They Bought and Paid for It

 And you can't have it back.

Wisconsin voters have to winnow down four Supreme Court judicial candidates to two on Tuesday, February 21. The candidates are running for the seat of retiring Justice Patience Roggensack, one of the four conservatives on the State Supreme Court.

Milwaukee County Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz was first on the airwaves with commercials relying heavily on the message that she is biased in favor of abortion rights. She doesn't use euphemisms like "choice" or "reproductive rights." She comes right out and says "abortion," and so do the women in her We-Support-Protasiewicz ads.

A shadowy third-party group quickly followed suit with this "Madison Liberals Want OUR SUPREME COURT" ad. After showing rioters in the background, it then accuses her of letting rapists out onto Wisconsin streets — well, just one case, but you're supposed to conclude that she does it all the time.* The ad concludes by endorsing former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, appointed to the Court by Gov. Scott Walker in 2016, but who lost the seat in 2020.

Right-wing groups have consistently accused judicial candidates who don't hew the conservative, pro-business, pro-Republican line of being soft on crime. Their attacks date back to 2008, with unfair soft-on-crime accusations against Gov. Doyle appointee Justice Leroy Butler, who lost to Mike Gableman (who has since gone on to peddle Trumpist lies about the 2020 election).

These groups don’t necessarily care about stocking the Court with judges who sentence every criminal defendant to life behind bars, but they have seen that it wins them elections.

Kelly's own ads this year tout his decision with the conservative majority to strike down Governor Evers's "stay-at-home" directives in the early weeks of the COVID-19 epidemic.

Kelly is one of the two right-wingers on the ballot this year, and interestingly, now a liberal group is running an attack ad using the same tactics against the other conservative, Waukesha County Court Judge Jennifer Dorow. "Better Wisconsin" found some case in which she allowed a defendant convicted in a domestic abuse case two days to report to prison, “time he used to violently assault his own family members.”

Dorow became familiar to Wisconsinites this year as the judge in the trial of the asshole who drove his pick-up through the Waukesha Christmas Parade, killing six people. She justifiably sentenced him to life in prison, and her ads play up that case.

Although he has a few endorsements from some prominent Democrats in Wisconsin, we haven't heard much yet from the fourth candidate, Dane County Court Judge Everett Mitchell, who presides over the Juvenile Division in Branch 4. 

If he should happen to be one of the final two after February 21, I'm sure we'll be hearing about any kid in his courtroom who grew up to murder, rape, pillage, shoplift, or jaywalk.

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* Update: The Protaseiwicz campaign this evening his fired back with a TV ad charging that as lawyers before they became judges, Dorow and Kelly defended criminals, including in Kelly's case, youth pastors (plural) who molested children.