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Candidates for spring Supreme Court election coming into focus

By: Associated Press//December 3, 2012//

Candidates for spring Supreme Court election coming into focus

By: Associated Press//December 3, 2012//

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By SCOTT BAUER

Associated Press

Justice Patience Roggensack

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – Who’s in and who’s out for a statewide Supreme Court election to be decided in April should start to come into clearer focus as candidates were able to circulate petitions to get on the ballot starting Saturday.

A state Supreme Court justice will be elected April 2. The race is nonpartisan, although candidates and their backers tend to organize along party lines.

The incumbent – Justice Patience Roggensack — has announced she is seeking re-election.

Lemon law attorney turned online liberal video satirist Vince Megna is running against Roggensack, who is part of the court’s four-member conservative majority. At least two others, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi and Marquette University law school professor Ed Fallone, have said they are seriously considering getting into the race.

Neither Fallone nor Sumi said they had made up their minds as of last week.

Saturday was the first day candidates for the races could begin circulating nominating papers to get the required 2,000 signatures to be on the ballot. The papers are due by Jan. 2.

If more than two candidates run for either office, the two highest vote-getters in the Feb. 19 primary will advance to the April general election.

Megna said he had nearly 100 volunteers ready to circulate papers on his behalf and he’s already hitting the circuit to speak with groups about his candidacy.

Megna issued a statement Thursday saying that he doesn’t see Roggensack as his opponent in the race, but rather “David Koch and the other out-of-state big money forces that will flood Wisconsin.”

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Koch and his brother, Charles, are billionaire energy executives who founded the Washington, D.C.-based group Americans for Prosperity, which spent tens of millions of dollars trying to defeat President Barack Obama and has also spent millions of dollars on advertising in Wisconsin elections.

Megna has become an outspoken critic of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans, posting numerous satirical videos online making fun of their policies. Megna made a name for himself by representing consumers who bought faulty vehicles, known as lemons, against car manufacturers and dealers. Megna said he has sued General Motors more than 500 times without a single loss.

He said this Supreme Court race is critical because Roggensack is in the conservative majority.

“The out-of-state forces could lose their majority,” Megna said in a statement. “Therefore, the Koch Brothers will be working overtime on this one.”

Roggensack’s campaign adviser Brandon Scholz issued a statement in response, saying the race is about experience, honesty, integrity and fairness.

“This campaign is not and should not be a mud-wrestling tournament,” Scholz said.

Roggensack, first elected to a 10-year term in 2003, has been busy building bipartisan support for her re-election.

“I have shown that I understand the differing constitutional roles of Wisconsin’s three branches of government, and that I have fairly and impartially decided each case that has come before me, independent of outside pressures,” she said in a statement.

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