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The Year’s Biggest Election

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The battle for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is a microcosm of the country. It is narrowly divided politically, though Democrats have a slight advantage in the popular vote in statewide elections. And, as in Washington, Republicans have structural advantages in the government that give them outsize power.

Conservatives have controlled the state’s Supreme Court since 2008, and Republicans have held a hammerlock on the Legislature since 2011, when the party drew itself an impenetrable majority after taking control in a wave election.

Tomorrow, Wisconsin will hold an election for a seat on its Supreme Court, and it is no exaggeration to call the race, for a 10-year term, the single most important American election of 2023. It is already the most expensive judicial race in the nation’s history. The candidates and the super PACs supporting them have spent nearly three times as much on this race as in any prior court election.

Why is a single state race crucial? Because whichever side prevails will hold a 4-to-3 court majority, and this is the first American election in which the winner will single-handedly determine two big issues: the fate of abortion rights and whether the state has a functional representative democracy. The winner will also set the course for the 2024 presidential election in a state where fewer than 23,000 votes decided four of the last six such races.

If the liberal candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, wins, Wisconsin will almost certainly become the first state to allow abortion again after outlawing it with last summer’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. And because Democrats are likely to challenge the makeup of the state’s legislative districts if the court has a liberal majority, the near supermajorities that Republicans enjoy in the State Legislature would also probably not survive until the 2024 election.

A victory for the conservative candidate, Daniel Kelly, would mean abortion remains illegal, the gerrymandered maps stay in place, and Wisconsin remains a dysfunctional democracy for the foreseeable future.

Janet Protasiewicz and Daniel Kelly.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times

Abortion became illegal in the state last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, throwing the question to the states. Wisconsin’s near-total ban on abortion — enacted in 1849, a year after statehood and seven decades before women could vote — suddenly became the law again.

Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) is a judge and former prosecutor from Milwaukee who has so emphasized her support for abortion rights that nobody could be confused about how she’d rule on the 1849 law. In interviews and television advertisements and during the lone general election debate, she has stressed her belief that abortion decisions should be left to women and their doctors, not to state legislators.

Kelly, a conservative former state Supreme Court justice who lost a re-election bid in 2020, has the backing of the state’s leading anti-abortion organizations and has repeatedly stressed his opposition to the practice.

Protasiewicz has bet that her support for abortion rights will energize Democratic voters and persuade enough independents and moderate Republicans to win. It is a big wager on the continuation of the politics that helped Democrats exceed expectations in last year’s midterm elections.

When I got my first full-time job in journalism at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2002, Wisconsin was an evenly divided state but one where control regularly switched back and forth between the two parties.

That ended after the 2010 Republican wave, when the party took both chambers of the Legislature and Scott Walker was elected governor. The G.O.P. weakened public-sector labor unions and drew itself the most aggressive gerrymander in the country — near supermajority control of both chambers in a 50-50 state. In 2020, Joe Biden won Wisconsin but carried only 37 out of 99 State Assembly districts.

Republicans also changed state law to make voting more onerous, enacting a strict voter ID law, while the state’s Supreme Court banned drop boxes for absentee ballots last year. Wisconsin now ranks 47th out of 50 states on how easy it is to vote, according to the 2022 Cost of Voting Index.

Protasiewicz calls the Republican-drawn maps “rigged,” has suggested the labor law is unconstitutional and says she agrees with the liberal dissent in last year’s Supreme Court drop box ruling. Kelly says redistricting is a political problem to be solved by legislators — the very people who created it.

This race will have real impact on national issues, too.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was the only one in the country that agreed to hear Donald Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election, eventually rejecting — by a single vote — his attempt to throw out 200,000 ballots in the state’s two big Democratic counties. Kelly, when I interviewed him in February, declined to say whether he agreed with the decision to uphold the 2020 results.

The 2024 presidential election in the state may be close enough to be contested in the courts again. New congressional maps could also put up to three Republican-held House seats in play.

Tomorrow’s other big election: Chicago’s mayoral runoff race has focused on crime. The election pits a former schools executive, Paul Vallas, who is campaigning largely on a pro-police platform, against Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner who favors solutions that go beyond policing. Here’s what matters in four of the city’s wards.

  • Democrats are using messages about abortion in their campaigns, even when the office they’re running for has little say on the issue.

  • Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas and a Trump critic, announced his bid for the 2024 Republican nomination.

  • The Biden administration blacklisted a spyware firm. But the government signed a secret contract with the company.

  • Donald Trump is using his criminal indictment to raise money and promote his 2024 presidential campaign.

  • Trump spent the weekend making plans for his arrest, while officials in New York prepared for potential turmoil.

  • The Russian authorities said they had detained a woman in the killing of a pro-war blogger in a bombing in St. Petersburg, Russia, yesterday.

  • In a call with his Russian counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanded the release of the imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich.

  • A Russian children’s rights advocate says she’s rescuing abandoned Ukrainian children. The International Criminal Court accuses her of abducting them.

  • Residents in a Ukrainian city near active combat refuse to leave. The Times rode with the police trying to evacuate them.

  • Saudi Arabia, Russia and their oil-producing allies said they would cut production, an apparent effort to increase prices.

  • The Israeli government moved forward with a plan to establish a national guard, a political victory for a far-right minister.

  • Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister who found international popularity, lost a national election.

  • Pope Francis left the hospital after receiving treatment for bronchitis.

Storms have resurrected a California lake that was drained.Mark Abramson for The New York Times

  • “This could be the mother of all floods”: California residents are bracing for the melt of this winter’s snowfall.

  • Anti-abortion groups argue abortion pills are dangerous. More than 100 scientific studies have concluded that they are safe.

  • The police found the body of a 2-year-old boy in the jaws of an alligator in Florida after his mother was stabbed to death.

Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discuss Trump’s indictment and the 2024 election.

Women’s sports deserve to be mythologized like men’s sports are, Kate Fagan writes.

“The Last of Us” is right: In a warming world, fungal infections are a public-health blind spot, Dr. Neil Vora says.

Secret to happiness: People in Finland say it’s knowing when you have enough.

Looking for love? Move abroad.

Metropolitan Diary: Getting his daily steps in. (All 113,772 of them.)

Quiz time: Take our latest news quiz and share your score (the average was 8.8).

Advice from Wirecutter: The best creamy peanut butter.

Lives Lived: Seymour Stein championed acts including the Ramones, Talking Heads and the Pretenders on his label Sire, and helped found the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He died at 80.

The victorious L.S.U. players.Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

N.C.A.A. champions: Louisiana State beat Iowa, 102-85, winning its first national title in women’s basketball, The Athletic writes. “I think we have a lot to be proud of,” an emotional Caitlin Clark, Iowa’s star, said after the game.

Colorful and divisive coach: Kim Mulkey, L.S.U.’s coach, wore a tiger-striped pantsuit of pink and gold sequins. But don’t mistake her for any triviality, Jeré Longman writes in The Times. It was Mulkey’s fourth national title as head coach.

Chaos on the track: Max Verstappen won the Australian Grand Prix yesterday, but it was not a leisurely competition for the title front-runner, The Athletic’s Madeline Coleman writes.

Leonard Scheicher and Girley Jazama in “Measures of Men.”Julia Terjung/Studiocanal GmbH

Modern Germany has frequently grappled with the Holocaust, but it has not paid much attention to its role in the 20th century’s first genocide, when German colonial forces killed many people in what is now Namibia. A movie, “Measures of Men,” aims to change that.

The film tells the story of the killings through the eyes of a German anthropologist who becomes complicit in the slaughter. It has been screened for lawmakers in Germany’s Parliament and will be shown in schools too. “Cinema allows us to awaken emotions, and implant images that can let you see events differently,” Lars Kraume, the director, said.

Linda Xiao for The New York Times

Maqluba is a Palestinian dish made with rice, meat and fried vegetables.

The Broadway adaptation of “Life of Pi” is rich and inventive.

The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was pocketbook. Here is today’s puzzle.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Get down (five letters).

And here’s today’s Wordle.

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

P.S. Wordplay columnist Rachel Fabi’s mom engaged in some lighthearted trolling in the comments section of a recent Times Crossword puzzle.

Here’s today’s front page.

“The Daily” is about Trump’s indictment.

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Source: Elections - nytimes.com

Tagcloud: AbortionElections, Courts and the JudiciaryLaw and LegislationPolitics and GovernmentStates (US)Supreme Courts (State)Wisconsin

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