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Money expected to pour in for state Supreme Court candidates

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//March 10, 2016//

Money expected to pour in for state Supreme Court candidates

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//March 10, 2016//

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Spending by outside groups in the Supreme Court race between Rebecca Bradley and JoAnne Kloppenburg is off to a slow start. That could change quickly with less than a month to go before the election. (File photo by Kevin Harnack)
Spending by outside groups in the Supreme Court race between Rebecca Bradley and JoAnne Kloppenburg is off to a slow start. That could change quickly with less than a month to go before the election. (File photo by Kevin Harnack)

With less than a month to go before the election in a close race for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, the usual suspects among liberal and conservative interest groups have gotten off to a slow start toward spending the amounts of money that have made other recent contests remarkable.

But that doesn’t mean the cash isn’t coming.

The Wisconsin Alliance for Reform, a right-leaning group, has spent at least $369,970 on TV advertisements that are now airing in the Milwaukee, Green Bay, Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls markets. The ad takes JoAnne Kloppenburg, a Supreme Court candidate and current judge on the state Court of Appeals, to task for agreeing to hear an appeal filed by a convicted child molester.

Experts think those ads are just the start.

“This is a huge red flag telling us that when it’s all over, Wisconsin is going to have another very expensive and contentious Supreme Court election cycle this year,” said Susan Liss, executive director of Justice at Stake, a nonpartisan group that tracks spending in judicial races. “The pace was set in the primary, and this new round of spending on the general election could fuel an ad war on all sides that hurts confidence in the courts and does a terrible disservice to voters.”

Recent elections to the state’s high court provide a hint of what’s in store.

In 2007, $5.75 million was spent in a race that eventually gave Annette Ziegler — widely believed to be a conservative — a seat on the court. And $6 million was spent the following year in a contest that saw Michael Gableman, also believed to be a conservative, defeat Louis Butler.

Both races set records. The total in the Gableman contest has yet to be surpassed, in fact. The closest anyone came was in 2011, when $5.75 million was spent in a contest that saw the re-election of Justice David Prosser and that was largely thought of as a referendum on Gov. Scott Walker’s legislation greatly curtailing public employees’ collective-bargaining rights.

Now there is another tight race for an open seat on the state’s Supreme Court. Voters will go to the polls on April 5 to decide whether it should be current Justice Rebecca Bradley or instead Kloppenburg who should get the next 10-year term on the state’s high court.

Bradley comes to the race with the advantage of being the incumbent but is nonetheless not as entrenched as many of her predecessors. She was appointed by Walker to the Supreme Court only in October, succeeding Justice Patrick Crooks, who had died unexpectedly in the court’s chambers the month before.

Bradley and Kloppenburg have already faced off once in a primary election held Feb. 16. The results then were closer than many expected.

Bradley finished with 45 percent of the vote and Kloppenburg with 43 percent, leaving only about 12 percent for the third person on the ballot, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Joe Donald.

A new source of uncertainty was injected into the race Monday following the revelation that Bradley had railed against homosexuals in a student newspaper while she was an undergraduate at Marquette University. Still, many questions remained about whether comments — made more than two decades ago — would cost Bradley votes among those already disposed to support her.

Meanwhile, in other states, recent similar contests show outside groups’ willingness to spend on judicial contests has hardly abated. In Arkansas this year, $1.6 million — a historic amount — was spent on a contest to become the state’s next Supreme Court chief justice.

Nearly half of the money came from special-interest groups. That set a record for that type of spending in in the state’s history, according to Justice at Stake, a nonpartisan organization that tracks special interest spending on court races around the nation.

In Wisconsin, many observers say it’s only a matter of time before special-interest groups likewise start opening their wallets for Supreme Court candidates. Matt Rothschild, director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, said he’s a bit surprised that liberal groups have yet to line up behind Kloppenburg, but he thinks the support will be coming soon.

On the other side of the political spectrum, money has so far come from only Wisconsin Alliance for Reform. The organization, which is also working to defeat Russ Feingold in his bid to return to the U.S. Senate, spent about $440,000 in TV ads for Bradley in the primary.

Conspicuous for their absence, though, have been Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Wisconsin Club for Growth and other heavyweights among conservative groups.

“The question is whether the conservative donors are going to use the Wisconsin Alliance for Reform as their main outside group or whether the traditional conservative outside groups WMC and WI Club for growth are going to weigh in,” Rothschild said.

He predicted conservative groups will spend between $500,000 and $1.5 million.

And they could need every penny of it.

Although Bradley may have come out on top at the primary, her opponents are not taking her slim margin of victory as any sign that she will also prevail on April 5.

Scot Ross, executive director for One Wisconsin Now, noted that Bradley is the first conservative Supreme Court candidate in the last decade to get less than 55 percent of votes in a spring primary.

“Obviously it remains to be seen how much the spending will go on,” he said. “I’m guessing that Gov. Walker’s allies are desperate to keep this seat. … The problem is Rebecca Bradley has an unprecedented three appointments in three years by Gov. Walker. And Gov. Walker’s poll numbers are in the tank.”

Poll results released by Marquette University suggest that only 39 percent of state voters approve of the way Walker is handling is job. One source of trouble for Bradley, Ross said, is her close connection to the governor.

But conservatives are not the only ones who have an incentive to spend big in the race, said Rothschild. Partisans from both sides no doubt see the contest as a way to move the court in their favored political direction.

Right-leaning groups, if Bradley wins, would get the prize of a stronger 5-2 majority with their chosen successor to Crooks, who was often perceived to be a swing vote. Liberal groups, on the other hand, have an opportunity to inch the court to the left — a necessary step if they are ever to eventually gain the majority.

And with just a month before election date, there’s still time to influence voters.

Of the respondents to last month’s Marquette University Law School poll, 31 percent said they did not know how they will vote. And of those certain to cast their vote April 5, 37 percent backed Bradley and 36 percent Kloppenburg.

“If I was one of these outside groups on either side and I see that huge percentage of undecideds,” Rothschild said, “I’m going to say this is easy pickings.”

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