Spending in Wisconsin race reflects high stakes for court
MADISON, Wis. — Spending on the high-stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race has topped $42 million, nearly triple the previous national record for a court race, with the Democratic-backed candidate having a roughly $6 million advantage, according to a report released Monday just before polls opened.
The winner in today’s election between Democratic-backed Janet Protasiewicz and Republican-backed Dan Kelly will determine majority control of the court, with issues such as abortion access, redistricting and more than a decade of Republican priorities hanging in the balance.
The court has been under conservative control for 15 years, helping to enshrine priorities of the GOP-controlled Legislature and former Gov. Scott Walker. Liberals have cast the race as a defining moment for their side to exert power and potentially overturn the state’s 1849 abortion ban law and redraw maps created by Republicans that have increased their control of the Legislature.
The winner will also set majority control of the court ahead of the 2024 presidential election. The current court came one vote short of overturning President Joe Biden’s win in Wisconsin in 2020.
As of Monday, Protasiewicz and her backers had spent about $23.3 million compared with about $17.6 million for Kelly and his supporters, according to a report from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks campaign spending.
The previous record high for spending in a court race was $15 million in Illinois in 2004.
Protasiewicz has spent nearly $12 million compared with Kelly’s more than $2.2 million. Protasiewicz’s campaign has received nearly $9 million from the state Democratic Party, based on the latest campaign finance reports. Kelly, who previously worked for the state and national Republican parties, has also gotten financial backing and in-kind contributions in this race from the state GOP and county parties.
CHICAGO MAYOR’S RACE
Chicago mayoral candidates Brandon Johnson and Paul Vallas ended the final weekend of the race by fanning out across the city, from a Dungeons and Dragons-themed bar in Avondale to churches around the South and West sides.
With election day today, the candidates held smaller-scale events as they focused primarily on mobilizing their bases and generating turnout in the bitterly contested race.
Johnson’s weekend schedule included a stop in Humboldt Park before taking him down the north lakefront, where the mayoral candidate bit into ethnic delicacies from chutney-dipped samosas at a restaurant along Devon Avenue to an Asian carp burger in the backyard of an Uptown store.
Johnson avoided mentioning Vallas by name but portrayed his rival as one lacking “love.”
“Those who do not possess that love, they start to act out,” Johnson said. “My mother would say they’re just showing out. But there are days, y’all, that are in front of us. We’re gonna bring them along too, because that’s the true essence of love. That we love our opponents too.”
Vallas spent the last Saturday before Election Day shoring up his base by also revisiting wards that he won in the first round. Along the way, he swayed his hips with Chinese Lion Dancers and nodded his head to the songs of the Romanian-American Chicago Children’s Choir.
The former Chicago Public Schools CEO joined a group of supporters for an event at Bella Luna in the Southwest Side Hispanic community of West Lawn, where a crowd of about 150 people ate green and red tamales under mason jar chandeliers.
Alderman Silvana Tabares of Ward 23 kicked off the event with an attack on Johnson, who has faced criticism for previously supporting the “defund the police” movement.
“We’re not going to let Brandon Johnson take our police officers out of our neighborhoods,” she said. Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Iris Martinez introduced Vallas as a “true-blue Democrat!”