We have nominally non-partisan elections coming up here in the Dairy State next week, and the airwaves have been flooded with attack ads for the two candidates for Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Both candidates accuse each other of letting sex offenders off with light sentences.
It has been the successful tactic of Republican judicial candidates here for decades. Outside groups have also weighed in; they used to tell viewers to “tell” Candidate X to stop being so lenient to criminals— ignoring the fact that the surest way to get Candidate X to stop being so lenient to criminals is to elect him or her to the Supreme Court, where they will never pass sentence on a criminal again.
The tactic has been mitigated only very recently as younger voters, mostly female, have noticed that Republican judges have no respect for their reproductive rights. We have also noticed that when it comes to the actions of our lopsidedly Republican legislature, the Republican justices are nothing remotely resembling "non-partisan."
We are waiting to see how the mutual accusations of criminal-coddling play out this time. Judge Susan Crawford also claims that Judge Brad Schimmel will return Wisconsin's 1849 anti-abortion law to effect, and that he bears (some of) the responsibility for the backlog of untested rape evidence kits that built up while he was Attorney General.
In past election cycles, the Koch Brothers have been the major out-of-state funders of third-party advertising supporting Republican judicial candidates, setting new campaign spending records every year. This year, Elon Musk has stepped into that role, also repeating his 2024 tactic of bribing voters. He's only offering $100 this time, not the $1million he dangled in front of swing state voters for Trump, but it's not as if Schimmel is a 34-time convicted felon who fomented a riot at the U.S. Capitol, pushed snake oil during a worldwide epidemic, and swiped hundreds of classified documents last time he left the White House.
Oh, and it's not technically offering bribes for votes. No, Musk is merely paying voters to sign his phony petition against activist judges. Just give him your name and address. He's already got your Social Security number.
By the way it just so happens that Musk's Tesla company is suing the state of Wisconsin over a law preventing him from opening Tesla dealerships here.
No comments:
Post a Comment