A gerrymandering arms races happening around the country this year, why not in Wisconsin?
Also how some big orders out of Washington could affect Wisconsin and a look at the closing
days of our state Supreme Court race.
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm Sean Johnson here with my colleagues Anya Ben-Wagtendank, Zach Schultz, and Rich Kramer
in Eau Claire.
Hey everyone.
Hey.
Hello.
Hey.
So Rich, there had been sort of this hope by Democrats that there was this one case in
this courtroom in Madison that could potentially redraw the congressional lines ahead of the
midterm elections.
It seems like this courtroom said, no, that door is actually closed.
What did they say this week?
So they said that they don't really have the authority to do anything about the maps.
The lawsuit is seeking a redraw because of some things that happened back in 2022.
Well, the Supreme Court is the one that put those maps in effect, but the Circuit Court
judges said that they just, they can't overrule the Supreme Court.
So essentially, they dismissed the case and it seems all but likely that the current
districts which are held by six Republicans and two Democrats will remain the same for
the November election.
And just kind of zooming out as to why this feels like it matters more at this moment
in time, you have this redistricting battle going across the country where Republican
states have redrawn their congressional maps to add more Republican seats, Democratic
states have responded in kind.
Where does this leave Wisconsin Big Pictures Act when it comes to what everything looks
like here as part of that battle?
Well, we're still going to be operating under the same congressional lines that were actually
Tony Evers' version of the maps, if you recall, under the old least changed model at the Supreme
Court at that time, run by conservatives dictated.
This was Tony Evers' version of the old Republican maps, slightly adjusting them.
The most competitive district remains the third, which is Western Wisconsin, La Crosse, and
going up through Rich's area.
And that race has been close for a few cycles.
It will remain close this fall.
Democrats across the country look at it as a possible pickup, but the rest of the districts
barring a huge wave look like they're going to stay the way they've been.
There were Democrats who were thinking Wisconsin could get in this redistricting game.
Most of the states doing that around the country are doing that with one party rule,
where the Democrats or Republicans control the entire state, so they can do this mid-decade
even though they're not supposed to be.
Wisconsin obviously doesn't have that.
It would have had to go through the Supreme Court.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has consistently said, we do not want to touch these congressional
lines.
They have been given options multiple times, and they've said no through original action.
So that's why, in this case, there were two different plaintiffs that said, how about
we go through the local courts first and see if it can work the way up to the Supreme
Court.
Under a law passed by Scott Walker and the Republicans, that meant these challenges
had to go to this panel of three judges, and there were two panels created by the Supreme
Court.
One of them has said, well, we'll have a trial in April of 27.
So a year away, obviously nowhere near in time for 26.
The other one was the one that dismissed the case this week.
The other panel that still has a case out there has not ruled on their motion to dismiss.
It's possible that could get thrown under the very same grounds.
And it looks like at this time the flaw is in the law that was passed that was supposed
to hear this, because it requires the Supreme Court to set up these judges to do something.
And the judges say it's not clear what we have the authority to do in this case, which
is why they dismissed it, yet another time where this challenge will not get to the Supreme
Court under this venue.
To the dismay of many Democrats who said, hey, we have a four, three majority on the
liberals do on the state Supreme Court.
Let's try there.
Maybe not the legislature this time, because it's not going to go anywhere there.
Or will it, Anya, because some people may have heard about this push by Governor Tony
Evers to ban partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin.
He's going to call a special session for that later this month.
Just a thought exercise here.
Could it work?
Could that change the lines?
I mean, if history is any guide, Evers' special sessions don't often go anywhere, right?
Republicans who control the legislature.
They have to show up, but they gavel in and gavel out very often on his agenda.
But there was actually maybe some signs that there could be something to this.
So initially, first of all, Republicans did not sort of dismiss it out of hand, which
was notable.
Robin Boss said that he would be willing to negotiate on this.
Last I asked him about it a couple weeks ago.
He said, like, it hasn't come up yet.
So it's possible that a deal kind of won't be brokered.
But when I've spoken to experts about it, what they say is that because of the redrawn
state maps of two years ago, kind of GOP guarantee hold of the legislature is no longer so guaranteed.
And so both parties would need to kind of map out the 2026 elections, the 2028 elections,
the 2030 elections going back and forth.
And so because of that, it's not clear that gerrymandering in Wisconsin is beneficial
to either party in a way that in California or Florida, it is guaranteed sort of beneficial
to one party or another, because we have divided government and these super, super
close elections because we are so purple, gerrymandering is not necessarily beneficial
to either side.
So maybe getting rid of it altogether is actually the politically better choice.
But as a constitutional amendment in the year 2026, not going to happen because it just
it takes too long.
Well, certainly, right.
So it won't affect the midterms in any kind of way.
But if there were any kind of like negotiation there and constitutional amendments take a
little bit longer, and Republicans have said they don't agree with sort of the language
that Evers has put forward, that it's too vague and it's too broad.
So there's all these details that would need to get hushed out.
But I think this kind of broader conversation, knowing that voters pretty categorically,
regardless of party, do not like gerrymandering.
They don't like feeling sort of subject to gerrymandering.
It could be a really interesting issue to kind of be in the water during the selection
year.
Earlier, the most important thing for viewers to know is that even if a deal somehow got
passed, like the Hail Mary of all Hail Mary's for gerrymandering reform, it wouldn't affect
the current maps.
The next time this would come up would be redistricting in 2032 after the 30 census.
So these maps would be locked in place.
The only way they're going to change barring the Wisconsin Supreme Court is if Democrats
win a trifecta this fall, then they would actually have one party rule to do what we've
seen in these other states.
But otherwise, it's not going to happen.
So what about that other case, though?
You alluded to it.
Rich, you're familiar with this case.
It's been filed by law forward, and it just took a different approach to this redistricting
question.
Yeah, I'd say it's slightly different approach.
It's kind of getting at the same thing.
The overall complaint is that the districts are designed to favor incumbents.
So that's slightly different than the argument that, well, Republicans drew the districts
to favor Republicans.
But it's in a lot of ways very similar.
So that case is proceeding.
The parties in the lawsuit seem to be more amicable with one another.
They've all agreed on these court dates that will start in 2027.
So again, that's not going to result in any changes to the congressional map in Wisconsin
before November.
And if it's not thrown out on the same grounds that the other case was dismissed, it'll be
interesting to see how that plays out before the three-judge panel.
Yeah, I would say there's a pretty good chance that we are going to, well, it is not really
a scheduled thing to do in 2027.
I think we're going to be talking about this map in 2027.
I mean, we just think about what wins elections in Wisconsin or anywhere from a party's perspective.
Well, you've got to have good candidates.
You still have to have that.
You've got to have a message voters like, you've got to have money.
But what is maybe more powerful than all of those lines and districts that favor you?
You change the math because you can't win in a district where you have those other three
if the voters are tilted to the other side.
So I think in this hyper-part as an era, they're definitely going to be talking about this
in 2027, whether it is in the legislature with Democrats in power or the Supreme Court
where a 4-3 majority for liberals now could potentially be 5-2 next year.
We just don't know.
So I think that's something that obviously is going to be on our radar for a while.
Redistricting is always in play in Wisconsin and it will never be a topic that we're not
interested in.
It's not relevant.
That's right.
We don't have to wait for the next census, I'm feeling.
So from voting maps to voting, Rich, there was also this big executive order from President
Trump this week dealing with mail-in voting.
What did the president call for there?
He called for some very sweeping changes, essentially a federal overhaul and a lot more
participation from the federal government with regard to voting lists and absentee voting.
So the executive order directs federal agencies to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible
to vote in every state, including Wisconsin.
Then it also directs the U.S. Postal Service to not send any mail-in ballots to people
who aren't on those lists.
And it would just give the president Donald Trump's administration a lot of power over
who gets to vote and who doesn't.
So it's likely to wind up, in court, in fact, a lawsuit has already been filed.
There's a lot of questions about whether the president can do this and that's what we're
going to see.
The different parties in the lawsuit argue.
So it's a big change that's been proposed, but it's just an executive order.
So it doesn't carry the same kind of weight as a congressional act or something like that.
So I think what a lot of people would be rightfully wondering is, is this going to happen?
Is this something that is likely to happen in Wisconsin specifically?
The first thing I always look at when these kind of things come out of Trump White House
specifically is, what is the reaction for politicians in Wisconsin?
We saw universally all the Democrats, including Governor Evers, use a profanity online to describe
his reaction to this.
And we didn't see anything for Republicans.
And if this had a prayer or a chance of actually being legal or valid in Wisconsin,
there would have been some of the usual Trump-supporting Republicans that would have come
out and said, yes, thank you, President Trump, it's about time.
I didn't see any of that.
Maybe somewhere it was put out and I missed it.
But the overall reaction was a lot of crickets from Republicans.
That signals most election observers saying this is completely not legal in Wisconsin.
Unenforceable Wisconsin would remove the right to vote for absentee ballots.
We can register on day of.
There's just so many things that do not apply to how Wisconsin elections are run,
barring the fact that it's not even legal constitutionally across the rest of the country,
according to every election expert that we ever talk to.
I mean, Sean, you've covered this just as long.
It's not possible for the federal government to dictate how elections are run.
That's done by the states.
No, I mean, actually Rich was just doing an interview with a legal expert and Rich,
I'm stealing your story here, but the expert was just reading from their phone the second
of the Constitution that says, basically, this is a right that belongs to states.
Anya, there was an order this week, though, not from the President,
from the United States Supreme Court that overturned a conversion therapy ban in Colorado.
We have a conversion therapy ban in Wisconsin.
What does that U.S. Supreme Court decision mean for us here?
Yeah, so this is kind of the sort of two levels at which this decision kind of functions in Wisconsin.
So to go back in time a little bit, last summer, there was this big Wisconsin state
Supreme Court decision that is the reason that we have this statewide conversion therapy ban,
but it is an administrative rule.
It's not a law.
And so kind of putting aside the conversation around what that did for the balance of powers,
it was this kind of huge decision.
One of the outcomes of that was that agencies that want to impose rules can do so, and one of
the ones that was imposed was around professional behavior for therapists and marriage counselors.
And so according to sort of the rules of their conduct, they cannot practice conversion therapy,
which is sort of the practice of counseling people towards certain gender sexual identities.
So that is the form that our ban takes.
So that's different than how it looks in Colorado, all of which is to say that the answer
of how this affects us in Wisconsin is it really depends on who you ask.
So according to the governor's office and the governor supports this ban on conversion therapy,
the ban here is still in place.
According sort of pending litigation was kind of the tempering of that.
And then I spoke to conservative kind of supporters of overturning bans on this,
including at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
And they said, well, as soon as the lawsuit is filed, you know, that will go after the
Wisconsin ban.
And so the question is, is Will going to file that lawsuit?
So right now it seems to be on the books, and also we have many local versions of these laws
around Wisconsin, but sort of how soon will this be then challenged here in the state?
That's sort of the big question.
But definitely it carries more weight than your average executive order, I suppose,
because they are the court of last resort.
And yeah, and then they said that these types of bans violate a counselor's free speech.
That's a First Amendment violation.
That's a very big and it was an eight to one decision, right?
Even liberals on the Supreme Court found that.
What's interesting is more likely that would be filed in federal court,
which really would take away the venue of the liberal majority in Wisconsin Supreme Court,
even though it's a state administrative rule.
This was a federal court decision, free speech, First Amendment is a federal right.
So they don't have to worry about Wisconsin's liberals running the court.
They can skip the venue and head right to Madison and federal court.
Sure.
So we had to talk about our court, though, because we have an election on Tuesday.
By the time we do this show next week, we're going to know who the next justice is.
There were some fundraising numbers out this week, Rich, as we lined up this campaign.
What story did they tell?
Well, they told that a liberal appeals court judge Chris Taylor is continuing to really
pull ahead in terms of fundraising over conservative appeals judge Maria Lazar.
So Taylor in this last reporting period raised four times as much as Lazar.
She also got donations from around 20,000, more than 20,000 people.
Lazar's donations came from about 1,700 people.
So a big discrepancy there.
Also, Taylor really outspent Lazar this time.
So the numbers actually represent an improvement for Lazar compared to the last reporting period
that ended at the end of last year, which was a 10 to 1 gap with Taylor and the lead.
But still, not the kind of numbers you want to have with days before the election.
And some money coming to the candidates from the political parties.
Zach, you've done some reporting on this.
One of these people is going to be a justice very soon.
And they will have that political donation basically on their resume.
Are they going to have to step down when these parties have business before the court?
The short answer is no.
And there are two different courts that have said that is the reason.
The first of which is the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
And when the conservatives ruled the court, but a little more than a decade ago,
they put in place the recusal standard that still governs the court that says,
just because you received a campaign donation does not mean that you are biased for that party.
Part of that reason, the rationale was, well, what if your opponent donates money to you and
then tries to kick you off the case.
Another one is the United States Supreme Court has similar rulings that have been applied
multiple times that say that just because you received a campaign donation does not mean you
have to step down.
This has been tried repeatedly.
Republicans have gone after Janet Protoste with multiple times,
including on redistricting cases over and over because of the donations she got.
And over and over, no one has been stepping down over this in Wisconsin.
You know, I'm curious, Anya, the both parties we said gave money to the candidates.
Democrats gave more, but in the past, they've given a lot more.
What can we read into the fact that they're deciding to not
deem this the election of all elections and pouring all resources into it the way that
they did in the Protosteowitz race or the Crawford race?
Yeah, I mean, we are used to kind of hearing that level of language around both the Supreme
Court elections and then also various national elections.
Every election is the most important of our lives.
Exactly. But this one November is actually probably the most important of our lives.
And maybe the Democrats want to kind of keep that messaging for the midterms.
And so kind of stepping back and maybe they're really confident about their contender this time.
The stakes are not as high.
Liberals will hold a majority no matter who wins.
And so why not kind of keep those resources in the bank for November?
Zach, you described it as kind of they're making a bet, essentially.
They're hedging their bet that they don't have to invest any more to secure this win.
I think you pointed out perfectly that even if they lose the hedge on that bet somehow,
they still maintain the majority that to put the incentives on as high and
seeing the incumbent Republicans or conservatives leave this race repeatedly shows they don't
believe the same either.
Well, that's all the time we have for today.
Thanks for joining us for this week's Inside Wisconsin Politics.
Be sure to follow us on PBSWisconsin.org, WPR.org, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.