Got.
This for me.
All right. Do you
have a clip on it?
Or is that the one of
the one for the room?
Okay.
All right.
Okay. Let's get this party started.
Everybody.
I run. My name is Ryan Sporty.
I'm the state representative for
District 89.
I'm so used to standing up and
saying, I'm running.
I'm in New
York.
And it's my honor today to introduce
a very special guest, Judge Susan
Crawford.
I just want to start out by
observing.
If you're like me, a lot of you are
still thinking about what happened
in November, what happened on
November 5th.
And I've had a lot of folks come up
to me and ask Ryan,
you know, what do we do?
What comes next?
What can we do to help?
And I've got a very simple answer.
To.
This.
What do we do?
This What comes next?
This.
How can we help this?
This is the next big fight.
Biggest fight of the year here in
Wisconsin.
And it's my honor to introduce a
fighter. A champion.
Judge Crawford?
Well,
Judge Crawford is a common sense
judge rooted in the same basic
values that she learned growing up
in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
You belong to all
bands.
She has a vast wealth
of experience, including as
a prosecutor,
two former prosecutors up here.
What's not to love?
Go vote
no. She has experience as a former
prosecutor, a private practice
attorney, and now as a judge.
She understands that we need a
Supreme Court justice
who will stand up to keep our
communities safe, who
will be fair and impartial,
and who will always use common sense
and won't politicize the
Constitution or our Constitution
in any effort to take away our
most basic and fundamental rights.
Judge Crawford believes in doing the
right thing always.
She's fought to protect the rights
of law, and she'll keep doing that.
She will be a fair and impartial
state Supreme Court justice.
And for the first time in a long
time, folks, we have a progressive
majority right now on the Supreme
Court.
We can't lose it.
We cannot go back.
We cannot lose that.
We need a judge that again, be
justice will faithfully
follow the facts.
Follow the law as we have the
majority right now that is doing so
delivering on the promise of a fair
and impartial justice system.
We can't risk losing that progress.
It's more important now than ever
before that it's my pleasure
to introduce the one and only
Judge Susan Crawford.
Well done.
Well, thank you, Ryan, for that
great introduction.
He's going to be a star in our state
for me.
All right.
Well, I think you're all
here because you know how important
this race is.
It is coming up on April 1st.
That means we have a little less
than three months.
It's going to be here before we
know it and
really means so much to me to have
you here and have you already
engaged and willing to
get out there and fight this fight
and make sure I get elected on April
1st.
So thanks for being here.
This election is not just
going to affect the future of
our state and possibly our country,
but it is going to affect all
of our personal freedoms and
our fundamental rights.
That is why this is so important.
And the question that's going to be
presented to the voters is,
do Wisconsinites want someone
who believes in common
sense, who knows right
from wrong and
who believes in the rights and
freedoms that we have been given
under our state constitution and our
state laws?
Or do they want an extreme
politician like Brad
Schimel, who
has spent his career pushing an
extreme partizan agenda and
taking rights away from people?
Well, I have spent the past six
months traveling all over
the state of Wisconsin, and I think
I know what the answer is.
Wisconsinites want a common
sense justice who will be fair
and impartial and who
believes in holding people
accountable If they have harmed our
community, harmed our families.
They want a justice who is going to
serve the people of our
state and not serve
some special interests,
some wealthy interests.
And they want somebody who's going
to always uphold the Constitution
and enforce our laws.
And that is what I spent my whole
career doing.
And it's what I'm going to do for
all of you on our Wisconsin Supreme
Court.
Like Ryan said,
I grew up in Chippewa Falls.
It was a great place to grow up.
I remember riding my bike all over
town as a kid.
Going to Irvine Park would be a park
in the middle of Chapel Falls.
Spending a lot of time outdoors
with my two brothers and my sister.
And it's the kind of place where
people know each other, you know,
you know each other from school, you
know each other from your church,
or maybe your parents work together.
But it is a community where
people really know each other
and support each other and
where people are willing to give
back to their communities.
My dad was an engineer
who got his degree from UW Madison
after serving in Korea, serving
our country.
And my mom is a third
generation Wisconsinite who grew
up in Greene County.
My great grandfather started a
barber shop on the square
in Monroe, Wisconsin, back in the
1860s.
So we've got a pretty
long history in Wisconsin, and
my mom and dad still live in
Monroe, Wisconsin, today.
They are getting up there in years.
My mom's turning 90 this
year on April
1st.
So we got to give my mom a good
birthday present.
That's cute.
So when I was growing up, you know,
things weren't always easy.
My baby sister was born with
some special needs.
Needed a lot of extra care,
needed some specialized medical
care.
And my dad was laid
off from his job when I was in high
school. So we went through some
tough times as a family,
but we always stuck together
and stood up for each other
and we made it through some of those
tough times.
And I know a lot of you in the in
the room here have had
similar experiences.
I grew up in similar kinds of places
where there was a real sense of
community and of people
helping each other out.
So that is all.
What taught me right from wrong,
gave me my basic values
and taught me the
value of common sense.
So that is what I'm bringing
to this race for the Wisconsin
Supreme Court.
And I'm also a mom.
I'm a proud mom of two
young adults.
My husband and I raised
our kids with all those same values.
And I'm really proud that they
now, as young adults, are
looking for their way
to give back to their communities
and do some good in our world.
And I'm really proud of them.
Let me talk a little bit about my
career and tell you a bit about
the things that I have worked for
throughout my legal career
to protect Wisconsin families
and Wisconsin values.
I started my career as a prosecutor
at the Wisconsin Department of
Justice and took on
felony cases all
the way up to the Wisconsin Supreme
Court to make sure that
people who harmed our community,
who hurt people were held
accountable.
And I always worked hard to
get it right.
I also worked in state
agencies helping to
lead state agencies and ultimately
was chief legal counsel in the
governor's office.
But I always had
my priority to make sure that we
were applying the laws fairly
and equally across state
government, that
if somebody hurts,
hurt somebody, hurt our community,
that they lost
their right to live in our community
and belong in jail.
I also believe that
big corporations also
that hurt our communities and hurt
people need to be held accountable
and that victims of
crime deserve to have their
rights protected.
We need to have justice served.
Why, after about 14
years in state government,
I shifted gears
and joined a private law firm.
We had an election in Wisconsin in
2010 that had something to do
with that change of pace.
But I ended up in private practice
as a lawyer, and I continued.