”

National politics, including Musk donations, loom large

Crawford worked to link Schimel to Elon Musk, who has become a major player in Wisconsin’s court race. According to regulatory filings with the state, as of Wednesday, Musk’s political action committee had spent about $6 million on the race while another PAC with ties to the billionaire had spent an additional $4 million.

Crawford argued that Musk had a business interest in Schimel’s campaign because his company, Tesla, recently filed a lawsuit against Wisconsin to try to open dealerships in the state.  

“It is no coincidence that Elon Musk started spending that money within days of Tesla filing a lawsuit in Wisconsin,” she said. “He’s trying to buy access and influence by buying himself a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”

Debate moderators also asked about recent mailings from a Musk-backed group, separate from Schimel’s campaign, that said he’d “support President Trump’s agenda.”

Schimel said he doesn’t coordinate with outside groups who spread messages in support of him. Asked if he would ever rule against Trump, he said he would.

“If President Trump violates the law, or President Trump brings a lawsuit that he’s wrong on the law, of course I would,” he said. “I don’t have any personal loyalty to him that supersedes the oath I take as a judge.”

Abortion and Act 10 due to come before the court

The candidates were asked about several issues that the court is likely to rule on, including abortion. A case challenging a pre-Civil War law that once banned abortion is currently pending before the court, as is another case that seeks to expand state abortion rights.

Crawford declined to weigh in on the specific lawsuits, saying that doing so would be prejudicial, but she said she supports abortion rights broadly and pointed to her record representing Planned Parenthood as a private attorney.

“Voters need to understand that this is a critical issue in this race,” she said. “My opponent has said he believes the 1849 law in Wisconsin is valid law. He’s trying to backpedal from that position now.”

She pointed to statements Schimel has made saying that there isn’t a constitutional right to abortion.

Schimel said his comments, which reflected the outcome of the federal decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, were taken out of context. He said that he is personally opposed to abortion but argued that the matter should be taken up by voters, not courts.

“No judge or justice should be deciding this issue for the voters of Wisconsin,” he said. “If four justices on the majority in the court can make that decision for the voters, that decision can flip back and forth every time the majority flips.”

An effort to overturn Act 10 — the signature law signed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker that weakened public unions — is also likely to head to the Supreme Court. As a private attorney, Crawford represented groups that opposed that law.

Current conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, who helped author the law when he served as Walker’s general counsel, has said he’ll recuse from hearing that case. Crawford said she thought Hagedorn’s decision was appropriate, but she would not commit to recusing from the latest challenge because her own lawsuit had focused on a different aspect of the law.

“If the same provision that I was involved in litigating back in those early days was challenged again, I most likely would recuse again,” she said.

Schimel defended previous statements he’d made saying he would have supported Act 10 in court.

“My job as attorney general was to defend Wisconsin law, not to pick and choose which laws I like or didn’t like,” he said.

In April, as voters decide between Schimel and Crawford, they’ll also face the question of whether to enshrine the Wisconsin’s voter ID law into the state constitution. Republican lawmakers who approved that ballot question said they were doing so to prevent a liberal-held court from undoing the law.

Crawford, who also led a lawsuit against Wisconsin’s voter ID law when it was first enacted, was asked if she stood by her criticisms of the law, including calling it “draconian.” She said the law is “very different now than it was then,” thanks largely to changes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court required following her lawsuit.

Schimel said that while it would not affect his decisions on the bench, as a voter, he would support the resolution on voter ID.

Soft-on-crime accusations have dominated airwaves

Both candidates have also sought to paint the other as insufficiently tough on crime throughout their respective careers. While Crawford and Schimel only spoke directly to each other a handful of times throughout the evening, several of the evening’s sharper exchanges happened as they traded accusations of lying about the other’s record.

Crawford has made Schimel’s work on testing rape kits central to her campaign attacks on him. She argues that when he was the state’s attorney general, he did not prioritize clearing a backlog of crime kits until it became politically expedient.

On Wednesday, she drew a contrast with her own record.

“I’m proud of the work that I did as a prosecutor and proud of the work that I did later representing Wisconsinites in our courtrooms, protecting their health care rights, protecting their voting rights, and protecting their rights in the workplace,” she said.

Schimel accused Crawford of misrepresenting his record and said she lacked the experience with crime victims that he had as a former Waukesha County district attorney.

“I was the guy they called at 3 a.m. to go to the crime scene. I was the guy who worked with law enforcement to build that case from the crime scene all the way to conviction. I was the shoulder that crime victims cried on time and time again,” he said. “My opponent never did that.”  

High stakes and high spending

Whoever wins this race will determine the ideological balance of the court, where liberals currently hold a 4-3 majority. The next two elections will put conservative incumbents on defense, meaning that if Crawford wins, the court could stay in liberal hands until at least 2028.

As of Wednesday, about $59 million had been spent on the race, according to a tally by WisPolitics. That’s more than the record set during the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which was at the time the most expensive judicial race in American history. 

Despite all the attention and spending, most Wisconsinites still didn’t know much about the candidates in late February, according to the latest Marquette Law School poll.