MADISON, Wis. (Legal Newsline) - Ahead of a debate that will help Wisconsin voters decide the future of its supreme court, conservative candidate Brad Schimel says his opponent has a "troubling history" of giving felons weaker prison terms than what prosecutors suggest.
The current court, controlled by liberals, does not get along. April 1's election between Schimel, a former state attorney general now a judge in Waukesha County, and circuit judge Susan Crawford will determine if conservatives gain a 4-3 majority and is expected to be the most expensive state supreme court race in American history.
It's old hat for Wisconsin, which does not assign judicial candidates political parties. The same played out two years ago when Janet Protasiewicz gave liberals a majority. Like Crawford, her biggest individual donors don't live in Wisconsin.
And like Crawford, her record handling criminals in her court became a major issue. Schimel's campaign says Crawford, a judge in Dane County, has provided weak sentences to dangerous criminals.
"Child rapists, sexual predators and violent criminals know that they have an ally in Susan Crawford," Schimel campaign spokesperson Jacob Fischer said in late February. "Susan Crawford's career is defined by making Wisconsin less safe."
Among the examples are:
-Kevin Welton, found guilty of sexual assault of two children in incidents that occurred eight years apart sentenced by Crawford to four years in prison despite a 10-year request from prosecutors. He's now free and lives 1.6 miles from a high school in New London, Wisconsin Right Now reported.
-Curtis O'Brien, found guilty of first degree sexual assault of a girl when she was 5 years old. Crawford set bond at $500 despite past bail-jumping convictions.
-Crawford allowed O'Brien to live with his father across the street from an elementary school while out on bond, leading about half of the town of Black Earth to sign a petition urging Crawford to reconsider. Ultimately, she sentenced him to four years in prison compared to a maximum of 60 years and is already out of jail.
The victim said she would daydream about ponies while O'Brien raped her.
-Daniel Blanchard and Daniel Anderson, each charged with 10 felony counts of child pornography possession, faced up to 25 years in prison. Crawford dismissed nine of the charges, then sentenced each to three years in prison.
-Thomas Gogin had been convicted of sexually assaulting a woman but in 2001 Crawford's criminal appeals unit missed a deadline to appeal an order that vacated his conviction.
Her campaign site says she understands "what it takes to keep communities safe." Her record will surely be a talking point when she and Schimel debate March 12.
It's already hit the airwaves, with Elon Musk's Building America's Future and another group, the WMC Issues Mobilization Council, spending millions on ad campaigns against Crawford.
Musk isn't the only one outside of Wisconsin with an eye on the election. Crawford's campaign finance disclosures from January-February show plenty of out-of-state money.
In fact, counting donors who have given her at least $10,000 or more this year, Legal Newsline determined that out of the $620,150 she raised from those big spenders, 87% ($541,150) came from out of state.
Out-of-state donors giving $10,000 or more to Schimel account for 20% of those donations ($90,000 of $442,500 total).
Schimel's campaign says Crawford is "funded by George Soros, the biggest supporter of soft-on-crime prosecutors in America." The same was said in 2023 about Protasiewicz.
In the two years since Protasiewicz's election, conservatives have accused the liberal majority of a power grab, tyranny and gutting the people's access to courts.
Conservative justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley has been an outspoken critic, filing dissenting opinions in key cases that accused the liberals of replacing the law with their own ideologies.
In one case, the liberals overturned a decision a then-conservative-led Supreme Court had issued two years earlier. Democrats said the law allows absentee voters to put their votes in ballot drop boxes, rather than return them in the mail or in person.
The decision went against the GOP majority in the legislature, which said the law forbid drop boxes. Democrat Gov. Tony Evers intervene and urged the liberals to overrule the previous ruling, which they did.
"The majority again forsakes the rule of law in an attempt to advance its political agenda," Rebecca Grassl Bradley wrote.
"The majority began this term by tossing the legislative maps adopted by this court... for the sole purpose of facilitating 'the redistribution of political power in the Wisconsin legislature.'
"The majority ends the term by loosening the legislature's regulations governing the privilege of absentee voting in the hopes of tipping the scales in future elections."