As a couple dozen people sat around tables at the Black River Area Chamber of Commerce in western Wisconsin, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford 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 at the Feb. 15 event.
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 Wisconsin Supreme Court, and 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 Brad Schimel, the conservative, is backed by the GOP.
Throughout her campaign, Crawford has sought to paint herself as the measured jurist facing a partisan extremist in Schimel.
“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?”
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Schimel has lobbed nearly identical attacks on her.
Crawford work under former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat who was then serving as Wisconsin attorney general.
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 made Schimel's record on testing sexual assault kits while attorney general a central theme of her attacks. In ads and in speeches, she’s accused him of sitting on a known backlog 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.
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The Schimel campaign and its allies have hit back. One ad from Fair Courts America, a national political action committee, nicknames Crawford “ catch-and-release Crawford ,” arguing she routinely sentences offenders to less prison time than she should.
Crawford worked for Democrats, and Democratic groups
Crawford has sterling Democratic credentials. After Doyle 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 , which ended collective bargaining for most public sector unions. She also led a lawsuit against Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which she once called “ draconian."
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.
Crawford has also been an outspoken supporter of 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.
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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.
“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.”
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