Jay Weber Show transcript 4-12-24 7:10am
This was huge news that broke yesterday: liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Anne Walsh Bradley not running for re-election next year-after all.
We have ten-year Supreme Court terms in Wisconsin. And they are staggered so that only one of the seven seats comes up for re-election in certain years-
And Anne Walsh Bradley-the longest-serving justice- is up for re-election in 2025. Yesterday-completely unexpectedly- Bradley announced that she wasn’t going to run for another term, after all.
One of the reasons that this was so unexpected is- up until yesterday-she had been indicating that she was running again.
Bradley is 73 years old-which might seem young for a US Supreme Court Justice-
But in the State Supreme Courts-where justices are elected or appointed to specific terms- 73 is getting up toward that ‘upper window’ of service.
The retirement age is 65 or 67. Most of us-do not-want to work until we are 80 or 85 years old-
And so, it isn’t terribly surprising to me that Anne Walsh Bradley has reconsidered and has decided not to run again.
Her initial response-I’m certain-was about ‘two things’:
First- the fact that she and the liberals had been out of power for so long and finally, finally, her side of the ideological aisle was going to start winning, again. Finally, her written opinions were going to be part of the winning ruling and not just the minority dissent...
And second- I’m sure her vow to run again was a nod to the pressure she was getting to run for yet another term-which would be her fourth.
After all-the leftists in Wisconsin just. Just. Got ideological control of the court for the first time in a long time-and only have a 4-3 majority.
The national leftist organizations and democrat party -just went ‘all in’- to buy the liberal advantage on this court with a massive campaign to get Janet Protosawitz elected-
And they’ve been riding high on that accomplishment ever since.
When Protowatiz won-the narrative was: fantastic- now we get Bradley another term and we’re in control for a while. I’m certain Anne Walsh Bradley was quickly pressured to vow she’d run again.
And she did.
But now, months later, with the passage of some time to think about it, she has reconsidered. And this-is- huge.
We have talked about the power of incumbency in politics and political races. Being the incumbent-in most instances- is a huge advantage over any challenger...but especially so...when it comes to these supreme court races. Historically, once someone is elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court- the voters just keep sending them back there- until they retire. The instances of a judge losing as an incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court member are rare, indeed.
And so-even with a quality candidate like Brad Schimmel stepping up very early to say he was running for this spot next year- the clear expectation was that Anne Walsh Bradley would hold this seat.
Any fight between Schimmel and Bradley would have been a hard-fought one. It might have been close. But until yesterday, Ben Wickler and the Wisconsin and national democrats could rest assured that ‘incumbents don’t lose’.
I am certain that they expected to keep this seat-and their biggest ‘reassuring factor’ is that Anne Walsh Bradley was running again.
So-this really had to be shocking and disappointing news to Wisconsin’s insider democrats, yesterday.
A 73-year-old Bradley said she’s looking forward to retirement.
Another thing this announcement is going to do-is light a fire under both the Wisconsin activist community-and the other three liberals on the supreme court- to try to rush to get to all sorts of leftists rulings before next spring-so that they can be sure they are still in the majority.
Think about all the lawsuits the Wisconsin left wants to rush to this court. They want to overturn abortion laws, legalize drop boxes and new forms of election cheating. Repeal voter id if they can. Repeal act ten-or at least parts of it-if they can.
They already have these lawsuits drawn up and several of them are already submitted to the Wisconsin supreme court. As eager as Wisconsin’s leftists are to get their way on all these issues-and rack up some long-anticipated wins-
The prospect of Bradley not being on the court to provide the one-vote win is going to inject a whole new level of panic and urgency into them.
I would expect an absolute deluge of lawfare and challenges to walker era reforms to now flood into the Wisconsin Supreme Court before Labor Day. ‘it’s on’, for the left, people.
They’re going to get ‘crazy aggressive’ in trying to get all their appeals and ‘re-peals’ to the court.
Remember-supreme court elections are spring elections in Wisconsin. This is an April first election next year, folks, with the winning justice being seated by July or August. Wisconsin’s left suddenly has about a year to try to engineer rushed decisions out of this liberal majority-
But here’s the thing.
This also becomes significant: if the left goes ‘too hard core’...and if these activist judges in the majority go too ‘hard core’ ...and issue a flurry of unpopular, radically liberal, opinions as part of a flurry of activity before the election- it’s bound to backfire on them.
Know what I mean?
It’s one thing if next spring’s election is conservative Brad Schimmel against a left-wing judge very few voters have heard of- but it’s something very different if we are coming off six months of radical, harsh sounding, unpopular decisions by the liberal majority- and they have given voters ‘a reason’ to vote for the conservative candidate.
Get it?
We’ll probably start getting the names of liberal judges in Wisconsin who want to run -quickly here- but let’s invent one.
You know it will be a woman and you know she’ll be hyphenated. She’ll also either be white or Hispanic because racist Wisconsin democrats think that anyone who doesn’t live in Milwaukee and Madison is ‘racist’, and so they wouldn’t be able to win statewide with a black candidate.
And so- a white woman with a Hispanic-sounding name because she married a Hispanic man-or lesbian- fits the bill perfectly -
Let’s say: Karen Woodside-Gutierrez....is running against Brad Schimel.
She’s got a better chance of winning an open seat like this-if it’s just ‘conservative guy’ versus ‘liberal woman’.... sight unseen. Most voters have never heard of either of them- ‘it’s on’.
And I know Brad Schimmel was the attorney general and has won a statewide race-but voters forget.
So-Schimmel / Woodside-Gutierrez is one thing. Shimmel running in a race against an unknown liberal when the liberal supreme court has just spent the last month bolloxing up decisions to appease their lefty masters?
That’s a very different race.
And so-it will be interesting to see how aggressive the four liberals on this state supreme court are going to be-or want to be- between now and next spring.
They are going to be deluged with cases from Wisconsin democrats and activist groups who have more than a decade’s worth of pent-up beefs and grievances-
How many of those cases will they agree to take? And how many will they rush to get done-between now and then?
Walsh-Bradley’s announcement yesterday has completely changed the timeline-and the pressure-on both the left-wing activist groups and the other three activist left-wing judges on that court. Make no mistake.
Folks-Brad Schimmel is a very strong conservative choice and a very good political candidate. He was the Waukesha County DA for years- then served a term as the Wisconsin attorney general before losing to Josh Kaul by a single point in 2018- i watched him on the stump thru several election cycles-he’s very good in front of a crowd. Very personable.
He knows what it takes to win a statewide race. He won’t be sitting at home playing his tuba-or doing his taxes instead of campaigning-as our last few conservative standard-bearers did.
Shimmel is formidable and Wickler and the WI democrats know it. The only reason they haven’t been worried about this race until now is because they-thought- Anne Walsh Bradley was running again.
She’s not.
This was -huge news- yesterday.
photo credit: Fox 6 News Milwaukee