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.
I'm Sean Johnson here with my colleagues, Zach Schultz and Rich Kramer.
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 Zach, what is the difference this year?
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 5-2.
If Mariel is our wins, it stays at 4-3.
But that simply is the difference between $100 million in campaign and the attention of
the world on this very important swing state, and of course, 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 was 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 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 former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimmel spent a day with him on the
campaign trail, and 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 Schimmel 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 language used by Schimmel 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 Schimmel did
last year.
It's almost like an old-fashioned Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, Zach.
It harkens back to a day where things weren't as heated, that 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.
They may use the label's conservative liberal, but Chris Taylor is a former legislative Democrat
but now independent judge.
But her connections to the Wisconsin, the Democratic Party, run deep.
Lazar's connections to Republican Party covered go deep.
I've attended multiple events with her, which she's been speaking at GOP rallies with the
next speaker's Eric Tony running for attorney general.
So it's not like either 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 an arm's
length in your name, but you take all the money under the table, you take all their
effort for grassroots because that really matters 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.
What should people know about Chris Taylor's background and what led her to this point?
Well, 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 the tumultuous times
in the Capitol.
And then she left.
She was appointed a Dane County judge by Governor Evers.
And 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 partisan activity in her
background.
And she doesn't deny that, but like every judge or justice, she won'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 Schimmels, 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.
Oh, sorry.
Yeah, exactly.
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 JB Van
Holland.
And that was in the early years of Republican control of state government.
So after 2011, when a lot of laws were passed, that wound up in court.
That's tried to sue to stop the voting maps passed by Republicans, abortion restrictions,
and act 10.
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 both of her races
there were unopposed.
And then in 2022, she became a judge on the Second District Court of Appeals.
But to your point, yes, she's leaning on her experience in the courtroom, but also 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've all 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 of races in loss.
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 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 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 on the court.
But it is striking a very big change for her to go from that attack, attack, attack,
democratic legislator to a judge going to cease things differently.
You mentioned those ads, Rich, from Maria Lazar.
She is trying to go for this kind of above-it-all judge.
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 on things like abortion.
Lazar's campaign adds, say, that 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.
There's a woman saying that she's afraid of her daughter having to compete against
biological men 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 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 the ads do send a cycle.
Well, so let me let me ask you.
So we've seen low turnout elections in the past.
And that was at a time when conservatives really want a lot of these races, when there
was lower turnout, when their 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 Dallot 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 elected conservative
justices for many years up until, you know, 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 at 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're 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 but there have been a couple cases, Zach, that you have asked both candidates about.
We 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 was 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?
So the, the case that was ultimately decided that election in Wisconsin was called Trump
v. Biden and it was brought by Trump's lawyers, one of which is Jim Troopis, who is currently
being prosecuted in Dane County Court for forgery related to the false electors thing tied in
around the same time period.
It's a very small world in law, especially in political lawyers times.
But yes, that case when 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 a four, three decision and this is at a time when conservatives controlled
the court, four to three, that said, no, we won't take the case.
It was Brian Hagadorn, who ultimately sided with the three liberals to throw out the
case.
That solidified the win, Biden won Wisconsin definitively, election conspiracies be 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
candidate 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 won't even go the one step further, because I asked her point blank, like, there
are people who are going to hear this answer and say, well, what about the 200,000 votes
that we're 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 immediately jumped all over 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.
Yeah.
Rich, that is two 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 Lazar'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 Troopis.
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 Speaker Robin Voss who had
hired him before.
I mean, it was a whole thing.
So she's still getting hit for even associating with those two people.
But yeah, the standing issue, the other thing that comes to mind is I've, 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, et cetera.
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 Zach, 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 asked 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 call versus Ermansky 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 a boy again.
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 one by Scott Walker and the Republicans.
And Chris Taylor said it was absolutely the correct decision.
Maria Lazar.
That's again, didn't say how she would have voted, but she kind of answered it in the
end of her answer by saying, well, if I win, it'll still be a 4-3 court.
So 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 and
she would be in the majority.
And who knows?
That is the question that Taylor and other people are saying was if the court flips again,
well, 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.
And Rich, there was another finding in the Marquette poll that we recently covered that
it's hard to say where people stand on the candidates when more than half a voter say
they don't know.
But what we did see, which 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 is excited to vote in the April 7 election.
So some numbers all run off here.
People saying that they're 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.
Zach, 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 Hagadorn'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 let enough the pedal at all.
And she is running a different kind of race than the judge Newbauer who ran in that year's
race, you know, ran.
I mean, you mentioned it, taking her 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 colleague Anya VanWack and Nok will be back next week.
Be sure to follow us on PBSWisconsin.org, WPR.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your
podcasts.
Are they going to be able to edit that together?
I'm sure we'll be able to cut that out, but no.
So my question for future references is, was my cue too subtle because I tried?
I said your name and then left it so I don't think so because I was just too nervous.
I didn't hear it.
I was just waiting for Sean voice and so he's saying he wasn't paying attention to me at
all.
Well, that's not what I'm admitting.
You can infer what you like, but yeah, I got it.
I was just so nervous.
I was too in my head.
I wasn't listening to the conversation.
No, that's not a big deal.
It's more of for the future.
Is it also?
I don't know if this helps me at all because it's just almost more distracting.
But I think it does work better when I'm tossing to you.
It's not going to Sean every time or I take it from you and ask Sean a question.
So I guess what I did this time is I said your name and then finished a sentence.
What I can do in the first is say the sentence say, rich, like I can double tap rich, like
I shouldn't matter, man.
So I should be able to, you know, and then the rich, I can, I can make it, I can lay
a lot of your.
I should, you know, I should recognize my own name, you would think.
But, um,
Well, apparently not from my voice.
Maybe at the end, it would be all right.
Otherwise, I just vow to pay more attention and not be as nervous trying to get ready
for my answer.
But.
All right, are we going to try the open again?
Yeah, that's what we discussed.
Yeah, if we can.
Might as well.
We're all here.
Uh, it would probably, I would probably do a better job if you are able to just like
flip it around so that I land on inside Wisconsin politics.
Yeah, like you were there.
I think the end of the show would probably benefit from you saying that's how we've got
time for today and then the close.
Yeah.
That's another signal to the audience.
Otherwise, it might feel abrupt, finish the sentence and then go to the close.
You know what I mean?
Just like that.
I did.
But I maybe.
No, did I not?
I didn't know.
I mean, I didn't hear anything.
Wow.
I said, thanks for joining us.
Maybe that was it.
Yeah.
That's all we have time for.
That's good.
That's it.
Yeah.
That's how Fred and I wrap most of our interviews.
We'll have to leave it there.
That's all we have time for.
And me, we're just out of time.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
That's good.
Otherwise, it can feel abrupt as that shift.
Oh, yeah.
You could do the Porky Pig thing.
Could I see prompter?
It's not.
There we go.
So we have not stopped recording.
They're just getting their stuff together back in control room.
We'll be ready to go very soon.
All right.
Yeah.
They'll look down as good as.
Audio folks.
Can you hear me?
And so I've got my mic up and I've got the headphones up to be able to hear them.
Because the feed was a little quiet.
But I'm hearing some noise, man.
I'm hearing like a hum from lights and some kind of ba-da-da-da-da-da-da.
Is that not coming through on your end?
That sounds good, huh?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I mean, I just, I felt terrible after the fact last week when you guys said there
was some issues.
But if you're not hearing it, then it's all right.
Weird.
Well, yeah, what's strange is it gets louder when I turn direct monitor off.
So I don't know what the deal is.
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Hopefully.
Okay.
You guys good to go?
Yeah.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is coming up and polling shows the majority of you say
you don't know enough about the candidates.
Let's fix that.
I'm Sean Johnson here with my colleagues, Zach Schultz and Rich Kramer.
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
Hey, guys.
Hello.
Hey.
Hey, Rich Kramer.
Hello, TV.
Yeah.
Just trying to imagine how we would jump in.
I'll actually ask a pretend question afterward.
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.
I'm Sean Johnson here with my colleagues, Zach Schultz and Rich Kramer.
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
Hey, guys.
Hello.
Hey.
So the 2022 and 2025 elections were really big, Zach.
And this one's not as big.
What happened?
Because there was no election in 2022.
2023.
Good catch.
You're trying to catch me there.
Yeah.
I lived through that.
I asked Protostave what's how to say your name.
Oh, gosh.
OK, we're going to take a look at some light stuff.
Do you need us here for that?
Yes, we need that.
Let's see how pretty we can make you out look.
Good luck.
The tweet's working for you.
OK, John.
Right.
They're corduroy.
I think it's corduroy.
No, this is the first thing I'm going to try to hold this yellow.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I mean, it's in my earbuds.
It sounds like some kind of an interference from a light.
Because it's sounds like a motorboat far away, kind of like a
kind of like a kind of.
He's talking about motorboat.
I think he's talking to audio, Zach.
You motorboat in son of a bitch.
I would love to put together a blooper reel of rich statements.
Oh, man.
The stuff that comes out of his face is just random.
We'll get ended.
Oh, God.
The more comfortable he gets to, the better material
you're going to get.
It started with him going, oh, what?
I'm glad he didn't curse.
He could have gone, oh, shit.
I'm assuming you will cut that out.
Yes, we made a note.
We also souped you incorrectly at first.
That was on you?
I think so.
Poor on you.
He looks the most.
If you want, I mean, you see how Zach put his off to the side.
Yeah.
Could do something like that.
Well, oops.
We can have the audio people.
No, I should have known that.
I'll be right back.
I never speak directly into a mic like that.
And get up here, and I forget how to think.
Hmm.
I thought that was better than Scott.
You didn't say me what Elon Musk.
That was Rich's job.
No, Rich.
An unforgettable moment.
It was crazy.
It was straight up handing people money.
That kid still has that as his banner.
I know.
Rich asked him about it in an interview once,
and the kid was like, he just, like, wouldn't answer it at all.
And then a week later, he puts it up on Twitter.
Like, I think we're going to use just FYI,
like the first five and a half minutes off of the top,
right here and now.
Oh.