Costly WI Supreme Court Seat Paying Off For Rich Leftist Donors

Big Money Democrats just dropped a fortune buying a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, and they’re already reaping huge returns. 

The left-led court late last week issued a 4-3 ruling upholding Democrat Gov. Tony Evers’ audacious ploy to annually increase public school spending for the next four centuries. With activist court rulings like this, who needs an executive branch? 

The liberals’ paper-thin justification for trampling all over the Republican-controlled legislature is a sign of things to come, and immediate proof that the “nonpartisan” Wisconsin Supreme Court’s liberal majority isn’t nearly as interested in upholding the constitution as it is in protecting the leftist agenda. 

“Nobody is going to be surprised with the string of liberal rulings that are going to come from this court; the question is simply how fast they rewrite the Wisconsin statutes in a lot of areas,” state Sen. Andre Jacque, a Green Bay-area Republican, told The Federalist in an interview. 

‘Justice Does Not Have a Price’

Some of the wealthiest sugar daddies in liberal politics dumped in millions of dollars to elect liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford. The nationally-watched and -funded race, pegged at north of $105 million, quickly became the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history. Crawford easily defeated Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, a former Wisconsin attorney general, and the left held on to its narrow majority for the foreseeable future. In August, Crawford will begin a 10-year term. She will replace Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who is retiring after a long career of liberal activism on the bench, including her latest vote to uphold Evers’ constitutionally suspect education tax increase for the next 400-plus years. 

With the election settled, the liberal majority is free to rule on without consequence the kind of controversial cases that could have cost votes leading up to an on election day. No, court watchers tell The Federalist, it’s no-holds-barred.

The Supreme Court race attracted big checks from billionaires on both sides, including some $24 million from Elon Musk and his political action committees tied to the tech titan and advisor to President Trump, according to WisPolitics.com’s review of campaign finance records. But Crawford’s campaign immensely benefitted from the generosity of well-heeled leftists such as George Soros, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and others who poured millions of unlimited contributions into the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and its efforts to hold political serve on the court. 

In one of the most obtuse victory speech’s on record, Crawford declared, “Today, Wisconsinites fended off an unprecedented attack on our democracy, our fair elections and our Supreme Court, and Wisconsin stood up and said loudly that justice does not have a price.” 

“Our courts are not for sale,” the liberal added. 

The courts are for sale. And this is what the left, including the big unions who gave generously and often to Crawford’s campaign, are getting in return. 

‘Undemocratic and a Shame’

After a bruising 2023-25 state budget battle with a Republican legislature that foiled many of the Democrat’s key initiatives, Evers revised the document more to his liking using his veto pen. In one of the biggest Richard Head moves in gubernatorial history, Evers kept the lawmakers’ $325 funding increase per student for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, but scratched out the “20” and the dash from the final year to change the ending date to the year “2425.”

Democrats rejoiced. Republicans cried foul. Two taxpayers, assisted by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC), the state’s largest business advocate, filed a complaint. They argued that Evers overstepped his partial veto authority in striking digits and creating a new number to hike education spending for 402 years — all in defiance of constitutional amendments and reforms limiting such “Frankenstein” and “Vanna White” vetoes. Governors from both parties have used the partial veto to alter policy. But Evers took his use of Wisconsin’s unique partial veto to another level.  

“Evers’ 400-year veto goes down in the history books as an embarrassing example of executive overreach, and an equally embarrassing example of a hyper partisan judicial ruling,” Scott Manley, WMC’s executive vice president of Government Relations, said in a statement following the ruling. “It’s undemocratic and a shame to increase taxes on voters for four centuries without their approval. The Governor and Supreme Court have effectively stolen the Legislature’s exclusive authority under the Constitution to write the law.”

‘No Laughing Matter’

The majority opinion, written by liberal Justice Jill Karofsky, works over the meaning of the constitutional language and unabashedly claims that while Wisconsinites long ago aimed to stop governors from using the veto pen to create new words in laws, they are somehow free to create new dates by ditching hyphens.  

“In short, the plain language of the constitutional text permits striking numbers written out with digits,” Karofsky wrote, insisting that the amount of the governor’s manufactured change in legislative policy is immaterial, “even when that change is considerable.” 

Justice Brian Hagedorn, who ran as a conservative but has on multiple occasions sided with the liberal wing, derided the majority’s opinion as “fantastical.” 

“How does a bill become a law? According to the majority, one option looks like this: The legislature passes a bill in both houses and sends it to the governor. The governor then takes the collection of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks he receives from the legislature, crosses out whatever he pleases, and—presto!—out comes a new law never considered or passed by the legislature at all. And there you have it—a governor who can propose and enact law all on his own,” Hagedorn wrote.  

The justice argues the majority’s ruing “treats bills presented to the governor as simply a set of alphanumeric ingredients from which the governor can cook up whatever he pleases.” 

“One might scoff at the silliness of it all, but this is no laughing matter. The decision today cannot be justified under any reasonable reading of the Wisconsin Constitution; the majority does not suggest otherwise,” the dissent argues. 

And Wisconsin taxpayers will pay for Evers’ veto games.  

‘Spending More and Getting Less’

Education policy expert Will Flanders said Wisconsin annually spends nearly $18,000 per student. That’s $360,000 to educate a class of 20 students. The cost climbs rapidly for the nearly 800,000 students in Wisconsin’s traditional district-run schools alone. Despite historic pre-K-12 federal funding during the Covid years, Evers and the public education establishment maintains an insatiable hunger for taxpayer dollars. 

“If you ask Tony Evers and his allies on the left what amount of spending per student would be enough, I don’t think they’d be able to give you a number,” Flanders, research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, said Monday in an interview with The Federalist. 

And what are taxpayers getting for their mandatory increased contribution to public education? Less than one-third of fourth-grade students statewide are reading at a proficient or better level, according to the Nation’s Report Card. In math, 42 percent of fourth-graders are making the proficient grade, and only 37 percent of eighth-grade students are. In Milwaukee, the state’s largest school district, just 12 percent of fourth-graders and a jaw-dropping 8 percent of eighth-graders are considered proficient in math. In reading, a mere 9 percent of fourth-graders and 15 percent eight-graders are meeting the proficient mark. 

“We’re certainly not getting positive bang for the buck,” Flanders said, adding that Wisconsin, once a leader in K-12 education, is failing behind states like Mississippi and Alabama that have more challenging student demographics. “Spending more and getting less isn’t the solution.” 

A Chance to Check the Court 

Democrats have spent a mint to control the Wisconsin Supreme Court. They’re already getting results. Hard-fought conservative reforms over the past generation — everything from public sector collective-bargaining reforms to right-to-work protections to school choice programs — could soon be history. More so, the Supreme Court election raised concerns about the liberal-controlled court driving new Wisconsin congressional maps that could help Democrats take back the House in 2026.

That’s why 2026 is so critical for Wisconsin conservatives. Controlling but one branch of government, Republicans are looking to do what they’ve rarely done in recent election cycles: win statewide offices. Evers, the leftist who pushed a proposal to change the word “mother” to “inseminated person,” is weighing a third run for governor. Wisconsin attorney general, secretary of state, and treasurer also will be on the ballot next year. And the Republicans are in for a tough fight to hold on to the diminished majorities they have in the Assembly and Senate — thanks in large part to the Supreme Court-approved redrawn legislative maps benefitting Democrats.

“Unfortunately, we’ve got two of the three branches against us right now. We’re working to make the third branch irrelevant,” Jacque said. “If we can take the governor’s seat next year it certainly makes it more difficult [for Democrats] to implement their social reengineering policies without an executive branch to administer it. That extends to the attorney general as well.”  

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.