All righty, let's get this party started everybody.
Hi everyone, my name is Ryan Spouty. I'm the state representative for District 89.
I'm so used to standing up and saying I'm running, I'm in.
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.
Yes. 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.
Judge Crawford is a common sense judge, rooted in the same basic values that she learned growing up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.
At Chippewa fans, she has a vast wealth of experience, including as a prosecutor, two former prosecutors up here.
What's not to love? Go vote! That's it!
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 community safe, who will be fair and impartial, and who will always use common sense,
and won't politicize our state 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 our rights before, and she'll keep doing that. She'll 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 state's Supreme Court.
We cannot lose it. We cannot go back. We cannot lose that. We need a judge. Again, a 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's my pleasure to introduce the one and only Judge Susan Crawford.
Welcome.
Well, thank you, Ryan, for that great introduction. He's going to be a star in our state.
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 Shemo, who has spent his career pushing an extreme partisan agenda and taking rights away from people.
Well, I've 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's going to serve the people of our state, 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've spent my whole career doing, and it's what I'm going to do for all of you on our Wisconsin Supreme Court.
As Ryan said, I grew up in Chippewa Falls.
It was a great place to grow up.
Remember riding my bike all over town as a kid, going to Irvine Park, the middle of Chippewa 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 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 Green County.
My great grandfather started a barbershop 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've got to give my mom a good birthday present this year.
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 room here have had similar experiences, 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.
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 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 and need to be held accountable.
And that victims of crime deserve to have their rights protected.
We need to have justice served.
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.