you ready that was actually Governor Walker's favorite thing to do was the
hand clap once he learned the singer he wanted to do it yeah he really thought
that was fun yeah he got into TV I think that was his next sidelines yeah
because he was already heavily in the radio yeah oh okay because he called he
like he had the private number so anytime and when he was Milwaukee County
exact he had something he wanted to say he just called up the studios okay
he would put him on yeah just like just put him right in there pretty much he
had the red line the red line okay we're good all right Judge Crawford thank
you so much for giving us this time thank you it's a pleasure to be here let's
start with your judicial philosophy how would you define it and what does it
mean to you yeah you know I be myself as a really common sense judge so I focus
on first of all making sure that I know what the facts are in any case I've
listened to the evidence and just determined what the truth is I think
that's a really important first step for any judge and then of course I make
sure I get the law right after listening to the lawyers tell me what
their positions are and then I have to make a decision after I have those two
things established and I pay a lot of attention to how my decision is going
to impact the people in a case the decisions I make are not abstract
principles they're going to affect real people's lives so I do pay close
attention to the context of my decisions and taking that up to the
Wisconsin Supreme Court I will also consider how the decisions that I'm
involved in as a justice will be applied in future cases because at the Supreme
Court level those cases are precedent and you have to think ahead to other
applications for the general public that doesn't have a lot of interaction with
the legal system they've kind of developed it the the shorthand of
judicial conservative or judicial liberal and that's often we define the
breakdown in the Supreme Court how would you define the distinction between those
two categories if there is one you know I think that kind of shorthand is
actually not that useful what I do is just try to be fair and impartial in
every case and apply the law to you know the facts that I've determined to be
true in the way that does justice and protects the interest in the case the
people in the case the way the law was intended so let's look at some history
recent history in the Supreme Court there's been a lot of overturning of
precedent recently both at the national end at the state level yes what are the
factors that you would look at when you decide to overturn a case history yeah
well I have not been in a position to do that of course because I'm currently a
circuit court judge and on the circuit court we are required to apply precedent
I think that as a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court what I would do
first of all if asked to overturn president is to consider what the
attorney's arguments are in favor or against doing so you know typically
justices are not coming to that conclusion on their own they're doing it
because one of the parties in the case is asking them to overturn a prior
precedent on grounds that it was wrongly decided so the first thing I would do in
a particular case is determine how I think the law ought to ought to be
applied in that case and often there's not a need to actually overturn a
precedent but rather to distinguish it to say well there are some different facts
in that case and maybe it should be applied more narrowly or there's an
exception that can be made in this new case so I think it's a rare instance
where a precedent actually has to be overturned but you know I would do the
same thing I just described I would look at the facts of the case listen to the
legal arguments on the Wisconsin Supreme Court I would certainly listen to what
my fellow justices had to say and what their positions were before making an
important decision like that to actually overturn a precedent in a couple of
recent cases regarding redistricting at least with the least change factor and
also drop boxes they they overruled some recent precedent does it make a
difference how long the precedent's been there well I don't think it does
necessarily I think it's a factor but it is certainly not the only factor and
probably not the most important one that I'd be looking at making such a
decision and then how do you contrast that to something like the Dobbs decision
which obviously overturned a major longstanding precedent right right well
you know I think the Dobbs case was wrongly decided and it represents the
first time to my knowledge that the United States Supreme Court has ever
undone a longstanding constitutionally vested right recognized under our US
constitution and I think that the case was poorly reasoned by the majority on
the Supreme Court and that's very well laid out in the dissent to that case
obviously abortion rights access to abortion in Wisconsin going through the
court systems before Wisconsin Supreme Court now but when voters are thinking
of this race should be they thinking of individual cases like Roe v. Wade or
Dobbs or aboard issues when they're deciding their justice or should they be
looking more broadly I think that voters should be paying attention to both I
think they should be looking at the candidates and what they bring to the
race so you know I'm somebody who has a history as first working as a prosecutor
then in private practice working in our courts to represent ordinary
Wisconsinites when often when the government had taken rights away from
them standing up for them and now as a circuit court judge so I have very
broad experience both handling the toughest felony cases in front of our
Wisconsin Supreme Court and standing up for Wisconsinites to protect their
rights in our circuit courts and again all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme
Court so I think it's important for voters to know that in contrast that with my
opponent who has a career as a partisan politician has run for partisan office
something like five times and is running his campaign for this office very much
as if it were a partisan campaign taking positions on cases pending before the
Wisconsin Supreme Court which show that he's biased and not impartial I've pledged
to be fair and impartial as a justice on the Supreme Court I am not saying how I
would decide any case that's currently pending before that court or on the way
potentially to the Supreme Court so I do encourage voters to look at what I'm
bringing to the race overall and there are also voters who care very much about
specific issues and reproductive health care abortion rights is one of those
issues and I you know I have talked openly about the fact that I think that
Dobbs was wrongly decided and that's why we now have all these cases coming to
the Wisconsin Supreme Court it's required that we relitigate those issues and I
have worked in the past to protect women's reproductive health care rights as a
lawyer in our courtrooms contrast that with my opponent Brad Schimmel who has
been a longtime opponent in a very extreme way to abortion rights has
openly said while campaigning for this office that he supports an 1849 law that
he thinks should be enforced as a criminal ban on on just about all
abortions in Wisconsin so for voters who care about that issue I think they
should be considering what each candidate brings and what their
experience is and they've had to say about it Brad Schimmel's partisan
history as a candidate is well documented it's right next to his name on every
election but you've worked in Democratic administrations both the
Attorney General and the governor's office and in private practice you have
argued cases on behalf of you know issues that align with the Democratic Party and
he argues that you are just as partisanly aligned how do you respond to that
well I think he's wrong he I have never been involved in partisan politics either
as a candidate or with any involvement personally at either the county or state
or national level in partisan politics that's Brad Schimmel's whole career and
again he you know he betrays his partisan roots by taking positions on every case
that is pending just about in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court telling
folks how he would decide them in a way that is you know he's prejudging those
cases that's very prejudicial to the parties in those cases particularly
when he I believe is making those decisions based on what he reads in the
newspaper and not on the evidence in those cases or the legal arguments of
the parties or any deliberations obviously with other justices on the
Wisconsin Supreme Court so there's a very sharp contrast in how we are
approaching this race I'm approaching it as a judge and I want to be a good
impartial common sense justice for the people of Wisconsin Brad Schimmel is
approaching it as if it was a partisan race and says he wants to get on the
Supreme Court to help conservatives win elections. In 2023 Janet Protasey
was talked about her values when she was running and that brought a new
attention in a new approach to in as opposed to prior candidates in that race
do you think it was appropriate for her to talk about her values are you wanting
to talk about your values how does that reframe the public's expectation of a
candidate for this office? Yeah well I think first of all that Janet Protasey
Witz is a real asset to the Supreme Court I think she is doing a great job and I
think that she also handled herself well in her campaign you know this is a
different race and I want voters to get to know me and get to know who I am and
what kind of justice they can expect me to be on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
So there are appropriate ways for candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme
Court or any court to talk about their experience what they've worked for and
their values and I will do that but I will stop short of taking a position on
any case in or or likely to be in the Wisconsin Supreme Court I think that's
improper and again it's prejudging cases is prejudicial to the parties and
unfortunately is what my opponent's doing. Let's talk a little bit about
Justice Breyer Haggadorn in the past he's taken a lot of heat from conservatives
who felt he wasn't conservative enough there have been a lot of Democrats or
liberals that have felt that he is kind of playing the middle and judging each
case as it should be he most recently recused himself in potential act 10
case he held a position in the Walker administration that was similar to the
one that you held in the Doyle administration. What are your thoughts on
on Brian Haggadorn both as a justice and in terms of recusal in his prior
role versus how you might be on the Supreme Court? Well I looked at the
order that he issued when he decided to recuse from the act 10 case and what he
said is that he helped draft that law and that he also had helped to defend in a
previous legal challenge in federal court to the exact provision of the
part of act 10 that's now at stake in this new case that is potentially at
least heading to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. So for him having taken a
position already on that exact provision and trying to defend it in
court I think he made the right decision to recuse himself and you know if I had
been in exactly that situation as Justice Haggadorn is I think I would have
made the same decision. How do you view his role on the court? Well he as you
said he is a justice who sometimes lines himself with what people would
consider the more liberal majority sometimes with the more conservative
majority and I think that any justice on the Supreme Court should approach
cases not based on how their friends are voting or how any block on the court is
voting but based on their independent view about what needs to happen in the
case and that's that's how I intend to participate as a justice on the
Supreme Court. I am not going to be trying to align myself with other
justices. I think there are other justices on the court who whose judicial
philosophies and approaches is closer to mine than others but it's it's a case
by case determination and that's how I intend to handle myself. In private
practice you also were part of an act 10 lawsuit. Yes. Would that prevent you
from sending any cases regarding act 10 in the future? You know if a case came
up whether it's on act 10 or anything else that any other topic that I had
some role in in challenging while I was a lawyer I would give it a very close
look to see what the facts were that were presented in that new case who the
parties were and what kind of legal issues are being raised and make a
determination about whether I could be fair and impartial sitting on that case
that's what the law requires us to do and that's what I do in every case. One of
the issues in this race is a repeat of an issue that Brad Shim will dealt with
in his reelection campaign in 2018 and that has to do with his handling of the
rape kits while he was the attorney general. What's your perspective on how
he did in that and whether it's fair to attack him is obviously he's defending
himself saying that that's an unfair attack. Well look the sexual assault kit
initiative that getting getting those kits identified that had not been
tested and dealing with the backlog was an initiative that started along before
Brad Shim will took office as attorney general started in the previous
administration under attorney general JB Van Holland and when Brad Shim will
enter the attorney general's office my understanding is that the staff who were
working on that initiative came to him and said look there's this backlog of
thousands of untested sexual assault kits and the department needs more
funding and resources to get those tested and he pushed him back and said go
look for a cheaper way to do this look maybe for some grant funding and
meanwhile he was going to the legislature asking for new unit of
attorneys called the solicitor general's office that he then utilized for the
entire time he was in office to pursue right-wing lawsuits including trying to
overturn the Affordable Care Act which if it had been successful would have
resulted in hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites losing their health
insurance. He was getting involved in environmental like litigation in other
states that had nothing to do with Wisconsin. These solicitor general the
person he hired into that role and out-of-state attorney we now know was
meeting secretly with conservative groups around the country to develop
the legal strategy to overturn Roe versus Wade which is what ultimately gave us
the Dobbs decision kicking out a 50 year long vested constitutional right
protecting women's right to access reproductive health care so those were
Brad Shimmel's priorities instead of addressing this backlog of sexual
assault kits. It is certainly an issue that I think voters are entitled to know
something about in this race. He got nine kits tested in a period of two
years and you know justice delayed is justice denied so the crime victims in
those cases some of the most serious cases that occur did not get justice from
Brad Shimmel. He's saying now that he got caught up with that backlog but he
only put his foot on the gas when it became an issue in his reelection
campaign so again this is Brad Shimmel's partisanship his political future was
at stake and he was worried about it so he started working on that backlog and
made some progress in it but voters saw through it and they sent him home and it
was up to his successor in office to get that job completed. One of the other
issues that regularly comes up in Supreme Court elections has to do with
prior rulings as a judge regarding offenders and leniency of sentences and
they make real easy attack ads. How does that affect you as a as a judge when
you're handling these cases knowing that any decision you can be made may be
twisted or taken out of context and used against you in a campaign commercial.
Well you know I don't make decisions as a judge based on what I think some
future attack ad might look at. I make decisions particularly in that example
of criminal sentencing based on what I believe is necessary to protect the
safety of the community what's necessary to protect the crime victims in a case
and you know I look at the nature of the offense that was committed and as the
as the law instructs judges in those kinds of cases to look at all the
relevant factors so what the defendant's rehabilitative needs might be that
person's criminal prior criminal record and I make a decision that I believe in
the interest of justice and will protect community safety and protect the crime
victim. Do you think it's a possibility that other candidates might be more
aware of potential attack ads when they are going through a sentencing phase.
You know I have no idea to be honest what and you know I don't know what
somebody like Brad Schimmel who's has a long career as a partisan politician
it may be that that's something that he has taken into consideration but I
don't want to speculate it's you know I think judges in Wisconsin by and large
are really dedicated to the job and work really hard at it and strive to make
good decisions the best decision they can make in every case. One of the other
cultural flashpoints that we're going through as a country right now has to do
with trans rights in your estimation do trans people have any specific
protections under the law are they a protected class do they get any other
category of protection when it comes to them being singled out as a group. You
know that is a question where if a case came in front of me that was making an
argument about the rights of transgender people or making a claim that they've
been discriminated against or something like that I would have to look at the
law and see what protections were available and hear out what the
attorney's arguments were both for and against those kinds of protections
obviously look at the facts to see what was happening in that case and then make
a decision based on what I thought the facts and the law required. But as of
now there's nothing specific in state or federal law that gives them any
protected status. You know I don't I don't want to answer that specific
question because I haven't researched it and I can't make a blanket statement
that there are no such protections without actually looking at the law to
make that determination. There are a couple other issues that may come before
the Supreme Court. One of them is former Supreme Court Justice Mike
Gableman and the attempt to try and disbar him or you know penalize him for
his actions. Given that you may be sitting on that if it does come to the
court what are your opinions what you can talk about of former Justice Gableman
and his actions. These have been quite public. Well I think you answered that
question a little bit for me in the way you framed it if that's a case that
may end up in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It's not appropriate for
me to comment on it or take any position on whether or not former Justice
Gableman should or should not be disciplined for the actions that he
took in. You know I believe he was hired by the legislature to investigate the
results of the 2024 election and there is a pending case in front of the office
of lawyer regulation. Complaint was filed against him seeking to discipline him
for some of his conduct both in the courtroom and generally in conducting
that investigation. That process is going to play out. I think it's possible it
will end up in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and if it does and I'm
there to with the other justices make a decision I'll do what I do in every
case which is to take a look at what the facts are and what the what the law
requires in that case. In a similar category Jim Troopis is also facing felony
charges for some of his actions coming out of the 2020 election and the phrase
law fair is being thrown around. What is your perspective or understanding of
law fair? What it is? Is it an actual real thing or is it kind of a made-up term?
I am sorry I'm not familiar with the term and I don't know how it's being
used. Okay. In that same category President Donald Trump recently issued
pardons for the January 6th defendants. What is your opinion of the pardons and
how that may play out in law? Yeah well I first of all the president under the
Constitution has very broad authority to grant pardons. There are no
limits stated in the US Constitution for the exercise of that authority but in
my view the pardon should be exercised appropriately by any president when
they believe that it advances the interests of justice and in my view those
pardons of individuals who stormed our nation's capital and attacked law
enforcement officers violently injuring many of them. I think those pardons were
completely inappropriate because that did not advance the interests of justice
and similarly we saw the pardon used by outgoing President Biden to pardon
family members and again I have concerns about that because I believe
that's an exercise of the pardon that also is not in the interest of justice.
Switching to the campaign on the ground you've been going out to a lot of
counties what is what's the mood like because a lot of the people that are
supporting you were also supporting Kamala Harris or Democrats last fall some of
those same people you're now asking to go out and collect you know they already
have collected signatures but to go out and do door knocking and campaigns and
get involved do they have energy are they feeling good coming off of last
November or is that a completely separate feeling? Well I think that
immediately after the November election I did send some some people that I was
talking to just being very disappointed by the outcome of that election but for
events that I'm attending now people seem really energized and really
enthusiastic they are also I think nervous and afraid by you know just a
sense that rights are under attack in our country and feeling like they want to
do something about that so I am seeing a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm
and I think I'll have a lot of help from people all through the state in getting
the word out to voters about how important this election is and how
important it is to put people on our Wisconsin Supreme Court who have some
common sense and want to be fair and impartial and protect Wisconsinites and
not to put somebody on our Supreme Court who's driving an extreme partisan
agenda and has a history of taking rights away from people. We've seen not just
2023 but prior to that Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin be become you
swooped up among the political parties and framed through a political rhetoric
from the public's point of view the amount of dollars coming in has dwarfed
anything it's setting national spending records is that healthy for democracy and
for the judicial system in Wisconsin or is that simply a side effect of the
importance of the race? Maybe a little bit of both I think that the huge amounts of
money that are spent on judicial campaigns is concerning I think the
partisan tone of these races is concerning and you know it's disappointing
to me that this this race can't just be about the candidates experience and
judicial philosophies. Brad Schimmel is trying to politicize it he has been
since the day he announced his candidacy for the race which was back in November
2023 that was he thought he was going to be running against a different candidate
at that time because current justice and Walsh Bradley had not yet announced
that she was going to retire but he said right out of the blocks that he intended
to take this race national and that he had great connections from his tenure as
a Republican Attorney General with conservative right-wing groups all
across the country that he was going to be making use of those ties to fund his
race so that's the climate that we are in and from my perspective I need to make
sure that my campaign has the resources that we need to get the message out to
voters to help them understand what my experiences what my values are you know
that I'm pledging to be fair and impartial and bring common sense justice
to the Supreme Court so we we need to be able to have resources have money in
other words to get that message out and I have a great campaign team who will
help me to do that. In 2023 Janet Protosey which received a lot of direct
transfers from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin to help fund her campaign in
in turn she said that she would recuse herself from any cases that involved the
Democratic Party of Wisconsin as a party would you do the same if you
receive a large direct contributions from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin?
You know I what I would do is if a case came before the Supreme Court in
which the Democratic Party was a party is to look at what the facts were in that
case who the other parties were and what the legal issues were that at stake and
then make a decision about recusal based on the specific instances of that case.
I think you know I'm a pretty cautious person as a judge and I I don't
prejudge matters like that and would wait to see what what that case brought
and whether I could be fair and impartial and if if it was a situation
where I believed I could not be fair and impartial due to past political
support financing support from the Democratic Party I would certainly recuse.
And finally the the tone of these elections has shifted over the years as
well. We saw in 2023 Janet Protosey which the opponent refused to officially
concede graciously an election night saying he did not have an opponent worthy to
concede to. Do you sense the same tone in this election or do you think that
perhaps it's not quite as dark as it was at that point? You know I hope that it's
not like that and I was disappointed in former Justice Kelly for not grace gracefully
conceding the election which he lost and he lost quite soundly I guess I would say.
I you know I try to be respectful and professional in all of my dealings with
other people and that's how I will treat Brad Schimmel if we cross paths on the
campaign trail as I'm sure we will.
Judge Crawford thanks for your time. Thank you so much Zack.
Alright that was good thank you so much for giving us the time we appreciate it.