Supreme Court Primary Election Appears Likely

An outspoken lemon law attorney and a Marquette law professor both filed signatures Wednesday to challenge sitting Justice Patience Roggensack in this year’s State Supreme Court race.Assuming their signatures hold up, lemon law lawyer Vince Megna and Marquette Law Professor Edward Fallone would be on a primary ballot with Roggensack in February. The top two vote-getters would advance to a general election in April.

While the race is officially nonpartisan, Megna is running as a Democrat. And if voters want to know where he stands on issues, he says he’ll tell them, “The people that I talk to, virtually 90 percent of them would ask me, well what are you? Meaning are you a Democrat, are you a Republican? And I would tell them. And to not tell them what you are, I think, is just furthering the sham that this is a nonpartisan election because everybody knows it’s not.”

Taking a more conventional approach to this race is Edward Fallone, who has written extensively on some of the high profile court cases in Wisconsin over the past two years. While his campaign is being run by a Democratic strategist, Fallone says he’s not running under any labels in this race, “It may be that that is an effective tactic, but I believe very strongly that that is not in the best interest of our state. I don’t think our judicial races should become more partisan. And I think it undermines the public’s faith in our institution of the court when they view a race like that in partisan terms. So I don’t agree with his tactics.”

Justice Patience Roggensack, who won her first term to the court ten years ago, turned in her nomination signatures late last week. Roggensack is part of the court’s conservative majority and her campaign is being run by a former director of the state Republican Party.