CANDiDATE PROFiLES
by Bill Lueders
Who will judge?
The Supreme Court election between Jill Karofsky and Daniel Kelly will shape Wisconsin’s future At a special teleconference meeting on March 18, Republican members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, including its chair, Dean Knudson, argued that the commission should be doing whatever it can to make sure the election happens on April 7. “In the current coronavirus crisis, it’s still extremely important and vital to the functioning of our society, we need to have our elections on April 7,” Knudson said, as reported by the Wisconsin Examiner. “Unlike states in which they’re holding only a presidential primary, our elections are much more important than that.” Besides the presidential primary, Wisconsin voters will choose between two candidates for state Supreme Court: incumbent Justice Daniel Kelly or Dane County Judge Jill Karofsky, for a 10-year term. The state Supreme Court race presents Wisconsin with a dramatic choice, especially given that Kelly, who was appointed to the bench in 2016 by Gov. Scott Walker, has a track record of expressing contempt for the very idea of government assistance to people in need. “It is true that there will always be people who need help,” Kelly wrote in a blog post in 2012. “I believe Jesus said as much. But to the extent we conclude from that datum that government must intervene, we do a disservice to those we are supposedly helping, as well as the people from whom we are stealing to provide the ‘help.’” So what is at stake in this election? “Not to put too fine a point on it, but really the future of Wisconsin,” Karofsky said in a March 3 interview in a Madison coffee shop. “The cases that the court’s going to hear [in the near future] are going to have consequential impacts on the state.” “Start out with gerrymandering,” she says. “There’s certainly going to be a gerrymandering case that gets to the Supreme Court and we know from what’s happened in the past what an impact that decision will have.” (In 2018, state Republicans won 63 of 99 Assembly seats despite getting just 46% of the total vote.) Karofksy, a Dane County judge since 2017, anticipates court rulings regarding women’s access to health care, gun violence, criminal justice reform, the environment including the climate crisis, and “what democracy in this state is going to look like… All of that’s on the line.” KAROFKY AND KELLY WERE THE TOP votegetters in a relatively high-turnout Feb. 18 primary that eliminated Ed Fallone. Kelly snared half of the votes cast, compared to Karosky’s 37%. The winner on April 7 will get a 10-year court term starting Aug. 1, assuming that timetable still stands. Karofsky, noting Wisconsin’s status as a key swing state in the presidential race, said on March 3 that the court could end up deciding issues regarding election integrity, voter suppression, and even a possible recount in the fall presidential election. Or, as her campaign put it in a January fundraising appeal: “Donald Trump needs Dan Kelly on the Court to rig the election in November.”
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March 26–April 2, 2020
WILL THE APRIL 7 ELECTION STAY ON SCHEDULE? As of this printing on March 25, it’s still not certain how the April 7 election will happen. Gov. Tony Evers has consistently said he wants the election to go on as scheduled, in part because of critical contests for local governments. State officials are scrambling to recruit enough poll workers while pushing to have the election take place as much as possible — perhaps entirely — by absentee ballot. The deadline for most voters to request an absentee ballot is now April 2.
JILL KAROFSKY
• Age 53, single mother of two, lives in Madison; mother Judy is former Middleton mayor. Served as a Dane County prosecutor, general counsel to the National Conference of Bar Examiners, and head of the state’s Justice Department’s Office of Crime Victim Services. Elected circuit court judge in 2017. • Endorsed by many judges, lawyers and elected officials, Russ Feingold, Tammy Baldwin, Jim Doyle, Justice Rebecca Dallet, unions including Wisconsin AFL-CIO • Justices she’s praised: Shirley Abrahamson, Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
The next state Supreme Court will also be called on to decide all sorts of important legal matters related to the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s where Kelly’s apparent animus even to programs like Social Security and Medicare might come into play. “When the recipients [of public aid] are people who have chosen to retire without sufficient assets to support themselves, we call the transfer Social Security and Medicare,” Kelly wrote in a 2013 blog post. “And it’s welfare when the recipients are those who don’t create enough to sustain themselves during their working years.” He said the “transactions” that lead to people getting help like this from the government “bear all the indicia of involuntary servitude.”
DANIEL KELLY
• Age 56, married, five children; lives in the village of North Prairie in Waukesha County. Has worked as a lawyer for the federal government and in private practice. Appointed to the court by Gov. Scott Walker in 2016. • Endorsed by: President Donald Trump, Justices Rebecca Bradley, Brian Hagedorn, and former Justice David Prosser, Wisconsin Right to Life, Pro-Life Wisconsin, the NRA. • Justices he’s praised: Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas.
Even if the April 7 election doesn’t help decide who becomes president, or determine what life is like for those wanting the government to help them because of this coronavirus, it will shape the court’s ideological balance for years to come. If Kelly wins, Wisconsin Supreme Court conservatives will retain their 5-2 domination at least through 2026, assuming the elected justices all finish their terms. A loss by Kelly would cut the conservatives’ edge to 4-3 and give liberals a chance to gain control in 2023, when Chief Justice Patience Roggensack will be up for reelection. The candidates have been sticking to their scripts. Kelly calls Karofsky an activist judge eager to put her own liberal political views ahead of the
