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      Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: Protasiewicz Wins With Abortion Message

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      Janet Protasiewicz prevailed in the state’s highly consequential contest for the Supreme Court, which will now be likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps.MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin voters on Tuesday chose to upend the political direction of their state by electing a liberal candidate to the State Supreme Court, flipping majority control from conservatives, according to The Associated Press. The result means that in the next year, the court is likely to reverse the state’s abortion ban and end the use of gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by Republicans.Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, defeated Daniel Kelly, a conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who sought a return to the bench. With more than 75 percent of votes counted, Judge Protasiewicz led by more than 10 percentage points, though the margin was expected to narrow as rural counties tallied ballots.“Our state is taking a step forward to a better and brighter future where our rights and freedoms will be protected,” Judge Protasiewicz told jubilant supporters at her victory party in Milwaukee.The contest, which featured over $40 million in spending, was the most expensive judicial election in American history. Early on, Democrats recognized the importance of the race for a swing seat on the top court in one of the country’s perennial political battlegrounds. Millions of dollars from out of state poured into Wisconsin to back Judge Protasiewicz, and a host of national Democratic groups rallied behind her campaign.Judge Protasiewicz, 60, shattered long-held notions of how judicial candidates should conduct themselves by making her political priorities central to her campaign. She made explicit her support for abortion rights and called the maps, which gave Republicans near-supermajority control of the Legislature, “rigged” and “unfair.”Her election to a 10-year term for an officially nonpartisan seat gives Wisconsin’s liberals a 4-to-3 majority on the court, which has been controlled by conservatives since 2008. Liberals will hold a court majority until at least 2025, when a liberal justice’s term expires. A conservative justice’s term ends in 2026.As the race was called Tuesday night, the court’s three sitting liberal justices embraced at Judge Protasiewicz’s election night party in Milwaukee, as onlookers cried tears of joy. During her speech, the judge and the other three liberal justices clasped their hands together in the air in celebration.“Today’s results mean two very important and special things,” Judge Protasiewicz said. “First, it means that Wisconsin voters have made their voices heard. They have chosen to reject partisan extremism in this state. And second, it means our democracy will always prevail.”Justice Kelly, 59, evinced the bitterness of the campaign with a testy concession speech that acknowledged his defeat and portended doom for the state. He called his rival’s campaign “truly beneath contempt” and decried “the rancid slanders that were launched against me.”“I wish that I’d be able to concede to a worthy opponent, but I do not have a worthy opponent,” Justice Kelly told supporters in Green Lake, Wis. He had not called Judge Protasiewicz by the time she delivered her victory remarks.He concluded the final speech of his campaign by saying, “I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it.”Judge Protasiewicz made a calculation from the start of the race that Wisconsin voters would reward her for making clear her positions on abortion rights and the state’s maps — issues most likely to animate and energize the base of the Democratic Party.In an interview at her home on Tuesday before the results were known, Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) attributed her success on the campaign trail to the decision to inform voters of what she called “my values,” as opposed to Justice Kelly, who used fewer specifics about his positions.“Rather than reading between the lines and having to do your sleuthing around like I think people have to do with him, I think I would rather just let people know what my values are,” she said. “We’ll see tonight if the electorate appreciates that candor or not.”Over the last dozen years, the court has served as an important backstop for Wisconsin Republicans. It certified as constitutional Gov. Scott Walker’s early overhauls to state government, including the Act 10 law that gutted public employee unions, as well as voting restrictions like a requirement for a state-issued identification and a ban on ballot drop boxes.In 2020, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court was the only one in the country to agree to hear President Donald J. Trump’s challenge to the presidential election. Mr. Trump sought to invalidate 200,000 ballots from the state’s two largest Democratic counties. The Wisconsin court rejected his claim on a 4-to-3 vote, with one of the conservative justices siding with the court’s three liberals on procedural grounds.That key vote gave this year’s court race extra importance, because the justices will weigh in on voting and election issues surrounding the 2024 election. Wisconsin, where Mr. Trump’s triumph in 2016 interrupted a string of Democratic presidential victories going back to 1988, is set to again be ferociously contested.The court has acted in Republicans’ interest on issues that have received little attention outside the state.In 2020, a year after Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, succeeded Mr. Walker, conservative justices agreed to limit his line-item veto authority, which generations of Wisconsin governors from both parties had used. Last year, the court’s conservatives allowed a Walker appointee whose term had expired to remain in office over Mr. Evers’s objection.Once Judge Protasiewicz assumes her place on the court on Aug. 1, the first priority for Wisconsin Democrats will be to bring a case to challenge the current legislative maps, which have given Republicans all but unbreakable control of the state government in Madison.Jeffrey A. Mandell, the president of Law Forward, a progressive law firm that has represented Mr. Evers, said he would file a legal request for the Supreme Court to hear a redistricting case the day after Judge Protasiewicz is seated.“Pretty much everything problematic in Wisconsin flows from the gerrymandering,” Mr. Mandell said in an interview on Tuesday. “Trying to address the gerrymander and reverse the extreme partisan gerrymandering we have is the highest priority.”The state’s abortion ban, which was enacted in 1849, seven decades before women could vote, is already being challenged by Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s Democratic attorney general. This week, a circuit court in Dane County scheduled the first oral arguments on Mr. Kaul’s case for May 4, but whichever way a county judge rules, the case is all but certain to advance on appeal to the State Supreme Court later this year.Dan Simmons More

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      Liberal judge wins Wisconsin supreme court election, flipping ideological balance

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      In a historic election, the liberal judge Janet Protasiewicz is projected to win her race for a seat on Wisconsin’s supreme court. Her win will flip the ideological balance of the state’s highest court, which has been controlled by a conservative majority for 15 years.Elections and democracy observers have called this election the most consequential one of the year, with abortion rights, redistricting and election rules at stake. The race pitted Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee circuit court judge and former prosecutor, against Dan Kelly, a former Wisconsin supreme court justice with ties to election deniers and the far right.Protasiewicz will replace the conservative justice Patience Roggensack on 1 August; the court will be controlled by a narrow liberal majority.The race smashed campaign finance records for state judicial elections, drawing more than $45m, according to a WisPolitics analysis. By comparison, in Wisconsin’s last supreme court race in 2020, donors brought in about $10m. Political groups and wealthy individuals across the country have opened their coffers on both sides of the race, with Protasiewicz raising nearly $9m from the Democratic party and outside groups pledging more than $6m on pro-Kelly advertisements.The massive contributions underscore the stakes of the race – from abortion rights to the state’s electoral maps, which experts have identified as one of the most gerrymandered in the country.In 2020 the Wisconsin supreme court narrowly rejected an attempt by former president Donald Trump to overturn the results of the presidential election; the court could see a similar challenge in 2024. Following the 2020 elections, Kelly was hired by the Wisconsin GOP to advise on a plan to have a group of Republicans falsely claim to be electors. The plan failed and Wisconsin’s 10 Democratic electors voted for Joe Biden, reflecting the popular vote in the state.In a March interview with The Guardian, Protasiewicz said the future of democracy in Wisconsin and at the national level motivated her to run. “I thought about our democracy, and our democracy being at stake. And that’s why I decided to do it,” she said. “All the issues that we care about are going to come in front of this court. But primarily, primarily, our democracy is on the line.”When the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June, an 1849 law banning abortion went back into effect in Wisconsin. Abortion quickly emerged as a top issue in this race, with voters across the state mobilizing around the question of abortion access. A challenge to the ban is currently making its way through state courts and will likely end up in front of the state supreme court this year.During the race, Protasiewicz was open about her personal support for legal abortion access, and although Kelly refrained from sharing his views on the campaign trail, his campaign benefited from more than $1m from the anti-abortion group Women Speak Out Pac and earned endorsements from three anti-abortion groups in the state.With a liberal majority on the court, the 1849 ban could be overruled.Ahead of the announcement of Protasiewicz’s win Tuesday night, Mandela Barnes, Wisconsin’s former lieutenant governor who ran unsuccessfully for a US Senate seat in 2022, told the Guardian that her victory would be incredibly significant for the state.“If she pulls this off we can restore balance, we can restore fairness, we can restore actual justice,” he said. “That’s what’s exciting about it.”At Protasiewicz’s election night watch party in Milwaukee, supporters followed the election on their phones and broke out in excitement as favorable results were reported. The room erupted once the race was called for Protasiewicz.“She’s one of those people who’s Wisconsin to the bone,” Sonya Bice, 57, a lawyer in Madison, said about Protasiewicz. “She’s one of those people who’s willing to get out there and run in what everyone knew was going to be a very ugly race.”Progressive groups in the state are preparing to take advantage of the supreme court’s new liberal majority. Nicole Safar, the executive director of Law Forward, a progressive non-profit legal group, said organizers were considering how best to challenge the state’s rigged legislative maps.“Law Forward and our allies and our co-counsel are seriously looking at what a partisan gerrymander claim under the Wisconsin constitution looks like,” she said.In a special election that is still too close to call, voters will decide between Republican Dan Knodl and Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin to represent Milwaukee’s northern suburbs. If Knodl wins, the Republican party will have a supermajority in the state senate, paving the way for the party to impeach state officials – a process that Knodl says he would consider launching to pull Protasiewicz from the supreme court. More

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      This Wisconsin Court Race Is Highly Partisan. It Wasn’t Always That Way.

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      Supreme Court races were once more swayed by endorsements from legal and law enforcement officials. Now they’re indistinguishable from other elections.Today’s election in Wisconsin will be closely watched for its impact on the partisan makeup of the state’s top court, with abortion rights and election rules frequent topics of the campaign. The contest between Daniel Kelly, a conservative former state Supreme Court justice, and Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, is set to be one of the most consequential — and expensive — elections in the country this year.Judicial elections in Wisconsin are officially nonpartisan, but the races have become increasingly political. While it used to be common for voters to cast ballots for judges with whom they weren’t ideologically aligned, Democratic counties now heavily favor the liberal judicial candidates and Republican counties the conservative ones.The trend has been turbocharged in recent years as partisan polarization has grown nationally and as overt partisanship has crept into the dialogue among candidates for the court.It wasn’t always this way. In the 1980s and 1990s, races were largely seen as less partisan and more swayed by endorsements from leaders in the legal and law enforcement community, according to Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette University Law School Poll. He has studied the relationship between the ideological voting patterns in state Supreme Court races and presidential races.“Supreme Court races at the time seemed to be about who had more endorsements from sheriffs and prosecutors than anything else,” he said.While many candidates during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s had discernible ideological leanings, there was almost no relationship between electoral support for judicial candidates and presidential candidates of the corresponding political party. A notable example is Dane County, a longtime Democratic stronghold that is home to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 2000, a majority of voters in Dane County voted for Diane Sykes, a conservative judicial candidate, while also voting for Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president.Partisanship began creeping into races over the next decade. In a particularly vicious 2008 campaign, the conservative candidate, Michael J. Gableman, ran TV ads falsely accusing his opponent, the only Black justice on the state Supreme Court, of securing an early release of a rapist who was also Black. Mr. Gableman won by a narrow margin. After leaving the bench, he led a partisan inquiry into whether there was election fraud in Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election.The Relationship Between the Judicial and Presidential VoteState Supreme Court and presidential election results have become increasingly correlated in Wisconsin. More

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      Wisconsin voters cast ballots in crucial state supreme court election

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      Voters in Wisconsin are casting ballots on Tuesday in one of the most important elections of 2023 – a contest that will determine the ideological balance of the state’s supreme court.The court will probably determine the future of abortion in Wisconsin, as a lawsuit challenging the state’s 1849 ban is already winding its way through the courts. It is also poised to play a hugely consequential role in setting election rules for the 2024 presidential election in Wisconsin, a key battleground state. It could also get rid of the state’s legislative maps, which are so distorted in favor of Republicans that it’s nearly impossible for Democrats to ever win a majority.Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee judge, is facing off against Dan Kelly, a conservative who lost his seat on the supreme court in 2020. Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority on the state’s highest court, but one of its conservative justices is retiring, meaning that the outcome of the election will determine the ideological balance of the court.The race is the most expensive judicial race in American history. More than $45m has been spent, shattering the $10m record that was spent in Wisconsin in 2020 as well as the national record of $15m spent on an Illinois race in 2004. Protasiewicz’s campaign has received significant financial backing from the Wisconsin Democratic party, while Kelly has has been bolstered by spending from outside groups, most notably a Super Pac backed by GOP mega-donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. Kelly has also received donations from individuals who tried to overturn the 2020 election.Abortion has dominated the race, as have concerns about voting rights and crime.In Menomonee Falls, a Milwaukee suburb in conservative Waukesha county, a steady stream of voters poured into cast votes at the Good Shepherd church, a local polling station. Several voters pointed to abortion as their top issue in the race.“Abortion is top on my list. I’m definitely pro-choice, I don’t think anybody else should be telling me or any other woman what to do,” said Karen Bitzan, a 64-year-old self-described homemaker, outside the polling place, where it was cold and drizzling on Tuesday morning. “I don’t understand the Republicans who say you can’t have an abortion but then they have no plan of how to protect those children who are forced to be born to parents who don’t want them.”Lisa Ruiz, a 67-year-old retiree supporting Kelly, also pointed to abortion as the issue that drove her to the polls. “Abortion is my number one. I stand against abortion,” she said. “It’s bringing more Christians to come and vote.”Menomonee Falls is part of a state senate district where there is a closely watched election on Tuesday that could give Republicans a supermajority in the state legislature. Republicans could use that advantage to override vetoes from Tony Evers, the state’s Democratic governor, as well as to potentially impeach state officials. Dan Knodl, the Republican state senate candidate, has said he would consider impeaching Protasiewicz if he wins.But several voters said on Tuesday they were hoping that a reconstituted supreme court would reconsider the state legislative districts, upending the Republican advantage in the state legislature.“If Kelly wins, it means they basically still have a stranglehold on the state, except when they have a statewide election. And that’s not good news,” Terese Dineen, 70, said after she voted in Brookfield, another Milwaukee suburb.“I just think it’s ridiculous that a state that’s so evenly divided is just not represented,” said Bill Anderson, 57, a project manager in Brookfield.Also on the ballot on Tuesday were two GOP-backed referendum questions dealing with cash bail and welfare benefits. Democrats say those questions are a blatant effort to juice Republican turnout and some voters expressed frustration at how hard they were to understand. “I would like a referendum question to make referendum questions more understandable,” said Debra Tomkins, a voter in Madison, the state capital.In Milwaukee, as a heavy rain began falling around noon, canvassers dressed in neon vests gathered at the office of Black Leaders Organizing Communities (Bloc), a civic engagement group focused on Black communities. An organizer reminded the canvassers to tell voters that voters could still return their mail-in ballots in person and that those who voted a provisional ballot without identification would need to return with an accepted form of ID to have their vote counted.The majority of Wisconsin’s Black population is in Milwaukee. Earlier this year, Robert Spindell, a Republican on the six-member body that oversees voting in the state, celebrated low turnout in the city in 2022.“It’s really angering all of us. It makes us work harder. We know we have to knock 10 extra doors to make up for however many people are trying to misinform, spread misinformation,” said Kyle Johnson, 27, Bloc’s political director.The Covid-19 pandemic elevated the public’s understanding of the role of the court, said Angela Lang, the group’s executive director. “I think pre-Covid, nine times out of 10, the court maybe didn’t impact you personally, but now people are like ‘hey do you know there are 10 year terms? Have you ever voted absentee? Or used a drop box – they’re the ones that got rid of drop boxes. Or those statewide mask mandates.’ There are very real tangible things that affected people’s daily lives.”New maps in Wisconsin could also make a huge difference in Milwaukee, where Black voters have been packed into as few districts as possible to dilute their overall influence. “There’s so many other issues that we’re not able to move forward on unfortunately because of redistricting and specifically because of gerrymandering,” Lang said.Polls opened at 7am and close at 8pm. Voters and election officials reported high turnout at polling places on college campuses.“Young voters normally don’t vote in judicial elections, but this year is different,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic party of Wisconsin, during a get-out-the-vote event on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. “There’s this real sense that with reproductive freedom on the line and democracy on the line, this is a can’t-miss election.”Wisconsin is expecting severe weather Tuesday afternoon, including high winds, hail and a potential tornado. The Dane county clerk, Scott McDonell, told the Guardian he was concerned about how the weather might affect turnout and was telling people to vote early.Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s chief election official, told reporters in a call that she was working with Wisconsin emergency management to monitor the weather.“Severe weather is a very common contingency that Wisconsin election officials are prepared for,” she said. More

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      The most consequential politics story in the US isn’t the Trump arraignment | Robert Reich

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      One of the biggest challenges to the future of American democracy is unfolding this Tuesday, but not in Manhattan. It’s occurring in Wisconsin.Beyond the fact that no former president has ever faced a criminal indictment, Donald Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan on criminal charges offers little by way of news. An arraignment leading to a criminal trial that takes place months (if not years) from now is a dull technical legal proceeding.To satisfy the public’s seemingly insatiable craving for Trump entertainment notwithstanding, the media are filling the void with Trump swag: wall-to-wall “special coverage”, on-the-spot correspondents, panels of pundits, interviews with current and past Trump lawyers and former prosecutors, opinion polls, interviews with “average” Trump supporters, and mindless chatter about Trump’s moods (“troubled”, “angry”, “defiant”, “exhilarated”).Tonight, Trump is expected to deliver a prime-time address from Mar-a-Lago. No news there, either. Predictably, it will be little more than lies and smears – more free media coverage for Trump’s venomous bluster.A larger challenge to American democracy is occurring in Wisconsin, where voters will choose a new judge for the state’s supreme court and a senator for its legislature, but that’s getting far less attention than what’s occurring in New York.Wisconsin is a key swing state in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Its supreme court and legislature could be critical to the outcome.And it is the most gerrymandered state in the nation. Although voters in the state divide almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans, Republicans hold 63 out of 99 seats in the state assembly and 21 of 33 seats in the state senate.Four years ago, the US supreme court decided to leave partisan gerrymandering cases to state courts. This means that if the justice who’s elected today alters the Wisconsin supreme court’s seven-person majority, it could strike down the state’s wildly gerrymandered voting maps – a major advance for democracy.But even this might not be enough to restore democracy in Wisconsin. Tuesday’s special election to fill an open state senate seat will decide whether Republicans gain a supermajority that could allow them to impeach the new justice.The Republican candidate for that seat, Dan Knodl, has suggested he might try to do so if he doesn’t like who’s elected to the court.Not incidentally, Knodl was one of 15 Wisconsin Republican lawmakers who in January 2022 sent a letter to then vice-president Mike Pence asking him to delay certifying presidential results that showed Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump.The underlying issue in Wisconsin is the same as it’s been since Trump lied and smeared his way into the national consciousness seven years ago: whether an authoritarian demagogue can take over a national political party so that the party can then control enough state legislatures to elect that authoritarian – even though a large majority of voters reject him.Trump lost his 2020 presidential bid by 7m votes. But he could have won the electoral college, and therefore been elected president, had he won just 42,919 more votes spread across just three swing states – Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.So the rules about who gets to vote are crucial, especially in these swing states. And who sets those rules? State legislatures, along with state courts that decide whether the legislatures are acting constitutionally. Hence, the importance of Tuesday’s two races in Wisconsin.Wisconsin Republicans have already changed state law to make voting more onerous by enacting a strict voter ID law. And last year, the state’s conservative supreme court banned drop boxes for absentee ballots. Wisconsin now ranks 47th out of 50 states on how easy it is to vote.Not incidentally, Wisconsin’s supreme court was the only state supreme court in the nation that agreed to hear 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 large Democratic counties.Another way Trump could have won in 2020 is if the outcome of the election had been determined by Republican-controlled state legislatures in Wisconsin and other swing states – as Trump and many Republican members of Congress sought. Yet another reason why the Wisconsin races are so important.Friends, this is how authoritarian minorities steal democracies: they do it step by step. They design voting districts to freeze out a majority of voters. They then gain legislative supermajorities that allow them to control the state executive and state courts. Then they capture electoral college majorities despite the popular vote.Or they sow so much doubt about the popular vote that they decide the outcome.This was Trump’s playbook in 2020. He didn’t succeed then, but he might in 2024.What’s happening in Manhattan’s criminal court is obviously important. Holding a former president accountable to the rule of law is essential.But what’s happening today in Wisconsin may prove as, if not more, important to the future of American democracy. It will either strengthen or weaken the levers of self-government in a state where those levers could make all the difference.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      The Election That Could Reshape Wisconsin, and the Country

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      Mary Wilson and Rachel Quester and Marion Lozano, Diane Wong and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicWisconsin will hold an election for a seat on its Supreme Court today, and it is no exaggeration to say that the result could end up reshaping U.S. politics for years to come.The Times political correspondent Reid J. Epstein explains why the race to replace a single judge has become the most important American election of 2023.On today’s episodeReid J. Epstein, a political correspondent for The New York Times.Janet Protasiewicz, left, and Daniel Kelly during a debate in Madison, Wis., last month. Ms. Protasiewicz is a liberal, while Mr. Kelly is a conservative.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBackground readingCash is pouring in to the Wisconsin race, and some of the candidates have shed any pretense of judicial neutrality.Here’s what you need to know about the battle for the seat.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Reid J. Epstein More

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      Wisconsin’s High-Stakes Supreme Court Race: What to Watch

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      The election for a swing seat on the court is likely to determine whether abortion remains illegal in Wisconsin, as well as the future of the state’s heavily gerrymandered political maps.WAUKESHA, Wis. — American political candidates routinely drum up support by warning voters that this election, really, is the most important of their lifetimes.It’s almost always an exaggeration, but the description might just fit for Wisconsin’s deeply polarized voters, who on Tuesday will choose a justice to fill a swing seat on the state’s Supreme Court.The winner — either Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Milwaukee County judge, or Daniel Kelly, a conservative former State Supreme Court justice — will have the deciding vote on a host of major issues, including abortion rights, gerrymandered political maps, and voting and election cases surrounding the 2024 presidential contest.Officials on both sides have described the stakes of the officially nonpartisan race in existential terms — either they win and democracy survives, or they lose and it perishes.Wisconsin Democrats, who have been lost in the political wilderness for a dozen years, cast Judge Protasiewicz as their path to a promised land of abortion rights and fair maps. The state’s Republicans say Justice Kelly is their last hope to ward off liberal tyranny by fiat.Here are four themes animating Tuesday’s election:Wisconsin could turn sharply back to the left — or not.Wisconsin Republicans tend to talk about the election as if Judge Protasiewicz would roll onto the Supreme Court with a giant eraser to wipe out all of the legislative policies and structural advantages the G.O.P. has built for itself since Scott Walker became governor in 2011.They’re not entirely wrong.“A lot of the duly passed laws by the elected representatives of the state of Wisconsin would be deemed invalid,” Duey Stroebel, a Republican state senator from Cedarburg, said last week. “It wouldn’t be the people electing their representatives that would be making decisions, it would be her, based on her personal beliefs.”Indeed, Judge Protasiewicz has been clear about her views. She has signaled her opposition to Wisconsin’s 1849 law banning abortion in nearly all cases, which went back into effect when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, and she has called the legislative maps Republicans drew to give themselves a durable near-supermajority in the State Legislature “rigged” and “unfair.”But the state’s Democrats sound similarly apocalyptic about the prospect of Justice Kelly, who lost a 2020 bid to retain his seat on the court, returning to deliver conservatives a majority. He is aligned with the state’s anti-abortion groups and has said there is no legal problem with the maps.He also worked as a legal adviser for the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Wisconsin when they sought to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 presidential election. That Republican effort to undo Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory in Wisconsin was only narrowly rejected by the State Supreme Court, which voted 4 to 3 to uphold the results.“Dan Kelly advised fake electors in 2020,” said Greta Neubauer, the Democratic leader in the Wisconsin State Assembly, referring to a brazen plan by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn results in several states. “I absolutely fear what he would do in 2024 if a challenge to the popular vote and the election results came in front of him.”Abortion and crime are the two main issues.From the beginning of her campaign, Judge Protasiewicz (pronounced pro-tuh-SAY-witz) has sought to make the race a referendum on abortion rights in Wisconsin. Her campaign has spent $12 million on television ads in the last six weeks reminding voters that she supports them and Justice Kelly does not.“Judge Janet Protasiewicz believes in women’s freedom to make their own decisions when it comes to abortion,” her closing television ad states.It is a bet on the power of the most potent issue for Democrats since last summer, when the U.S. Supreme Court left the issue to the states.Even Republicans acknowledge privately that if the election is about abortion, Judge Protasiewicz has the advantage. Justice Kelly has not been as explicit, but he has implied that because legislators enacted the state’s abortion ban 174 years ago, they would need to rescind the law — something the current Republican majorities are unlikely to do.Hundreds of abortion rights supporters marched to the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., in January. Nearly all abortions became illegal in Wisconsin when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“He’s running a bit of a traditional campaign talking about larger issues of judicial restraint and things of that nature,” said Mr. Walker, the former governor who appointed Justice Kelly to the State Supreme Court in 2016. “She just spelled it out, and that very well may be the case for the left and the right in the future, just people saying, ‘Here’s how I’m going to vote.’”Republicans, as usually happens in Wisconsin, have tried to make the election about crime. Outside groups backing Justice Kelly have bombarded Judge Protasiewicz with ads attacking her as soft on violent criminals.Last week, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s business lobby, removed from the television airwaves an ad claiming that Judge Protasiewicz had issued a soft sentence to a convicted rapist. The victim in that case had told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that the ad had caused her new trauma and that she had no problem with the length of the sentence.In another episode, the Republican Party of Wisconsin, while southern Wisconsin was under a tornado watch last week, texted to voters a replica of an emergency weather alert warning that Judge Protasiewicz was “a soft-on-crime politician with a long history of letting dangerous criminals go free.”The cash-filled contest is all over Wisconsin TV screens.All indications are that more people will vote in this Supreme Court election than any other in Wisconsin history.More people voted in the Feb. 21 primary contest than participated in the state’s primaries in August, when there were races for governor and Senate. According to data from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the early-vote total as of Monday amounted to about a third of the total turnout of the 2019 State Supreme Court race, the last one that did not fall on the same day as a presidential primary.The record-smashing spending in the race — $39 million on television alone, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm — has ensured that just about every Wisconsinite is at least aware of the race, a key hurdle in typically low-turnout spring elections.The ultimate cost is expected to triple the previous high-water mark for spending on an American judicial election, which was $15 million for a 2004 Illinois Supreme Court race.Weeks ago, Wisconsin Democrats switched their strategy. Instead of sending door-to-door canvassers to visit voters who typically cast ballots in spring elections, they focused on reaching out to a broader group of people who tend to vote in November general elections.“When I was out knocking on doors a month or two months ago, people were aware that this election was coming, because they were seeing YouTube ads with their kids,” Ms. Neubauer said. “They were being bombarded with information about this election.”A key State Senate race is also unfolding.Wisconsin is also holding a special election on Tuesday for a vacant State Senate seat that covers parts of four counties in the suburbs north of Milwaukee.The district has long been held by Republicans but is trending away from the party. Mr. Trump carried it by 12 percentage points in 2016 but by only 5 in 2020. The Democratic candidate, Jodi Habush Sinykin, is contesting it with a heavy emphasis on abortion rights.Jodi Habush Sinykin, a Democrat, is running for a State Senate seat in suburbs north of Milwaukee. Morry Gash/Associated PressIf the Republican candidate, State Representative Dan Knodl, wins, his party will have a two-thirds supermajority in the State Senate, which would allow the G.O.P. to impeach and remove judges, statewide elected officials and appointees of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.Mr. Knodl, in an interview with PBS Wisconsin, said the impeachment powers granted to State Senate Republicans with his election “certainly would be tested.”Mr. Stroebel, the Republican state senator from Cedarburg, called impeaching Judge Protasiewicz over expected rulings on abortion and gerrymandering unlikely “but certainly not impossible.”If Dan Knodl wins his race for State Senate, Republicans will have a two-thirds supermajority, which would allow them to impeach and remove judges, statewide elected officials and appointees of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via Associated Press“If she truly acts in terms of ignoring our laws and applying her own personal beliefs, then maybe that’s something people will talk about,” he said. “If the rulings are contrary to what our state laws and Constitution say, I think there could be an issue.”Even if Republicans do not seek to impeach Democratic officials, the mere possibility could limit Democrats’ ambitions.“Just the threat of it obviously changes the way that public officials will act,” said Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator from Madison. “It will make agency heads and civil servants be extremely timid and feel like they can’t carry out their job responsibilities.” More