Voters give Roggensack a 2nd term

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By SCOTT BAUER
Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — It was out with the new and in with the old in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which saw the incumbent easily defeat a challenger who was not as well-funded.

Justice Pat Roggensack handily won a second 10-year term over Marquette University law professor Ed Fallone in Tuesday’s election.

Roggensack outraised her opponent and benefited from conservative groups that spent at least $500,000 on TV spots supporting her. No third-party groups came out to help Fallone.

Still, Roggensack said after her victory that she believed her campaign message touting her experience as a judge, and not the money spent by others on television ads supporting her, made the difference.

“I really don’t know if those ads connected with more people, but I suppose it helped drive name recognition,” she said.

Republicans backed Roggensack, who is generally viewed as part of the four-justice conservative majority on the court.

Roggensack successfully argued that the Supreme Court race should be about experience and said her 17 years as a judge, including a decade on the state’s highest court, trumped that of Fallone who had only worked as a professor and private practice attorney.

“The public understood that in order to be a justice it’s really better to have some experience as a judge,” Roggensack said.

Fallone tried to make the race about the court itself, saying Roggensack contributed to what he called a dysfunctional environment highlighted by the 2011 altercation between Justice David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley in which Prosser placed his hands around Bradley’s neck. Fallone accused Roggensack, who stepped aside in a disciplinary case brought against Prosser, of not doing enough to keep the court on track.

Roggensack, who built a broad coalition of supporters that included other judges, sheriffs, district attorneys and Republicans, countered that she was working to get the court to move past the incident and reform its public image.

Fallone said after his defeat that he felt the campaign raised important issues and he hoped that Roggensack would work to heal divisions on the court. Fallone said he planned to return to teaching, starting with a class Wednesday morning, and being active on issues he raised during the campaign.

“I will continue to speak out,” he said.

Associated Press writers Todd Richmond in Sun Prairie and M.L. Johnson in Somers also contributed to this report.