The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is coming up, and
polling shows a majority of you say you don't know
enough about the candidates. Let's fix that. This is
inside Wisconsin politics. my colleagues Zac Schultz
and Rich Kremer. Hey, guys. >> Hello. Hey.
>> So this is not something we're just making up here.
There has been polling on this race, and the leading
vote getter in that poll
was a majority of people saying they don't know who
they're going to support. That is so different than
in 2023 and 2025, when we in Wisconsin were the Super
Bowls of election for our Supreme Court races. So,
Zac, what is the difference this year?
>> Well, the simple difference is this isn't
for the majority. The Liberals will have a four
person majority for the next session no matter what.
If Chris Taylor wins, it goes to five two. If Chris
if Maria Lazar wins, it stays at 4 to 3. But that
simply is the difference between $100 million in
campaign and the attention of the world on this very
important swing state, and the court's decisions on
election laws versus a snooze fest, even in the
state for people that normally tune in for these
elections, are still trying to figure out, oh, when is
that coming up? >> And that's not hyperbole
either. That $100 million is a real number from last
election, when we shattered the 2023 record, not just
for Wisconsin, but for national judicial races.
Rich. The 2025 race was the first one you'd covered
really closely. What was a day in the life like on
that one, and how does it compare to what you've
observed in this Supreme Court race?
>> I mean, it's like night and day. I covered a
Republican, former Republican Attorney General
Brad Schimel, spent a day with him on the campaign
trail. And, you know, first off, the bat, he took money
directly from the Republican Party of
Wisconsin. Also, I was at a campaign event at the
Republican Party in La Crosse, where Brad Schimel
framed the race as a fight between good and evil. And
he also used an analogy of driving the serpent out of
the Garden of Eden. So the. The language used by
Schimel is very different than what we've seen from
Judge Lazar. She's promoting that she is the
independent candidate compared to Chris Taylor,
who she attacks as being an activist and former
Democratic lawmaker. But she just hasn't made the
same kind of statements that I've heard that
Schimel did last year. >> It's almost like an old
fashioned Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, Zac.
>> It harkens back to a day where things weren't as
heated, that your your TV wasn't filled with ads
nonstop in the lead up to it, where you really did
have to pay attention to learn who these people were.
Now it's still Republican Democrat, you know, they
may use the labels conservative, liberal, but
Chris Taylor is a former legislative Democrat but
now independent judge. But her connections to the
Wisconsin Democratic Party to the Republican Party
covered go deep. I've attended multiple events
with her. She's been speaking at GOP rallies
with the next speaker's Eric Toney running for
attorney general. So it's not like either of these
are running down independent lanes. They're
still following that traditional the new path.
If you want to become on the Supreme Court, you keep
the political parties at arm's length in your name,
but you take all the money under the table, you take
all the effort for grassroots, because that
really matters when when it comes to getting people out
to vote, those turnout operations, those dollar
operations still belong to the parties. There is no
independent structure for anyone to remain
independent and actually win a campaign.
>> So let's talk about the candidates here. Let's
start with Chris Taylor. She got into the race first.
Zac, what should people know about Chris Taylor's
background and what led her to this point?
>> Well, the the clearest thing is she had worked for
abortion rights groups before she became a member
of the legislature. She ran as a Democrat and Assembly
race in the Dane County area. I covered that race
way back when she was here through a lot of tumultuous
times in the Capitol, and then she left. She was
appointed Dane County judge by Governor Evers. Then she
ran for the appellate court and became a judge there,
which is what she's doing today. So she has followed
the judicial pattern, but she's got heavy partizan
activity in her background, and she doesn't deny that.
But like every judge or justice, she wouldn't be
the first one. I mean, former Justice Prosser
served as the Assembly speaker for Republicans.
And back in the day when they could say, well, I'm a
conservative justice, not a conservative politician
with Chris Taylor in this modern environment, I don't
know if it really matters because the candidates are
so tied to the parties anyway that her background
doesn't seem to have any baggage. And we saw with
Brad Schimel Rich, as you were talking about last
year, he's a former Republican attorney general
for Wisconsin, and he did not shy away from those
Republican connections. But you see a difference with
Lazar and how she's handled herself. Rich.
The so Lazar has been focusing on her career in
the courtroom. She's been a lawyer since 1989. She
worked for the Department of Justice under former
Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, and that
was in the early years of Republican control of state
governments. So after 2011, when a lot of laws were
passed that wound up in court, Democrats tried to
sue to stop the voting maps passed by Republicans,
abortion restrictions and act ten. So Maria Lazar, as
an assistant DOJ attorney, was representing the state
and defending those, and she was elected to the
Waukesha County Circuit Court. But that was the
both of her races. There were unopposed. And then in
2022, she became a judge on the second District Court
of Appeals. So but to your point, yes, she's she's
leaning on her, you know, her experience in the
courtroom, but also, you know, her political ads
kind of let you know where she stands on certain
things, or at least where her campaign does. So
there's plenty of signals out there.
>> You know, some of these candidates, when they run
for Supreme Court, they come from the law, and
maybe you're hearing about them for the first time or
getting introduced to them for the first time. But,
you know, Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar, as you both
mentioned, have been around for a little while. I
remember Maria Lazar defending Republican drawn
legislative maps in 2012 alongside co-counsel Dan
Kelly, who former Supreme Court justice and who ran
in a couple races in lost. I remember Chris Taylor
very well for her role in the minority on the
Legislature's Budget Committee, where if you
have that position, you are expected to be able to talk
and defend every position and and attack the
majority's position aggressively. And so she
did that. Well, she wasn't just a backbencher
legislator. She was the person who was on that
front line of attack. And, you know, since we've since
she's become a judge, that's changed. And she has
indicated and her friends have indicated, look, she
knows this is a different role in court, but it is
striking a very big change for her to go from that,
you know, attack, attack, attack. Democratic
legislator to a judge who sees things differently.
You mentioned those ads, Rich for Maria Lazar. She
is trying to go for this kind of above it all judge,
you know, I don't want to get into politics. The ads,
they tell a different story, though. I mean, she's
definitely not going that way with her campaign.
>> Yeah, the ads have focused on basically
attacking Taylor, things like abortion, lasers,
campaign ads say that, you know, Taylor wants abortion
up to the moment of birth, which is a line you've
heard a lot of Republicans say over the years. And the
latest one that I think just came out this week,
features a woman saying that she's afraid of her
daughter having to compete against biological men in
in school sports, which. >> Republican themes pulled
right from congressional races and state assembly
races, governor races hitting the points that
work for them. >> Yeah. So the ad lays out
the the political part of it. And then you've got a
picture of Lazar saying that she'll uphold the law.
So it seems like she's still trying to walk that
line. But, you know, the ads do send a signal.
>> Well, so let me let me ask you you. So we've seen
low turnout elections in the past. And that was at a
time when conservatives really won a lot of these
races, when there was lower turnout, when there
consistent voters from the suburbs of Milwaukee came
out to vote no matter what. And the Liberal candidates
really struggled to get the attention that they needed
to win these races. And then we saw things flip
from Rebecca Dallet on in 2018. So what do you see as
the impact of less attention right now on this
race? >> I think we'll find out
what a less attention race means here. I think though,
in the era of Donald Trump, for one, you know, since
Donald Trump realigned the Republican Party and its
base of voters, a base that reliably reelected
conservative justices for many years up until around
2017, we don't know what that shift is going to mean
in a lower turnout election, but we know that
conservatives start out as kind of a structural
disadvantage in these races. And we also know that
liberals have just found a pattern for what it takes
to run, talk about their values. They're not afraid
to talk about cases that have happened. They are not
afraid to talk about women's health. And it's
just been a winning formula for them in, you know,
really since 2018, with one exception in 2019 that has
been the liberal path to victory year in and year
out. So there have been a couple cases that you have
asked both candidates about where you actually got to
hear them. You gave them a chance anyway to weigh in
on some very high profile races that came before the
Wisconsin Supreme Court. Let's look at those if we
can. There was one about the 2020 election, which we
will be talking about forever as reporters, I
think. And this is a there were a lot of challenges to
the election results and to Joe Biden's victory in
Wisconsin that came before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
What did you ask the candidates?
ultimately decided, that election in Wisconsin was
called Trump v Biden, and it was brought by Trump's
lawyers, one of which was Jim Troupis, who is
currently being prosecuted in Dane County Court for
forgery related to the false electors thing tied
in around the same time period.
in law. >> Especially in political
times. But yes, that case went all the way to the
Supreme Court. And the question was the Trump
administration or the Trump campaign wanted to throw
out 200,000 votes in Wisconsin, specifically in
Dane and Milwaukee counties regarding absentee ballots.
And the question before the Supreme Court was, should
they even take the case? So the question was standing
in the legal sense of did Donald Trump and his
campaign have a legal right to even file a lawsuit in
the first place? Ultimately, it was A43 decision. And
this is a time when conservatives controlled
the court 4 to 3 that said, no, we won't take the case.
It was Bryan Hagedorn who ultimately sided with the
three Liberals to throw out the case. That solidified
the win. Biden won Wisconsin definitively,
damned. And it was the three conservatives who
didn't necessarily say they would have thrown out the
votes. But they said we should at least hear the
case. When I asked both candidates about this,
Chris Taylor was absolutely on the side of the Liberal
candidates, saying, of course they made the right
decision and they never should have thrown out
those votes, should have never gotten that far. It
was Maria Lazar who really didn't want to take a
position on it. But she said the issue of standing
is still going to come back before this court, which is
true. And she wouldn't even go the one step further. I
asked her point blank, like, are people going to hear
this answer and say, well, what about the 200,000
votes that were going to get thrown out? And she
said, well, I don't want to weigh in on that. I don't
want to talk about that. And that was just a place
she wasn't willing to go. And the Democratic Party
and Taylor's campaign that, saying she's still
connected to election deniers and conspiracy and
this whole issue. So, you know, the 2020 election
will not go away. It's still present. And it's
present in their answers, too.
things can be true. That is a position that a lawyer
can take that look, this has to deal with standing.
We're not going to get into it. Another thing that is
undeniably true is that there are people in Maria
Lazaro's base, or the conservative base, who have
strong feelings about the 2020 election.
>> Yeah, they absolutely do. So in 2022, she was
endorsed by people. She was attacked for being endorsed
by people like Michael Gableman and also for
associating with Troupis. Gableman is a former
Supreme Court justice who led the 2020 election
investigation. That was kind of widely panned. And
also he was fired by Assembly Robin Assembly
Speaker Robin Vos, who had hired him before. I mean,
it was a whole thing. So she's still getting us hit
for even associating with those two people. But yeah,
the standing issue, the other thing that comes to
mind is I, you know, we've heard the president,
President Donald Trump, say, well, you know, all those
cases, they never looked at the cases. They just found
these technicalities and they tossed them out.
That's not true. There was plenty of cases that were
dismissed on the merits, lack of evidence, etc. but
it just kind of reminded me of that when I heard that
answer from Lazar. And I've seen that same answer from
a lot of people who do believe that the 2020
election was stolen. >> And Zak, I feel like we
can't talk about a court race in Wisconsin these
days without talking about the issue of abortion.
That's another one where you ask the candidates
about their positions. What was your question and how
did they handle. >> That specifically? The
question was, how would they have decided if they
had been on the court when Kohl versus Urmanski was
brought before the court? To be clear, that was the
case that looked to throw out the 1849 abortion ban
from Wisconsin. That was the attorney general suing
Sheboygan. That wasn't the point. It was that was what
the case was called for. Three the Liberal majority
throughout that law said it was annulled essentially by
laws passed after that, specifically won by Scott
Walker and the Republicans. And Chris Taylor said it
was absolutely the correct decision. Maria Lazar once
again didn't say how she would have voted, but she
she kind of answered it in the end of her answer by
saying, well, if I win, it'll still be A43 court.
So my. I wouldn't have changed the outcome of that
case, which sounds a lot like her saying she would
have decided with the conservatives on the case,
which really shouldn't be all that shocking. Those
are who her colleagues would be if she wins and
then another conservative wins, then she would be in
the majority. And who knows that? That is the question
that Taylor and other people are saying was if
the court flips again, will abortion rights come up
before the court? I will say Lazar finished her
answer by saying, however, she views that Supreme
Court decision as final and that the abortion issue is
settled as far as the courts are determined.
Obviously, it's not settled when it comes to
gubernatorial and legislative elections. So
those will still play out. And we're going to be
covering a lot of that coming up. But their
answers kind of fell into the camps that you might
expect them to, especially given their messaging and
ads. another finding in the
Marquette poll that we recently covered that, you
know, it's hard to say where people stand on the
candidates when more than half of voters say they
don't know. But what we did see, what you saw. There's
a lot of tells in there about which side is more
enthusiastic right now at this moment in time.
>> Yeah. Big time. There was a big disparity in
terms of who's excited to vote in the April 7th
election. So some numbers I'll run off here. People
saying that there are certain to vote on April
7th. Democrats are up 18 points over Republicans.
How important the election is to the outcome or how
important is the election outcome to you? That was a
19 point spread in Democrats favor as well. So
there's all kinds of metrics. And not to mention
that President Trump had his lowest net negative
approval rating in Marquette poll history. So
those are all some headwinds for conservative
candidates. >> Zack, I guess against
that backdrop, what can Maria Lazar point to and
say? I got a good chance. Nonetheless.
>> The quick answer is she's relying on Hagedorn's
race from 2019. Like her, he was another conservative
candidate who was vastly outspent and written off
towards the end of the race. People thought that he was
not going to win, so much so that the Liberal
candidate at the time really took her foot off
the pedal. When it came to running through the finish
line. Lazar directly points to that race and says,
that's the path to follow. That's get out the vote.
That's grassroots advocacy. If we can't win on ads, we
have to make sure our voters get to the polls,
especially in a lower turnout election. Taylor
said she's aware of it. She's going to run through
the tape, not letting off the pedal at all.
>> And she is running a different kind of race than
the judge Neubauer, who ran in that year's race, you
know, ran I mean, you mentioned it taking your
feet off the pedal. She ran more like a judge than a
candidate, I guess, in that race. So we'll see how that
plays out in the closing days. Thanks for joining us
for this week's Inside Wisconsin Politics. Our
Wagtendonk. We'll be back next week. Be sure to
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