Wisconsin Democrats fear ‘usual tricks’ after GOP passes new maps

Both chambers of Wisconsin's Republican-dominated legislature on Tuesday passed new maps for the state Assembly and state Senate that were proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Yet even though Evers submitted those very maps to the state Supreme Court, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Molly Beck reports that the governor is "facing pressure by high-powered Democrats" to veto them.

Shortly after passage, however, a spokesperson for the governor reiterated his earlier promise to sign his maps if they were passed without changes. He has until Tuesday to act.

Wisconsin Republicans have fought relentlessly to preserve their extreme gerrymanders, which in 2022 gave them a veto-proof two-thirds supermajority in the Senate and left them just two seats shy of that mark in the Assembly. Last year, they repeatedly threatened to impeach newly elected Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who was part of the liberal majority struck down the GOP's current gerrymanders and ordered fairer maps for 2024.

Desperate to avoid that fate, Republicans recently passed versions of Evers' maps that were altered to protect GOP incumbents, prompting the governor to veto them. That turn of events caused Democratic legislators to be suspicious of the GOP's apparent about-face, with Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer warning that Republicans might be "up to their usual tricks."

Last month, the court received six sets of proposed maps from parties and interested outsiders, four of which a pair of court-appointed experts said met the court's criteria for neutrality in a non-binding report. Of this quartet, Republicans reportedly believed the governor's plans were "more favorable for them" than the other three submissions.

Data from Dave's Redistricting App show that Joe Biden would have won an 18-15 majority of seats in the Senate, though with many districts just narrowly favoring the president. Meanwhile, Donald Trump would have won a 50-49 majority of seats in the Assembly in a state he lost by a slim margin.

However, Democratic lawmakers were nearly unanimous in their opposition to Evers' approach, with some arguing that letting the court-supervised process play out could produce better maps. Democrats also focused their opposition on a separate provision in the bill that would prevent the new maps from taking effect before November's general election, meaning the GOP's current gerrymanders would remain in place for any recalls or special elections before then.

Despite his hardline record, GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is facing a recall effort from MAGA extremists for not fully embracing Trump's election conspiracy theories, so this provision would ensure the recall would take place in his current district instead of a new one if the effort qualifies for the ballot.

In striking down the GOP's maps, the Supreme Court laid out a two-track process for implementing remedial plans, both soliciting submissions from litigants and also giving legislators the chance to pass their own maps first. However, the court would still have to sign off on whether any newly enacted maps comply with the criteria it laid down, which include political neutrality along with other traditional nonpartisan considerations.

Wisconsin GOP’s large majorities expected to shrink under new legislative maps

Most of the newly ordered maps redrawing Wisconsin's political boundaries for the state Legislature would keep Republicans in majority control, but their dominance would be reduced, according to an independent analysis of the plans.

Seven sets of new state Senate and Assembly maps were submitted on Friday, the deadline given by the Wisconsin Supreme Court to propose new maps after it ruled three weeks ago that the current ones drawn by Republicans were unconstitutional.

The ruling stands to shake up battleground Wisconsin’s political landscape in a presidential election year.

Wisconsin is a purple state, with four of the past six presidential elections decided by less than a percentage point. But Democrats have made gains in recent years, winning the governor’s office in 2018 and again in 2022 and taking over majority control of the state Supreme Court, setting the stage for the redistricting ruling.

Under legislative maps first enacted by Republicans in 2011, and then again in 2022 with few changes, the GOP has increased its stranglehold over the Legislature, largely blocking major policy initiatives of Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic lawmakers the past five years.

Republicans currently hold a 22-11 supermajority in the Senate and a near supermajority of 64-35 in the Assembly. If they can get a supermajority in both chambers, they would be override Evers’ vetoes. He has already issued more vetoes than any governor in Wisconsin history.

The Supreme Court, in ordering new maps, said the current legislative boundary lines were not contiguous, resulting in districts that with disconnected pieces of land in violation of the state constitution. The court ordered new maps with contiguous districts, but also said the maps must not favor one party over another.

The Dec. 22 ruling set off a furious dash to meet a March 15 deadline set by the state elections commission to have new boundary lines in effect for the state's August primary. Candidates have to submit nomination papers signed by residents of the district in which they are running by June 1.

Following Friday's map submissions, a pair of consultants hired by the Supreme Court will analyze the proposals and issue a report by Feb. 1.

The consultants could choose to ignore all of the maps submitted last week and put forward their own plan. Or, they could adopt maps as submitted, with or without changes. The Supreme Court has said it will enact a map unless the Legislature passes plans that Evers would sign into law, a highly unlikely scenario.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, along with Evers, a conservative Wisconsin law firm, a liberal law firm that brought the redistricting lawsuit, a group of mathematics professors and a redistricting consultant submitted new maps on Friday.

“We’re a purple state, and our maps should reflect that basic fact,” Evers said in a statement. “I’ve always promised I’d fight for fair maps — not maps that favor one political party or another — and that’s a promise I’m proud to keep with the maps I’m submitting.”

Marquette University Law School research fellow John D. Johnson did an analysis of the maps using a statistical model to predict the results of the 2022 state legislative election had they taken place in the newly proposed districts. This year, different Senate seats will be up for election and turnout will be higher because of the presidential election.

Still, the analysis shows that the Assembly maps would keep a Republican majority ranging from as low as one seat to as high as the current 29 seat margin.

The 50-49 Republican majority map was submitted by Law Forward, the Madison-based law firm representing Democratic voters that brought the lawsuit. The map maintaining the current 64-35 breakdown was proposed by Republican lawmakers.

Republicans only addressed the contiguity issue in their maps, resulting in fewer changed boundary lines than other proposals.

In the Senate, five of the seven submitted plans would maintain the Republican majority, according to Johnson's analysis. It would range from one seat, under plans from Evers and Law Forward, to 13 seats under the Republican map.

The maps proposed by Senate Democrats and a redistricting consultant who intervened in the case would give Democrats a narrow majority of either three seats or one seat.

Republicans have indicated that they plan an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing due process violations, but it's not clear when that would occur.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has suggested the appeal will argue that liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who called the current maps “rigged” and “unfair” during her run for office, should not have heard the case. Her vote was the deciding one in the ruling that ordered new maps to be drawn.

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Abortion debate creates ‘new era’ for state supreme court races in 2024

The 2024 elections will be dominated by the presidential contest and the battle for control of Congress, but another series of races is shaping up to be just as consequential.

Crucial battles over abortion, gerrymandering, voting rights and other issues will take center stage in next year’s elections for state supreme court seats — 80 of them in 33 states.

The races have emerged as some of the most hotly contested and costliest contests on the ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion. The decision shifted the abortion debate to states, creating a “new era” in state supreme court elections, said Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which tracks spending in judicial races.

“We have seen attention on state supreme court elections like never before and money in these races like never before,” Keith said.

Heated court races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2023 handed victories to Democrats and saw tens of millions of dollars in TV ads, offering a preview of 2024. They're also prompting groups to consider investing in states they would not previously have considered.

ABORTION AND GERRYMANDERING TOP ISSUES

At least 38 lawsuits have been filed challenging abortion bans in 23 states, according to the Brennan Center. Many of those are expected to end up before state supreme courts.

The ACLU is watching cases challenging abortion restrictions in Wyoming, Kentucky, Ohio, Utah, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, Georgia and Montana.

“After Roe v. Wade was overturned, we had to turn to state courts and state constitutions as the critical backstop to protecting access to abortion,” said Brigitte Amiri, deputy director at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “And the stakes are unbelievably high in each of these cases in each of these states.”

The ACLU was among major spenders on behalf of Democrats in this year's state supreme court contests in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Another big player in recent court races has been the Republican State Leadership Committee, which has said its focus is mainly on redistricting, or the drawing of political district boundaries. The group called state supreme courts the “last line of defense against far-left national groups,” but didn't say how much it intends to spend on next year's races or which states it's focusing on.

In Ohio, Democrats are expected to cast state supreme court races as an extension of the November election in which voters enshrined the right to abortion in the state constitution. The state has more than 30 abortion restrictions in place that could be challenged now that the amendment has passed.

“The state supreme court is going to be the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the new constitutional amendment that the people voted for and organized around,” said Jessie Hill, law professor at Case Western Reserve University and a consultant for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights. “That is a huge amount of power.”

With three seats up for a vote and a current Republican majority of 4-3, Democrats have an opportunity to flip the majority of the court while Republicans will try to expand their control. Hill said the “very high-stakes election” will serve as another test of the salience of the abortion issue in turning out voters.

“We saw an incredible number of voters come out to vote on that amendment and an incredible amount of investment in those campaigns,” Hill added. “I think we’ll see a similar attention and investment in Ohio come next year.”

Redistricting also is likely to be a main focus in the state's supreme court races, given the court will have realigned politically since it issued a series of rulings finding Ohio’s congressional and legislative maps unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans, said David Niven, political science professor at the University of Cincinnati. He expects millions of dollars to be spent on those campaigns.

“There’s often little conversation about these races, but they are just so utterly consequential in very tangible, practical ways that touch voters’ everyday lives,” he said.

MAP BROADENS FOR CONSEQUENTIAL RACES

Pending legislative and congressional redistricting cases also could play a role in North Carolina.

Republicans in North Carolina are looking to expand their majority two years after the court flipped from Democratic control in the 2022 election. That flip to a 5-2 GOP majority led to dramatic reversals in 2023 on rulings made by the previous court, which had struck down a 2018 photo voter identification law as well as district maps for the General Assembly and the state’s congressional delegation.

Groups on both sides also are expected to focus on Michigan, where Democrats hold a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court. Candidates run without political affiliations listed on the ballot, though they’re nominated by political parties.

Two incumbents — one Democrat, one Republican — will be up for election in 2024. The court recently kept former President Donald Trump on the state's ballot, denying a liberal group's request to kick him off. It is currently weighing a high-profile case over a Republican legislative maneuver that gutted a minimum wage hike backed by voters.

2023 RACES A PREVIEW

In Wisconsin, abortion played a dominant role in the 2023 court race, with Democrats flipping the court to a 4-3 majority in a campaign that shattered previous national records for spending in state supreme court elections.

Liberal-leaning Justice Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly, who previously worked for Republicans and had support from the state’s leading anti-abortion groups.

Protasiewicz was targeted with impeachment threats this year over comments she made on the campaign trail about redistricting as Republicans argued she had prejudged what then was an expected case on the state's heavily gerrymandered state legislative districts. Experts say the controversy is an example of how more money and attention have changed the dynamics of many state supreme court races to be increasingly partisan.

Democrats in Pennsylvania added to their majority on the court after a race with tens of millions of dollars in spending. Democrat Dan McCaffery won after positioning himself as a strong defender of abortion rights.

CONTESTED SEATS EVEN IN DEEP RED STATES

It remains to be seen whether abortion rights will play a factor in states where party control isn't at stake. That includes Arkansas, where the court is expected to maintain its 4-3 conservative majority. The seats up next year include the chief justice position, which has drawn three sitting justices.

A fight over abortion could wind up before the court, with a group trying to put a measure on the ballot next year that would scale back a state ban on the procedure that took effect once Roe was overturned.

Abortion rights supporters also aren't writing off longshot states such as Texas and its all-Republican high court, which rejected the request from a pregnant woman whose fetus had a fatal condition to be exempted from the state's strict abortion ban.

In Montana, Republicans have spent huge sums to try to push the court in a more conservative direction. The liberal-leaning court is expected to hear cases related to restrictions on transgender youth and abortion. A landmark climate change case also is pending before the court, which will have two of its seven seats up for election.

Jeremiah Lynch, a former federal magistrate running for the open chief justice position, has cast himself as a defender of the court's independence and has warned voters to expect a barrage of negative advertising. Cory Swanson, a county attorney also running for the post, announced his bid on a conservative talk show and recently vowed to weed out any “radicalized” applicants for law clerks in response to antisemitism on college campuses.

In West Virginia, where conservatives have a current 5-4 majority on the court and two seats will be up for grabs, GOP chair Elgine McArdle said Republicans aim to focus more on judicial races than in years past.

“One area the state party has never really engaged much in is nonpartisan races, including the judicial races," McArdle said. “That won’t be the case this time around.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court orders new legislative maps in redistricting case brought by Democrats

The liberal-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned Republican-drawn legislative maps on Friday and ordered that new district boundary lines be drawn as Democrats had urged in a redistricting case they hope will weaken GOP majorities.

The ruling comes less than a year before the 2024 election in a battleground state where four of the six past presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes, and Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew over a decade ago.

The court ruled 4-3 in favor of Democrats who argued that the legislative maps are unconstitutional because districts drawn aren't contiguous. They also argued that the Supreme Court violated the separation of powers doctrine.

“Because the current state legislative districts contain separate, detached territory and therefore violate the constitution’s contiguity requirements, we enjoin the Wisconsin Elections Commission from using the current legislative maps in future elections,” Justice Jill Karofksy wrote for the majority.

The court said it will proceed with adopting remedial maps in time for the 2024 election unless the Republican-controlled Legislature can pass maps that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will sign. Evers vetoed the current maps.

The lawsuit was filed a day after the court's majority flipped to 4-3 liberal control in August. That's when Justice Janet Protasiewicz joined the court after her April election victory.

Protasiewicz called the GOP-drawn maps “unfair” and “rigged” during her campaign, leading Republicans to threaten to impeach her before she had even heard a case. She sided with the other liberal justices in striking down the current maps.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who had threatened impeachment the loudest, backed off on Wednesday and said even if she ruled in favor of throwing out the maps, impeachment was “super unlikely.”

She joined with Karosfky and justices Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet in the majority. Conservative justices Annette Ziegler, Rebecca Bradley and Brian Hagedorn dissented.

The ruling comes one month after the court heard oral arguments in the case in November. The state elections commission has said maps must be in place by March 15 if the new districts are to be in play for the 2024 election.

Democrats argued for having all 132 lawmakers stand for election under the new maps, including half of the members of the state Senate who are midway through their four-year terms. The Legislature argued that no new maps should be enacted any sooner than the 2026 election.

Democrats argued in Wisconsin that the majority of current legislative districts — 54 out of 99 in the Assembly and 21 out of 33 in the Senate — violate the state constitution’s contiguity requirement.

Wisconsin’s redistricting laws, backed up by state and federal court rulings over the past 50 years, have permitted districts under certain circumstances to be noncontiguous, attorneys for the Legislature argued. Even if the court decided to address the issue, it could only affect alleged areas where districts aren’t contiguous and not upend existing district lines, Republicans argued.

Democrats also argued that the Supreme Court violated the separation of powers doctrine when it adopted the Republican-drawn map that Evers had previously vetoed, “improperly seizing powers for itself the Constitution assigns to other branches.”

The legislative electoral maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2011 cemented the party’s majorities, which now stand at 64-35 in the Assembly and a 22-11 supermajority in the Senate.

Since taking the majority in 2011, Republicans have enacted a wide range of conservative priorities. They have all but eliminated collective bargaining for public workers, and since 2019 they’ve been a block on Evers’ agenda, firing Evers appointees and threatening impeachment of Protasiewicz and the state’s elections leader.

Republicans are also just two seats short of a supermajority that would allow them to overturn Evers’ vetoes.

Litigation is ongoing in more than dozen states over U.S. House and state legislative districts enacted after the 2020 census.

Wisconsin GOP Assembly leader backs off threat to impeach Supreme Court judge over redistricting

Almost immediately after Janet Protasiewicz was elected to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court last April, flipping it to a liberal majority, Republican leaders threatened to impeach her if she didn’t recuse herself from a case challenging the state’s heavily gerrymandered electoral maps. This was because after being seated on the court in August, Protasiewicz refused to recuse herself from the Democratic-backed lawsuit seeking to throw out Republican-drawn electoral maps, drawing even more impeachment threats from Republicans.

Protasiewicz’s victory had resulted in a 4-3 liberal majority on the court, ending a 15-year period in which conservative justices held control. But now faced with intense backlash, Robin Vos, the Republican leader of Wisconsin’s Assembly who threatened possible impeachment of Protasiewicz in August, has pivoted and now says that such a move is “super unlikely,” The Associated Press reported.

RELATED STORY: Former Wisconsin GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel is running for the state Supreme Court

The AP wrote:

When asked in an interview Wednesday if he would move to impeach Protasiewicz if she orders new maps to be drawn, Vos said, “I think it’s very unlikely.”

“It’s one of the tools that we have in our toolbox that we could use at any time,” Vos said of impeachment. “Is it going to be used? I think it’s super unlikely.”

However, Vos refused to rule it out.

“We don’t know what could happen, right?” he said. “There could be a scandal where something occurs. I don’t know.”

Wisconsin’s Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler posted this reaction on X, formerly known as Twitter:

The Wisconsin GOP has made official what’s long been clear: they’ve pulled back the impeachment threat. Why did this happen? Because you rose up in outrage and made clear that such an abuse of the constitution would be politically catastrophic—for them. https://t.co/f20bV6dd9c

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) December 21, 2023

In September, Wikler announced that the state Democratic Party was launching a $4 million effort to to pressure Republicans to back down from impeaching Protasiewicz. At the time he said the Republicans were “holding a political nuclear football” and engaging in “political extortion.”

According to Associated Press analysis, Wisconsin’s Assembly districts rank among the most gerrymandered in the U.S., with Republicans routinely winning far more seats than would be expected based on their average share of the vote in statewide elections. Joe Biden flipped Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election, defeating Donald Trump by a narrow margin of 49.6% to 48.9%, a difference of 20,000 votes. In April 2023, with abortion rights a key issue, Protasiewicz defeated Republican Dan Kelly by 55.5% to 45.5%, a margin of nearly 200,000 votes.

Yet, as the AP pointed out, the legislative electoral maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2011 cemented the party’s majorities. Republicans now control the Assembly by a 64-35 margin, and hold a 22-11 supermajority in the Senate. Last year, the GOP approved maps that were similar to the existing ones.

In October, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear the legal challenge to the Republican-drawn maps. Election lawyer Marc Elias’ group, Democracy Docket, wrote on its website:

The petitioners in Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission allege that the Wisconsin state Assembly and Senate maps are extreme partisan gerrymanders that unduly favor Republicans in violation of the state constitution.

The petition notes that for the past two decades, Wisconsin’s legislative plans have been among the most gerrymandered in the country: “In 2012, Republicans won 48.6% of the statewide vote, which yielded a remarkable 60 assembly seats. … When Democrats received roughly the same vote share, they carried 36 assembly seats. … From the 2012 through the 2020 elections, Republicans never fell below 60 seats—winning up to 64, or nearly two-thirds of the seats. In 2018, Republicans won 63 seats with just 44.8% of the vote.”  

Last month, the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the redistricting lawsuit and is expected to issue its decision by early 2024. The plaintiffs are asking that all 132 state lawmakers be required to stand for election in 2024 under newly redrawn maps. Under current law, all Wisconsin Assembly members and about half the state Senate are up for election next year.

The wheels came off the Republicans’ threat to impeach Protasiewicz in October. That’s when two of three former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justices asked by Vos to investigate the possibility of impeachment told the Assembly leader it was not warranted. Former Justice David Prosser wrote to Vos:

“To sum up my views, there should be no effort to impeach Justice Protasiewicz on anything we know now. Impeachment is so serious, severe, and rare that it should not be considered unless the subject has committed a crime, or the subject has committed indisputable ‘corrupt conduct’ while ‘in office.’”

Article VII of the Wisconsin Constitution reserves impeachment for “corrupt conduct in office, or for crimes and misdemeanors.”

The Republicans’ threats to Protasiewicz were based on political statements that she made while campaigning for the seat in which she referred to the legislative maps as “rigged.” Republicans claimed that this constituted a predetermination of how she would rule on a case challenging the maps. In early October, Protasiewicz rejected calls from Republican justices to recuse herself from redistricting cases. The AP reported:

Protasiewicz said that while stating her opinion about the maps during the campaign, she never made a promise or pledge about how she would rule on the cases.

“I will set aside my opinions and decide cases based on the law,” she wrote. “There will surely be many cases in which I reach results that I personally dislike. That is what it means to be a judge.”

Democracy Docket also said that Republican lawmakers also took issue with the financial contributions made by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to her campaign. However, Jay Heck, director of the nonpartisan group Common Cause of Wisconsin called the Republicans’ “selected outrage” hypocritical because all but one of the seven sitting justices had accepted contributions from a political party.

The prospect of actually removing Protasiewicz from the court also became a less attractive option. That’s because if she were impeached by the Assembly and convicted by the Senate, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would now get to name her replacement rather than have to call a special election, which would have been required if she had been removed prior to Dec. 1, the AP reported.

And it’s good news for abortion rights activists that Protasiewicz remains in place to keep the liberal 4-3 majority intact. On Tuesday, a Republican district attorney appealed a court ruling that determined that an 1849 Wisconsin law does not ban abortions, the AP reported. That decision cleared the way for abortions to resume in the state. The appeal filed by Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski is likely to ultimately be decided by the state Supreme Court. And Protasiewicz is a supporter of abortion rights.

RELATED STORY: Wisconsin Supreme Court hearing arguments on redistricting that could result in new maps for 2024

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Wisconsin GOP Assembly leader backs off threat to impeach Supreme Court judge over redistricting

Almost immediately after Janet Protasiewicz was elected to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court last April, flipping it to a liberal majority, Republican leaders threatened to impeach her if she didn’t recuse herself from a case challenging the state’s heavily gerrymandered electoral maps. This was because after being seated on the court in August, Protasiewicz refused to recuse herself from the Democratic-backed lawsuit seeking to throw out Republican-drawn electoral maps, drawing even more impeachment threats from Republicans.

Protasiewicz’s victory had resulted in a 4-3 liberal majority on the court, ending a 15-year period in which conservative justices held control. But now faced with intense backlash, Robin Vos, the Republican leader of Wisconsin’s Assembly who threatened possible impeachment of Protasiewicz in August, has pivoted and now says that such a move is “super unlikely,” The Associated Press reported.

RELATED STORY: Former Wisconsin GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel is running for the state Supreme Court

The AP wrote:

When asked in an interview Wednesday if he would move to impeach Protasiewicz if she orders new maps to be drawn, Vos said, “I think it’s very unlikely.”

“It’s one of the tools that we have in our toolbox that we could use at any time,” Vos said of impeachment. “Is it going to be used? I think it’s super unlikely.”

However, Vos refused to rule it out.

“We don’t know what could happen, right?” he said. “There could be a scandal where something occurs. I don’t know.”

Wisconsin’s Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler posted this reaction on X, formerly known as Twitter:

The Wisconsin GOP has made official what’s long been clear: they’ve pulled back the impeachment threat. Why did this happen? Because you rose up in outrage and made clear that such an abuse of the constitution would be politically catastrophic—for them. https://t.co/f20bV6dd9c

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) December 21, 2023

In September, Wikler announced that the state Democratic Party was launching a $4 million effort to to pressure Republicans to back down from impeaching Protasiewicz. At the time he said the Republicans were “holding a political nuclear football” and engaging in “political extortion.”

According to Associated Press analysis, Wisconsin’s Assembly districts rank among the most gerrymandered in the U.S., with Republicans routinely winning far more seats than would be expected based on their average share of the vote in statewide elections. Joe Biden flipped Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election, defeating Donald Trump by a narrow margin of 49.6% to 48.9%, a difference of 20,000 votes. In April 2023, with abortion rights a key issue, Protasiewicz defeated Republican Dan Kelly by 55.5% to 45.5%, a margin of nearly 200,000 votes.

Yet, as the AP pointed out, the legislative electoral maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2011 cemented the party’s majorities. Republicans now control the Assembly by a 64-35 margin, and hold a 22-11 supermajority in the Senate. Last year, the GOP approved maps that were similar to the existing ones.

In October, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear the legal challenge to the Republican-drawn maps. Election lawyer Marc Elias’ group, Democracy Docket, wrote on its website:

The petitioners in Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission allege that the Wisconsin state Assembly and Senate maps are extreme partisan gerrymanders that unduly favor Republicans in violation of the state constitution.

The petition notes that for the past two decades, Wisconsin’s legislative plans have been among the most gerrymandered in the country: “In 2012, Republicans won 48.6% of the statewide vote, which yielded a remarkable 60 assembly seats. … When Democrats received roughly the same vote share, they carried 36 assembly seats. … From the 2012 through the 2020 elections, Republicans never fell below 60 seats—winning up to 64, or nearly two-thirds of the seats. In 2018, Republicans won 63 seats with just 44.8% of the vote.”  

Last month, the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the redistricting lawsuit and is expected to issue its decision by early 2024. The plaintiffs are asking that all 132 state lawmakers be required to stand for election in 2024 under newly redrawn maps. Under current law, all Wisconsin Assembly members and about half the state Senate are up for election next year.

The wheels came off the Republicans’ threat to impeach Protasiewicz in October. That’s when two of three former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justices asked by Vos to investigate the possibility of impeachment told the Assembly leader it was not warranted. Former Justice David Prosser wrote to Vos:

“To sum up my views, there should be no effort to impeach Justice Protasiewicz on anything we know now. Impeachment is so serious, severe, and rare that it should not be considered unless the subject has committed a crime, or the subject has committed indisputable ‘corrupt conduct’ while ‘in office.’”

Article VII of the Wisconsin Constitution reserves impeachment for “corrupt conduct in office, or for crimes and misdemeanors.”

The Republicans’ threats to Protasiewicz were based on political statements that she made while campaigning for the seat in which she referred to the legislative maps as “rigged.” Republicans claimed that this constituted a predetermination of how she would rule on a case challenging the maps. In early October, Protasiewicz rejected calls from Republican justices to recuse herself from redistricting cases. The AP reported:

Protasiewicz said that while stating her opinion about the maps during the campaign, she never made a promise or pledge about how she would rule on the cases.

“I will set aside my opinions and decide cases based on the law,” she wrote. “There will surely be many cases in which I reach results that I personally dislike. That is what it means to be a judge.”

Democracy Docket also said that Republican lawmakers also took issue with the financial contributions made by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to her campaign. However, Jay Heck, director of the nonpartisan group Common Cause of Wisconsin called the Republicans’ “selected outrage” hypocritical because all but one of the seven sitting justices had accepted contributions from a political party.

The prospect of actually removing Protasiewicz from the court also became a less attractive option. That’s because if she were impeached by the Assembly and convicted by the Senate, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers would now get to name her replacement rather than have to call a special election, which would have been required if she had been removed prior to Dec. 1, the AP reported.

And it’s good news for abortion rights activists that Protasiewicz remains in place to keep the liberal 4-3 majority intact. On Tuesday, a Republican district attorney appealed a court ruling that determined that an 1849 Wisconsin law does not ban abortions, the AP reported. That decision cleared the way for abortions to resume in the state. The appeal filed by Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski is likely to ultimately be decided by the state Supreme Court. And Protasiewicz is a supporter of abortion rights.

RELATED STORY: Wisconsin Supreme Court hearing arguments on redistricting that could result in new maps for 2024

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Sen. Ron Johnson goes on CNN, makes wild election claims, then struggles to provide proof

Sen. Ron Johnson went on CNN Monday evening to talk about the Republican Party’s continued attempts to tie providing aid for Ukraine with conservative bogeyman border policies. At the end of the interview, host Kaitlan Collins mentioned recent news about Wisconsin’s 10 fake Donald Trump electors cutting a deal in their civil case. Collins wanted the senator to weigh in on calls for one of the fake electors, Robert Spindell Jr., to resign his position on the state elections commission.

Johnson is nothing if not duplicitous and he stayed on brand, citing “all kinds of irregularities in Wisconsin in the 2020 election” and saying that having “an alternate slate of electors” was some kind of common practice, “just like Democrats have done repeatedly in all kinds of different states.” Collins reminded Johnson that these fake electors have admitted that what they did was at the very least “improper,” and Johnson responded by saying all the civil cases against them were “a travesty of justice.” That led to this exchange:

Collins: You think it's fine that someone who tried to overturn a legitimate election is still on a board that helps certify [elections]--

Johnson: –Democrat electors have done that repeatedly. Democrats have done the same thing.

Collins: Which one? In Wisconsin—fake slates of electors?

Johnson: No, it's, it's happened in different states …

Collins: Which ones, sir?

Johnson: I didn’t come prepared to give you the exact states but it’s happened repeatedly. It has happened repeatedly, just go check the books.

Collins: Which books?

Johnson: There have been alternate slates of electors by Democrat electors in our history. Again, you didn't—this wasn't what this interview is going to be about. I'll come and I'll provide you that information.

Not long after Johnson’s pathetic appearance, the senator went to his X (formerly Twitter) account to post his “examples,” which included Democratic reps objecting to the election results in 2017 and did not involve fake electors. Surprisingly, this also didn’t include creating a revolt at the Capitol building, and Donald Trump was certified without anyone being killed or injured.

His other example is the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Nixon had lost the election, but Hawaii was initially called for Nixon by 140 votes. Three Democratic electors chose to sign a slate saying Kennedy won. Of course, at that time there was a recount underway that would eventually reveal Kennedy got more votes.

Johnson’s part in the attempted coup on Jan. 6 has been the subject of much speculation, as the things he’s said in public and his alibi do not square with the evidence. Johnson has been secretly recorded admitting that there was no election fraud, and definitely not the kind of Big Lie-mythologized fraud that might have actually reversed the outcome in Wisconsin.

Since the failed coup, Johnson has consistently tried to downplay the severity of what happened at the Capitol and across the country after the 2020 election.

Campaign Action

Former Wisconsin GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel is running for the state Supreme Court

Former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel announced Thursday that he is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court against incumbent Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in 2025, casting the race as a chance for conservatives to win back a majority and serve as a check on liberals.

Bradley is part of a 4-3 liberal majority that took control of the court in August. She has said she will run for a fourth 10-year term. Schimel, a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge, is the first candidate to announce plans to challenge Bradley in the April 2025 election, but other conservatives are considering getting in the race.

In his comments announcing his candidacy as prepared for delivery, Schimel said: “There is no check on this new liberal Supreme Court majority.”

“The only check on them is to take back the majority by winning in 2025,” he said.

Schimel has been outspoken on abortion and some other political issues that are almost certain to get more attention during the race. Abortion was a key issue in the Supreme Court race this year won by liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who ran as a supporter of abortion rights.

As Waukesha County district attorney in 2012, Schimel endorsed a Wisconsin Right to Life legal white paper that argued for keeping on the books the state's ban on abortions except to save the mother's life. A challenge to that ban is expected to come to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, though Planned Parenthood has been offering abortions since September based on a circuit court judge's interpretation of the law. As Wisconsin's attorney general, Schimel supported laws in Indiana and Ohio that limited abortion access.

Schimel also was a staunch supporter of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which he suggested may have been why former President Donald Trump won the state in 2016. Schimel, as attorney general, joined a multistate coalition that sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act. He also defended Republican-drawn legislative maps that are being challenged before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Schimel, 58, served one term as attorney general starting in 2015. He lost his reelection bid in 2018 to Democrat Josh Kaul. Then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, appointed Schimel as a judge after his own defeat but shortly before they both left office. Before being elected attorney general, Schimel spent 25 years as a Waukesha County prosecutor.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler said in a statement Thursday night that Schimel "doesn't deserve a promotion to our state’s highest court.”

“Wisconsinites rejected Brad Schimel after a single term as attorney general because his extreme politics and inept mismanagement became too great to ignore, with thousands of rape kits left untested at the State Crime Lab and millions of dollars wasted on partisan efforts to suppress voting rights and push new restrictions on abortion access," Wikler said.

Bradley, 73, was first elected to the Supreme Court in 1995 and is the longest-serving justice on the court. She won her last election in 2015 by 16 points.

Bradley did not return a text message seeking comment.

The court is weighing several high-profile cases that were filed after Protasiewicz's win in April gave liberals a majority. In addition to the redistricting challenge, the court is considering whether to hear cases seeking to overturn Wisconsin's private school voucher program and to weaken powers the Republican-controlled Legislature have used to block pay raises for University of Wisconsin employees.

Protasiewicz's race was the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history. With majority control in play again in 2025, Bradley's race is likely to break spending records.

Republicans have floated the possibility of impeaching Protasiewicz over comments she made during the campaign voicing her opposition to an abortion ban and Republican-drawn electoral maps.

Schimel said the Protasiewicz race set a dangerous precedent.

“We need to restore confidence in the people of Wisconsin that the justice system will be fair and impartial,” Schimel said in his prepared remarks. “I will be honest about my principles, but will never prejudge a case and will never put my views above the law.”

Campaign Action

Former Wisconsin GOP Attorney General Brad Schimel is running for the state Supreme Court

Former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel announced Thursday that he is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court against incumbent Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in 2025, casting the race as a chance for conservatives to win back a majority and serve as a check on liberals.

Bradley is part of a 4-3 liberal majority that took control of the court in August. She has said she will run for a fourth 10-year term. Schimel, a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge, is the first candidate to announce plans to challenge Bradley in the April 2025 election, but other conservatives are considering getting in the race.

In his comments announcing his candidacy as prepared for delivery, Schimel said: “There is no check on this new liberal Supreme Court majority.”

“The only check on them is to take back the majority by winning in 2025,” he said.

Schimel has been outspoken on abortion and some other political issues that are almost certain to get more attention during the race. Abortion was a key issue in the Supreme Court race this year won by liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who ran as a supporter of abortion rights.

As Waukesha County district attorney in 2012, Schimel endorsed a Wisconsin Right to Life legal white paper that argued for keeping on the books the state's ban on abortions except to save the mother's life. A challenge to that ban is expected to come to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, though Planned Parenthood has been offering abortions since September based on a circuit court judge's interpretation of the law. As Wisconsin's attorney general, Schimel supported laws in Indiana and Ohio that limited abortion access.

Schimel also was a staunch supporter of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which he suggested may have been why former President Donald Trump won the state in 2016. Schimel, as attorney general, joined a multistate coalition that sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act. He also defended Republican-drawn legislative maps that are being challenged before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Schimel, 58, served one term as attorney general starting in 2015. He lost his reelection bid in 2018 to Democrat Josh Kaul. Then-Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, appointed Schimel as a judge after his own defeat but shortly before they both left office. Before being elected attorney general, Schimel spent 25 years as a Waukesha County prosecutor.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler said in a statement Thursday night that Schimel "doesn't deserve a promotion to our state’s highest court.”

“Wisconsinites rejected Brad Schimel after a single term as attorney general because his extreme politics and inept mismanagement became too great to ignore, with thousands of rape kits left untested at the State Crime Lab and millions of dollars wasted on partisan efforts to suppress voting rights and push new restrictions on abortion access," Wikler said.

Bradley, 73, was first elected to the Supreme Court in 1995 and is the longest-serving justice on the court. She won her last election in 2015 by 16 points.

Bradley did not return a text message seeking comment.

The court is weighing several high-profile cases that were filed after Protasiewicz's win in April gave liberals a majority. In addition to the redistricting challenge, the court is considering whether to hear cases seeking to overturn Wisconsin's private school voucher program and to weaken powers the Republican-controlled Legislature have used to block pay raises for University of Wisconsin employees.

Protasiewicz's race was the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history. With majority control in play again in 2025, Bradley's race is likely to break spending records.

Republicans have floated the possibility of impeaching Protasiewicz over comments she made during the campaign voicing her opposition to an abortion ban and Republican-drawn electoral maps.

Schimel said the Protasiewicz race set a dangerous precedent.

“We need to restore confidence in the people of Wisconsin that the justice system will be fair and impartial,” Schimel said in his prepared remarks. “I will be honest about my principles, but will never prejudge a case and will never put my views above the law.”

Campaign Action

Republican chaos is purposefully designed to dampen voter engagement

The Washington Post ran an illuminating story on Sunday titled, “In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics.”

A more honest headline would’ve been, “In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of Republican politics.”

With conservative nihilists either actively destroying our institutions, like the Freedom Caucus and the U.S. House of Representatives, or promising to do so, like Donald Trump, it should come as no surprise that people are growing increasingly tired of this.

Still, traditional media outlets remain wary of ascribing proper blame, doing a disservice to people who take that “both sides do it” coverage to heart. The Washington Post article featuring people in Wisconsin’s Door County, which is between Milwaukee and Green Bay, exemplifies that. It is one of just nine counties in the country that have voted for the winning presidential candidate since 2000. Let’s take a look.

The pandemic and inflation have already rattled folks, and the broader political backdrop — the impeachments, Trump’s torrent of falsehoods about the 2020 election, the Capitol insurrection, the band of hard-right Republicans ousting their speaker — has blocked out notice of what both sides cast as accomplishments, such as the billions of dollars poured into updating the nation’s roads, bridges and ports. Even as the economy grows at the strongest pace in two years, and jobs continue to proliferate, signs of progress are easy to miss amid what voters see as screaming matches.

So what are these screaming matches voters tell the Post are distressing them? Impeachments, Trump’s 2020 lies, the insurrection, and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s ouster. What do all these items have in common?

The answer is obvious: They are all things conservatives do. Even the pandemic was exacerbated by anti-science Republicans. Yes, voters refuse to see positive news on the economy because of those Republican screaming matches, but that’s on purpose. Republicans have every interest in making sure Democrats don’t get credit for being responsible stewards of our economy.

Here is the next paragraph:

They long for compromise. They want to feel heard and understood. Most Americans, for instance, desire access to abortion, tighter restrictions on guns and affordable health care. Many wonder why our laws don’t reflect that.

Access to abortion, tighter gun restrictions, and affordable health care? Which party is fighting for that, and which one opposes all those things?

Again, the article shouldn’t be about how people are disenchanted with politics, but with how Republicans are poisoning the electorate that otherwise supports the core Democratic agenda.

Nichols, a 58-year-old caregiving service manager in the city of Sturgeon Bay, sees Biden as “not super impressive” at a time when she aches to be reassured. She wants a leader who can bring the sparring factions together — a feat no one seems to be close to accomplishing. (Her favorite thing about Biden, though: “He’s not always in the news.”) Trump, on the other hand, was guilty of “mean girl behavior,” she thought, picking fights with even his own party while racking up criminal charges.

The government in general reminded her of the reality series “Big Brother” — “with all the lies and deals behind the scenes.”

“You don’t know where to turn or who to believe,” she said.

So … she longs for a leader who can bring everyone together, but she is upset by “all the … deals behind the scenes.” Politics isn’t about facts and figures, it’s about vibes. That entire sentence is nonsensical, yet this voter absolutely believes it. It doesn’t mean she’s stupid or unsophisticated; we need to stop thinking of voters that way. (I used to do so, and I’m increasingly realizing that it is not helpful in achieving our goals.) It means Republicans have done a great job of muddling the political landscape so that it repels people who are natural Democratic supporters.

Talking about Washington, [League of Women Voters advocates] decided, isn’t the best way to nudge Door County voters to the polls. But when the group focused on hot-button issues, Kohout noticed, residents seemed eager to listen. Chairs filled up at their event focused on mental health and opioid addiction.

Investment in mental health and opioid addiction? Again, those are government investments Democrats are happy to make, and Republicans are eager to block.

Henderson had liked Trump’s outspokenness at first — she would have voted for him in 2020 but was recovering from surgery on Election Day. Now she resents his “cockiness” and wishes he and other politicians would channel more energy into addressing the soaring cost of food. Two months ago, she’d had to lift the price of every menu item by 50 cents, and now her barbecue chicken Mother Clucker sandwich cost $10.75. Customers, she knew, wouldn’t pay much more than that.

Inflation is a serious issue, and arguing that the United States has the lowest inflation rate of any industrialized nation doesn’t do much to assuage those concerns. But we also know that a big part of inflation is corporate America taking advantage of it to artificially raise prices, leading to record Wall Street profits. One party would do something about that, the other wants to give corporations unfettered ability to price-gouge Americans.

The article then meanders around some Libertarians in the area, because sure, why not talk to a Libertarian about (checks notes) abortion rights, tighter gun restrictions, affordable health care, corporate price gouging, and mental health and opioid programs?

The LGBTQ+ community here is small, [Owen Alabado] said. As a gay man with Filipino roots in the overwhelmingly White town of Baileys Harbor, he stood out. It felt personal when Door County’s board of supervisors voted in September to restrict what flags can be raised on county poles, effectively banning the Pride rainbow. Then lawmakers in Washington elected a House speaker who had previously suggested criminalizing gay sex.

Alabado was sick of the division, he said. Neither party, he thought, seemed capable of fixing it. He wished he could be excited to vote for Biden, rather than feel obligated to do so to defend “basic human rights.”

“I can’t really speak to anything he has done,” he said, “because I’ve tuned it out, like a lot of people have. We’re so tired of the us-against-them politics.”

One party is banning the LGBTQ+ flag and trying to criminalize gay sex, but sure, both parties are part of the problem. And “I don’t know what Biden has done because I refuse to pay attention” is a weird flex. But again, vibes. People are fed up with the toxicity of our politics and they want to tune out. Who does this benefit? Republicans. Conservatives are doing this on purpose.

The single most successful Biden moment over the past three years hasn’t been any of his actual and very real policy accomplishments. It was the Dark Brandon meme.

We can lament the lack of sophistication among key voters, chastising them for not doing politics right, or we can understand that nihilist conservatives are destroying our institutions precisely to drive down voter participation and engagement.

If it takes Dark Brandon to combat that, sign me up. And over the next year, we’re going to have to find ways to talk to people in a way that calms and reassures them while also driving home the existential threat to our democracy that Trump represents.

Does that seem like an impossibly contradictory task? It is. But that’s what the country wants, and it will be our job as liberals and Democrats to find the solution.

Republicans are challenging labor leaders to fights and allegedly physically assaulting one another. Donald Trump says he will abolish reproductive rights entirely and is openly calling for the extermination of his detractors, referring to them as “vermin” on Veterans Day. The Republican Party has emerged from its corruption cocoon as a full-blown fascist movement.