Schimel launches campaign for state Supreme Court

If the early bird gets the worms, former state attorney general Brad Schimel must have a mouthful, launching a bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court a full 17 months before the April 2025 election. The early bird doesn’t always win, of course, and the former Republican attorney general and current Waukesha County circuit judge can expect a knock-down drag-out fight as he takes on incumbent liberal justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who has also announced her intention at age 73 to seek a new 10-year term in 2025.

Speculation has it that Schimel is trying to head off any potential Republican opposition and to avoid a February 2025 primary, but in any event he says he is running to restore integrity and objectivity to the state’s highest court.

“We need to restore confidence in the people of Wisconsin that the justice system will be fair and impartial,” Schimel said during an announcement in his home town of Waukesha on November 30. “I will be honest about my principles, but will never prejudge a case and will never put my views above the law.”

Schimel said any responsible and ethical judge will have many cases where the first impressions they have from a case do not end up being the way they rule. 

“That’s because you keep an open mind, you listen to people and you apply the law impartially,” he said, mentioning this past year’s Supreme Court election as one in which he said the ultimate winner, justice Janet Protasiewicz, made her views on potential lawsuits and current policy debates clear to the public.

That’s a dangerous precedent that should not be repeated, Schimel said.

“No one should come to court knowing that they have already lost,” he said. “A responsible jurist does not prejudge the case, and does not put their thumb on the scale. The liberal majority is poised to impose on the people of this state their will, rather than impartial judgment based on the law.”

Schimel also took aim at what he called the new liberal majority’s recent actions to meet in secret and fire the director of state courts and to remove some powers of the chief justice, saying those actions were also unprecedented and dangerous.

“There is an extraordinary danger when the high court feels it is above the law,” he said. “The legislature and the governor act as checks on each other. But there is no check on this new liberal Supreme Court majority. They have the final say in interpreting the Wisconsin Constitution and Wisconsin laws. The only check on them is to take back the majority by winning in 2025.”

Schimel’s campaign said his early entrance into the race will allow the campaign to build on what is an already strong and resourceful statewide network of grassroots supporters, law enforcement and judicial leaders, and donors that supported his 2014 and 2018 campaigns for Wisconsin attorney general.

Democrats: Schimel is extreme 

While Schimel was calling the actions of the liberal Supreme Court majority dangerous, Democrats were returning the favor, saying the former attorney general is an extreme partisan. 

The Democratic Party even unveiled a new website they say will highlight how Wisconsin’s “worst attorney general is the last person we need on Wisconsin’s highest court.”

“Wisconsinites rejected Brad Schimel after a single term as attorney general because his extreme politics and inept mismanagement became too great to ignore, with thousands of rape kits left untested at the State Crime Lab and millions of dollars wasted on partisan efforts to suppress voting rights and push new restrictions on abortion access,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin chairman Ben Wikler said. “Wisconsin’s worst attorney general doesn’t deserve a promotion to our state’s highest court.”

Another liberal group, A Better Wisconsin Together, tagged Schimel as partisan to the extreme.

“While the Wisconsin Supreme Court is a non-partisan body elected to hear cases where Wisconsinites’ rights and freedoms are at stake, it does not take much to see that Schimel’s record as a public official is riddled with right-wing partisan activism, misplaced priorities, and extremism on issues significant to Wisconsinites’ freedoms,” said the group’s executive director, Chris Walloch.

Among other things, Walloch said Schimel had signed his support onto a white paper authored by Wisconsin Right to Life that advocated for making abortion illegal in nearly every case. Walloch also accused Schimel of wasting more than $1 million in taxpayer money defending an extreme anti-abortion law.

Walloch also pointed to Schimel’s Republican track record as evidence of his partisanship, though most observers have long recognized that the court races are really not non-partisan. 

“Even a cursory glance at Schimel’s record in public office reveals that he will put his own partisan agenda above a duty to serve the people of Wisconsin,” Walloch said. “He’s shown us throughout his career, including his short time as attorney general before losing in 2018, that his extremism on the issues informs his actions.”

In his career, Schimel was a tough-on-crime prosecutor for nearly two decades in the Waukesha County district attorney’s office before becoming district attorney in 2006. As a prosecutor, he was a strong supporter of victims rights, as well as of Marsy’s Law. Schimel says he has prosecuted thousands of cases, including human trafficking, sexual assault, homicide, drug trafficking, and domestic violence. He says he also helped establish Waukesha County’s successful drug treatment court and later presided over the court as a circuit court judge. 

In 2018, Schimel was appointed to fill a judicial vacancy on the Waukesha County circuit court and was subsequently elected in 2019 to a full six-year term.

Schimel might not have an unopposed run to a clash with Bradley in April 2025. Appeals Court judge Maria Lazar told WisPolitics.com recently that she, too, was considering a campaign. She worked in Schimel’s justice department before also becoming a Waukesha county judge. She now sits on the state court of appeals.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.