Susan Crawford touts work as prosecutor — and for Democratic priorities — in Wisconsin Supreme Court bid

On a snowy Saturday in mid-February, a couple dozen people sat around tables at the Black River Area Chamber of Commerce in western Wisconsin. They ate from plates heaped with slaw and stewed chicken as they awaited the morning’s main event: a visit from Dane County Judge Susan Crawford.

Crawford, a liberal, is one of two candidates vying for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Her opponent, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, is the state’s former Republican attorney general.

Their race is already drawing national attention, though it was hard to tell from this event, which was more potluck than pep rally. Crawford, who grew up about an hour away in Chippewa Falls, talked to the crowd about her childhood and her background as a prosecutor. She took the kind of questions that people might have asked in a different era, when judicial races were sleepy affairs.

“How will you balance being (an) independent judge and an elected official?” one man asked.

Crawford responded that she’ll never tell people how she would decide specific cases.

“I’m running as a judge,” she said. “I’m not running as a politician.”

It’s a common refrain from candidates for the court, one Crawford has made often since she launched her campaign. But the political stakes of this race, which will decide the ideological balance of the court, couldn’t be much larger for Wisconsin. And because of when it will happen — just five months after Republicans won control of the White House and Congress — the race may soon be viewed as a referendum on the direction of the nation itself.

Two years ago, another Wisconsin Supreme Court race unfolded with similar stakes. High cost. A national spotlight. An ideological majority in the balance.

This time around, any pretense that these nonpartisan races are apolitical has dissipated. Crawford, the liberal candidate, is supported by the Democratic Party, while Schimel, the conservative, is backed by the GOP.

Both candidates are heavily focused on the other’s records on crime. They’re dropping hints on other issues, like abortion, that have grown increasingly less subtle as they look to mobilize voters who might otherwise stay home.

Throughout her campaign, Crawford has sought to paint herself as the measured jurist facing a partisan extremist in Schimel. Schimel has lobbed nearly identical attacks on her.

Standing before the group in western Wisconsin, Crawford laid out the argument that she shares at campaign events across the state.

“Do you want to have a justice who is going to be fair and impartial, somebody who applies common sense and knows right from wrong, and somebody who puts the safety of our communities first and the fundamental rights and freedoms of all Wisconsinites?” she said. “Or do you want to have a justice on the Supreme Court who is an extreme partisan politician?”

‘She was a star’

Crawford grew up one of four kids. Her father was an engineer educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Crawford recalls him getting laid off while she was in high school, setting the stage for her to pay her way through Lawrence College in Appleton.

“So I know the value of hard work,” she told the group in Black River Falls. “I learned that people have to stick together and back each other up.”

After graduating law school in Iowa, she didn’t make her way back to Wisconsin right away. But eventually she was hired to work under former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat who was then serving as Wisconsin attorney general.

“It was a big coup,” Doyle recalls of hiring Crawford back to the Badger State to work for the Wisconsin Department of Justice. “I mean, she was a star.”

In particular, Doyle remembers Crawford’s time leading the DOJ’s Criminal Appeals Unit, working on several cases that went before the very court on which she’s now campaigning to serve.

“She knows that law isn’t just an intellectual exercise, that it really affects people,” he said. “And when you’re in the line of work we were in as prosecutors, you have to really understand that this is not just a little game people play, but there is a lot at stake, and it will affect people’s lives forever.”

Crawford has leaned heavily on that background with criminal issues in this campaign. Late last month, she held a press conference with dozens of former Wisconsin assistant district attorneys — local prosecutors — who endorsed her.

“I’ve dedicated my career to protecting our communities,” she said at the event. “And I believe if you’re a victim of crime, you deserve to have your rights protected and justice served.”

A focus on Schimel’s record, including a backlog of rape kits

When campaigning against Schimel, she’s made his record on testing sexual assault kits while attorney general a central theme of her attacks. Those are DNA evidence collected after a person has been assaulted, which can be tested for evidence and prosecution.

In ads and in speeches, she’s accused him of sitting on a known backlog of such kits when he took office, and of only ramping up testing when he was running for reelection.

“He wouldn’t go to the Legislature to ask for additional funding to speed up that testing of those rape kits,” she told the group in Black River Falls. “He did go to the Legislature to ask for more lawyers to pursue a right-wing legal agenda.”

Schimel has said he was awaiting federal funding and following protocols that would respect the rights and feelings of the survivors.

Focusing on criminal issues is something of an unusual tack for a liberal candidate to take, said Anthony Chergosky, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

“I think one of the lessons from the November election that Democrats are taking is that the crime issue was problematic for their side,” he said. “So I think the Crawford campaign is going to try to at least make it a draw on the issue of crime.”

The Schimel campaign and its allies have hit back. One ad from Fair Courts America, a national political action committee devoted to elevating conservatives to state courts, nicknames Crawford “catch-and-release Crawford,” arguing she routinely sentences offenders to less prison time than she should.

Polling shows crime is an important issue to voters, but increasingly, voters have realized that state courts are responsible for settling political issues. That’s especially true in a state like Wisconsin, where the Democratic governor and GOP-held Legislature are frequently at odds, leaving the court as the place where some of the biggest partisan battles get settled.

Crawford worked for Democrats, and Democratic groups, for years

Crawford and Schimel are both trying to paint each other as too political. But there’s no denying that both have staked out partisan sides. Each is backed by a political party, with Crawford so far receiving at least $3 million from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and Schimel receiving about $1.7 million from the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

Those represent just a fraction of overall spending in the race, which is already approaching $50 million according to a running tally by WisPolitics. That’s close to the total amount spent in the last Wisconsin Supreme Court battle in 2023, which shattered national records.

But in spite of those big bucks in the race, many voters still don’t know these candidates. According to the most recent Marquette University Law School poll, many Wisconsin voters say they don’t have enough information about either candidate. That’s especially true for Crawford, who unlike Schimel, is making her first run for statewide office. Roughly three out of five voters have no opinion of her, compared to two out of five voters who say the same of Schimel.

About a fifth of voters say they haven’t heard anything about the race, even as national donors write fat checks, and national media shine a spotlight.

For better or worse, court watchers say partisan campaigns fill that gap. Research shows that people seeking nonpartisan office have to send partisan cues to voters if they want them to bother to show up to the polls, said Damon Cann, a political scientist at Utah State University.

“If they can give more of a feel for their ideology, their judicial philosophy, their approach to deciding cases, then it’s a lot easier for voters to discern where they’re at on the left-right political spectrum,” he said.

Crawford has sterling Democratic credentials, dating back to her days with Doyle. After he became governor, she served as general counsel in his gubernatorial office. She left for private practice, where she took the lead in several high-profile political cases, including a lawsuit challenging Act 10, the signature law from Republican Gov. Scott Walker that ended collective bargaining for most public sector unions. She also led a lawsuit against Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which she once called “draconian.”

An outspoken supporter of abortion rights

Crawford has also been an outspoken supporter of abortion rights, an issue that has motivated liberal voters since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.

That was especially true in 2023, when now-Justice Janet Protasiewicz emphasized her support for abortion rights, which may have won her the election.

Crawford has a record on abortion rights. As a private attorney, she represented Planned Parenthood on several occasions — including in a case titled Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin v. Schimel.

That case would have required state abortion providers to also have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, a requirement that abortion supporters say limits access. As state attorney general, Schimel defended the law.

On the campaign trail, Crawford has relitigated the issue. In ads, she ties Schimel to a 19th-century Wisconsin law previously interpreted as a ban on abortion, and she makes clear she “personally trusts women to decide whether to have an abortion.”

That law is currently being considered by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In an interview with WPR, Crawford said she thinks the federal decision overturning Roe was wrong.

“I’m not prejudging how any particular law or regulation should play out in the courts,” Crawford said. “But … as a woman and somebody who’s gone through pregnancy and birth, personally, I want to be able to make my own health care decisions with my doctors.”

The court is also expected to weigh in on a new challenge to Act 10. Crawford’s colleague, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jacob Frost, wrote the lower court decision that found the law unconstitutional. Frost’s ruling is currently on hold while the case is appealed. Crawford told WPR she has not read it.

Protasiewicz, who blazed the high-stakes liberal campaign trail Crawford now treads, has been dogged by calls to recuse from cases based on statements she made on the campaign trail and even before. She has repeatedly declined to do so, although she said she would consider recusing from cases involving the state Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

This time around, neither Schimel nor Crawford have committed to recusing from cases involving campaign donors. They’re not required to under state or federal law — court candidates are allowed to express personal opinions, so long as they don’t commit to ruling in a certain way.

Chergosky, the political scientist, said Crawford needs to focus on the kinds of issues that rev up Democratic voters, especially coming off Democrats’ bruising losses in November. Following an election cycle that empowered Republicans in Congress and sent President Donald Trump back to the White House, he notes Crawford’s voter base may be “demoralized and demobilized.”

“For Democrats, they’re going to have to work hard to mobilize their voters and to try to re-engage their party supporters after a very disappointing November election,” he said.

These issues are also key to the Schimel campaign’s attacks on Crawford. In ads and press releases, his campaign has tried to paint Crawford as “dangerously liberal.” He argues her past advocacy for voter ID and against Act 10 have crossed lines, and make her too partisan for the court. 

Former Gov. Doyle calls those knocks on Crawford’s record “disingenuous.” He points to Schimel’s endorsements by anti-abortion groups as evidence that both sides hold personal values on the issue.

Above all else, he says Crawford understands the law as well as anybody.

“We live in a very hyperpartisan world. There’s no way that you can avoid this these days,” he said. “But she knows what a judge’s job is, and a judge’s job is to look at the law and understand the facts and look at the Wisconsin Constitution.”