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Court of Appeals Judge Pedro Colón tells WisPolitics that he’s considering a bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, making him the third liberal candidate to express interest in next year’s open-seat race following progressive Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s retirement announcement on Thursday.
Two other liberal judges, Chris Taylor and Susan Crawford, had previously said they were considering bids. Meanwhile, one conservative, former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, is already running, and another, Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, says she might join him. However, former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly, who badly lost a comeback bid last year, informs WisPolitics he has “absolutely no intention of running whatsoever.”
Both sides, however, will need to be on guard against getting locked out of the general election. That’s because Wisconsin will hold an officially nonpartisan primary on Feb. 18, when all candidates will run together on a single ballot. The top two vote-getters will then advance to an April 1 general election, which means it’s possible that two liberals or two conservatives could face off in the second round of voting.
This problem is very familiar to voters in California, where deep-pocketed Democratic groups have often felt compelled to intervene in the state’s top-two primaries to ensure at least one Democrat moves on. Republicans have faced this issue less frequently, in part because California’s primary electorate tends to be more conservative than the one that shows up in November, but a similar pattern won’t necessarily hold in Wisconsin.
In fact, in last year’s Supreme Court election, a pair of progressive candidates combined for 54% of the vote in the primary—very similar to the 55% that the eventual winner, trial court Judge Janet Protaseiwicz, took in the general. But liberals were fearful of a lockout when the race began: Protasiewicz’s campaign manager, Alejandro Verdin, told “The Downballot” podcast that initial internal polls showed her a “distant third” behind two conservatives.
To avoid such a fate, establishment forces coalesced around Protasiewicz early on, which helped her earn a dominant 46% in the primary; another liberal judge took just 8%. Conservatives, meanwhile, were divided, with Kelly edging past Jennifer Dorow just 24-22 after a bitter campaign.
However, if a pair of conservatives were to square off against a trio of progressives, that would greatly increase the risk of liberals fracturing the vote and getting left out of the general election—a disaster of epic proportions that would immediately shift control of the court back to its conservative wing.
We’re not there yet, and much will transpire over the coming months. But the prospect of a top-two lockout is something progressives can’t sleep on.
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