Last year, Wisconsin voters elected a Tony Evers (D) governor over Tim Michels (R), 1,358,774 (51.2%) to 1,268,535 (47.8%). In the Attorney General race, Josh Kaul (D) beat Eric Toney (R) 1,333,351 (50.7%) to 1,298,180 (49.3%). And Democrat Doug LaFollette was reelected Secretary of State over Republican Amy Loudenbeck 1,268,754 (48.32%) to 1,261,129 (48.03%). This year there was a huge statewide race for the pivotal Supreme Court seat that would determine if the Court would be mainstream or fascist. The mainstream candidate, Janet Protasiewicz (D) beat far right extremist Daniel Kelly by 11 points— 1,021,370 (55.5%) to 8818,286 (44.5%).
In 2020, when Biden won Wisconsin, he captured 14 counties. Protasiewicz won 27 of them, including Brown (Green Bay), Outagamie (Appleton), Winnebago (Oshkosh), Kenosha, Columbia, Grant, Dunn, Vernon, Pierce, Jackson, Richland and Lafayette. There can be no doubt that Wisconsin voters wanted her and wanted her to remedy the grotesque gerrymandering regime the Republicans in the state legislature had had set up to cling to power and protect their own careers. Start by watching this powerful 6-minute piece that Rachel Maddow broadcast this past Monday:
As she said, now the Republicans are threatening to impeach Protasiewicz if she doesn’t agree to recuse herself from the gerrymandering case in front of the court. Yesterday, Andrew Gawthorpe asserted that what the Republicans are doing in Wisconsin is a warning to Americans everywhere. “It’s no exaggeration,” he wrote, “to say that Wisconsin and its state capitol, Madison, are now the front line of the battle to save American democracy… When Trump argued that he was the real winner of the election because the votes of people living in Democratic-leaning urban areas were somehow fraudulent and should not count, he was repeating arguments that Wisconsin Republicans had already honed. The speaker of the state assembly, Robin Vos, has explained that the state’s gerrymander is fair because “if you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority.” Because Madison and Milwaukee are the parts of the state with the largest concentration of non-white voters, Vos has revealed what the Wisconsin gerrymander is really about: race.
Republicans’ plan to impeach Protasiewicz is nakedly hypocritical: They argue that Protasiewicz, who received Democratic campaign donations, cannot give unbiased rulings in gerrymandering cases – despite the fact that numerous other Wisconsin state supreme court justices, including Republicans, have also received party donations and ruled on cases with political implications.
Their plan also bends democratic norms, in this case by impeaching Protasiewicz and then simply leaving her in limbo, legally unable to hear cases. Because the plan wouldn’t actually formally kick her from office, it denies the state’s Democratic governor the opportunity to replace her with another liberal. Democrats are fighting back, but their chances of success hinge on their ability to convince Republicans in the gerrymandered assembly to do the right thing.
As Wisconsin goes, so goes America. Although sometimes referred to as a “moderate” state, it is more accurate to view Wisconsin as one very conservative state and one very liberal state jammed together. The fact that it is narrowly divided between the two parties is precisely why Republicans have resorted to constitutional and political skullduggery to give themselves an unfair advantage.
The same is true of many other states, and indeed of America as a whole. What happens in Wisconsin is a crucial test case of whether the most brazen attempts to turn competitive elections into uncompetitive one-party control will fly.
This challenge will remain whether Trump goes to jail or not. Wisconsin Republicans were some of the most fervent backers of Trump’s own undemocratic actions, but they needed no lessons from him in how to suppress the will of the people. The Republican party’s belief in its own god-given right to rule– and that of its white, rural electorate– found its most dangerous expression in Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, but it long predated him. It will outlive him unless it is chastened by accountability and defeat at every turn. All eyes are now on Wisconsin and Janet Protasiewicz to see if it will be. Good luck, your honor.
This is the new ad the Republican Accountability Project just started running on Fox News statewide and digitally targeting 20 of the worst Republicans in the legislature: