Wisconsin's moribund democracy had been on life support for years, but Tuesday night's resounding progressive victory in a pivotal race for the state Supreme Court offers bright new hope for the restoration of rights long trampled by Republicans.
At the very top of the list is abortion, the issue that powered Democrats to unexpected success last year and was central to Judge Janet Protasiewicz's double-digit win in her bid for the state's top court. Alone among states that Joe Biden carried in 2020, Wisconsin has a total ban on abortion in place thanks to a zombie law dating to 1849 that was reanimated after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. That ban has been challenged by Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, and a state court judge will hear oral arguments over whether to dismiss the case early next month.
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Eventually, this lawsuit is all but certain to go before the state Supreme Court, which will see its composition change dramatically on Aug. 1 when Protasiewicz joins the bench and progressives take their first majority since 2008. While Protasiewicz was careful to avoid saying how she might rule on this case, she was unusually forthright about her support for abortion rights in principle on the campaign trail, and there's no reason to think her three liberal soon-to-be colleagues feel differently. A ruling striking down the 1849 ban (which Kaul says has been superseded by subsequent statutes) would at long last bring Wisconsin back in line with mainstream America.
But the changes we can expect would by no means end there. The lynchpin of the GOP's stranglehold on state politics has, since 2010, been its abusive gerrymandering of Wisconsin's electoral maps—a practice greenlighted by the Supreme Court's conservatives. Those justices once again gave their imprimatur to those gerrymanders last year when the court took over the redistricting process after a predictable impasse between Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
With no basis in law, the far-right majority decreed that any new maps should be adjusted for shifts in population by making the smallest possible changes from the previous maps—maps that Republicans had carefully drawn in their favor a decade earlier. Unsurprisingly, Republicans rode these maps to a supermajority in the state Senate last year and came just two seats short in the Assembly, despite the fact that Evers simultaneously won a second term.
Protasiewicz had harsh words for those maps, slamming them as "rigged." She said at a candidate state forum, “They do not reflect people in this state. I don't think you could sell any reasonable person that the maps are fair." We already know the court's progressives agree since they joined in a blistering dissent warning that signing off on such "sharply partisan" maps would have "potentially devastating consequences for representative government in Wisconsin."
A progressive group has already promised to ask the Supreme Court to revisit this decision just as soon as Protasiewicz is seated, and there's good reason to think it will. The court would be empowered to order that new districts—fair, nonpartisan districts—be drawn, which would not only give Democrats a shot at winning but would restore voters' rights to be respected, and for voters to enjoy a genuinely representative government.
Given the court's extremely wide jurisdiction, there's much, much more it could address, such as Act 10, the notorious 2011 law spearheaded by then-Gov. Scott Walker that stripped public employees of their collective bargaining right and was upheld by the court. And should Democrats retake the legislature one day there's even more they might do, like closing a massive campaign finance loophole that allows wealthy donors to funnel unlimited contributions to candidates.
We have in fact seen the great extent to which Democrats have revived and buttressed democracy in two neighboring states, Michigan and Minnesota, after winning control of state government last year. Protasiewicz's victory opens the door for a similar revival in Wisconsin. As much as we might not like America's unusual practice of electing judges, we're about to see very vivid demonstration of why these races are so critically important.
Progressives scored a monumental victory in Wisconsin Tuesday night when Janet Protasiewicz flipped a pivotal seat on the state Supreme Court, and we've got plenty to say about it on this week's episode of The Downballot. Not only are the electoral implications deeply worrisome for Republicans, the court's new liberal majority has the chance to revive democracy in the Badger State by restoring abortion rights and striking down gerrymandered GOP maps. It truly is a new day—and one we've long awaited—in Wisconsin.
We're also delving into the fascinating politics of Alaska with our guest this week, former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins. Jonathan recounts his unlikely journey to the state House after winning a huge upset while still in college before explaining how Democrats, independents, and even a few Republicans forged a remarkable cross-partisan governing coalition. We also get an on-the-ground view of what Mary Peltola's stunning special election victory last year looked like to Alaska Democrats.