GOP Hustles On Early Voting Ahead Of Wisconsin Judicial Race

The Wisconsin Supreme Court election slugfest between conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel and leftist Dane County Judge Susan Crawford will come down to local voter turnout on Tuesday, April 1, despite national interest in the outcome. Both are seeking the seat being vacated by retiring liberal Judge Ann Walsh Bradley.

The Federalist’s Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle has the perfect primer explaining the political motivations for millions of dollars in donations supporting both sides of the race from outside Wisconsin.

Fresh off the presidential election, Wisconsin voters are again enduring heavy schedules of broadcast political advertisements and a vigorous effort to lock down their vote through get-out-the-vote efforts.

Matt Batzel, national executive director for American Majority Action, says his group is mobilizing conservative voters with mainly face-to-face, door-knocking interactions.

“We’ve knocked on about 250,000 doors in the state since we started early February. As you know, weather does not cooperate, so in our four-day forecast is rain, rain, rain, snow, I think,” Batzel told The Federalist.

Blustery Wisconsin winds make for uncomfortable door-knocking, but bad weather on election day can dissuade voter participation too.

“This is where it helps a lot that we’ve gotten more people to embrace voting before Election Day,” Batzel said. “To me, the safest way to do that is at your clerk’s office. Early, in-person voting, where you literally are handing your [ballot in], and the clerk is verifying that you’re voting, and is your witness. There’s no mail, there’s no issues that you’re going to have from that. And if you mess something up, they’re going to correct that on the spot, or soon thereafter.”

His group is banking as many early votes as possible and trying to mobilize the rest of the GOP voters.

While many states adopted mail-in voting in 2020 in response to COVID, Wisconsin was doing in-person early voting for years before that. Voters are already comfortable with this style of voting. Wisconsin requires voters to show an ID when they vote.   

Batzel said the left has turned this election into a referendum on Elon Musk or a chance to thwart the Trump agenda. The left in Wisconsin, he said, is talking about Crawford giving Democrats a more favorable outcome when the borders of congressional seats are redrawn.  

“What they’re focusing on is just a pure political power play,” Batzel said. “But, you know, voters here just want to have a judge who is going to follow the rule of law. Most [voters] aren’t focused on national politics. They’re focused on good judicial ethics and jurisprudence.”

Judges are supposed to be predictable, nonpartisan followers of the law, not politics, and because of that, voter turnout for judicial elections has been traditionally low. But considering the heavy use of lawfare in recent years, voters understand how the balance of the court can be used to manipulate public policy. Lawfare was used before the recent elections to produce wonky voting rules, and now political lawfare — activists attorneys and partisan judges — are working to block President Donald Trump from implementing his agenda.

Now the power balance in the Wisconsin Supreme Court is in play, with four leftist judges in the majority, and three conservative judges. With a leftist stepping down, it leaves three judges on each side. The power could shift if Brad Schimel is elected, giving the state a 4-3 conservative majority court.    

Kyle Schroeder, chairman of the Wisconsin Young Republicans, told the Federalist that last Saturday they sent a National Young Republican deployment into the state for door-knocking. They brought in around 75 Young Republicans from 17 different states and made more than 11,000 voter contacts. Those personal conversations at the front door continue this Saturday too. Schroeder said those conversations show Republicans are extremely fired up about this judicial race.

“We’re seeing an all-time low in approval ratings for the Democrat Party and how they’re acting not only here in the state with Governor Evers, and Democrats in the state legislature, but also nationally, in their reactions to President Trump and what he’s doing to cut red tape and their protest and attacks against Brad Schimel. I think people are still very fired up from November,” Schroeder said.

The Young Republicans are also encouraging early voting, which ends on Friday.

Their door knocking has been focused on the following counties: Winnebago, Waukesha, and Rock.

 The Republican Party of Wisconsin’s Election Integrity Team has fill more than 2,400 election observer shifts and is still adding more, according to a statement. It also has more than 100 election attorneys ready to immediately respond to possible voting problems.

Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.