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December 22nd, 2022 Political Note #528 Janet Protasiewicz for Wisconsin Supreme Court
2022 Primary and General Election
Janet Protasiewicz
On November 8, 2022, Wisconsin was at a crossroad. Go left or right? Wisconsin chose yes and no.
The incumbent Democratic Governor Tony Evers defeated businessman Tim Michels 51.2 – 47.8. Wisconsin chose left. Did it opt for Tony Evers because of his progressive views or because the people of Wisconsin wanted stability?
The incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson defeated Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes 50.5 – 49.5. Wisconsin chose right. Did it opt for Ron Johnson because of his right-wing views or because the people of Wisconsin wanted stability?
On February 23, Wisconsin will come to another crossroad. The state is electing a new Justice of the Supreme Court. The primary will be February 23. The run-off election will be April 4. February 23 will resemble a four-way intersection without a stop sign.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has a 4-3 majority. Four of the Justices are Republicans. Three are Democrats. The retiring Justice is Republican Patience Roggensack. The Court’s frequent 4-3 redistricting decision-making reflects the views and strategy of the majority.
Consider the Court and redistricting. The state legislative and Congressional maps drawn after the 2010 census are the context for the discussions after the 2020 census. The 2010 elections in Wisconsin resulted in substantial Republican majorities in the legislature. The best illustration of the extremity of the post 2010 pro-Republican gerrymander occurred in 2018. Democrats won every statewide race. Democratic candidates for the state legislature received 53% of the vote. Republicans, however, won 63 of the state’s 99 legislative districts.
After the 2020 census, the 4-3 Republican Supreme Court majority established a brand new standard for considering maps. The Court wanted “least change” to the existing post-2010 legislative maps necessary to comply with the new census.
It got worse. After the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted the Governor’s proposal to comply with the “least change” standard because the Governor’s proposal complied best with that standard, the US Supreme Court rejected the that plan as being racially gerrymandered in favor of too many majority Black districts, leaving the Wisconsin Supreme Court to select the legislature’s proposed map.
Wisconsin’s Court elections are ostensibly non-partisan. To emphasize the apolitical character of the judicial election, it is held in the spring rather than November. In the primary, voters vote for one candidate regardless of political party. The top two candidates meet in a run off. In 2023, the non-partisan primary will have four candidates – two Democrats and two Republicans. Each party lives in horror of the possibility that the two top vote getters will be from the opposite party. That could happen.
In 2018, Democrats demonstrated the value of picking a candidate early in a non-partisan primary. As a result of the DCCC decision to support a single Congressional candidate early in California, Democrats had a finalist in every Orange County Congressional district and flipped five or six Congressional districts.
No entity in Wisconsin is serving the role that the DCCC fulfilled for Orange County. The Daily Kos, saying that this is the most important election of 2003, has endorsed Democrat Janet Protasiewicz. I endorse her, too, Of the four candidates driving at full speed on the slippery, icy roads that meet on February, 23 at this four way intersection, I encourage you to help Judge Janet Protasiewicz’ make it through unscathed so she can win the run-off on April 4.
Janet Protasiewicz has been a Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge since 2014. She serves in family court now, but has presided over cases in her career that range from homicides to misdemeanors, from drug cases to sexual assault. Before she was elected to the County Circuit, she was an Assistant District Attorney from 1988 to 2014. A 1985 graduate of the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, she received her JD in 1988 from Marquette University Law School.
Janet Protasiewicz says she sees the criminal justice system and American democracy as being under attack by radical partisanship. Our system of law, she argues, works because it is predictable, because the constitution, the statutes, and case law tell us what to expect. Radicals, she says, are making the courts dangerously unpredictable. As an example, she explains, the right to privacy had appeared to be settled law. We knew that it is not the government’s role to tell us who we can and cannot love. Too many individuals and too many judges are focusing on outcomes they want rather than the law. The US Supreme Court is taking cases it should not take. The US and State Supreme Courts are acting like political bodies.
Janet Protasiewicz concludes by saying that she has a simple view of the law. “If you work hard and play by the rules, the government should leave you alone.” “If your rights are violated, you should get a fair shot to demand justice.” She is campaigning, she says, to get politics out of the court room.
Look at the other three candidates. You can see why she is a better state-wide candidate than the other Democrat and the best judicial candidate of the four.
Judge Everett Mitchell, the other Democratic candidate, is a Dane County (That’s Madison, the other Wisconsin Democratic stronghold) Circuit Court Judge. He is a 2000 graduate of Morehouse College, received a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary in 2003 as well as a Masters in Theology and Social Ethics in 2004. He received a law degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2010. From 2010 to 2012, he was an Assistant District Attorney in Dane County. From 2012 to 2016 he was Director of Community Relations at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2011, he became and remains Senior Pastor at Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church. In 2016, he became a Dane County Circuit Judge. He posts on his Linked In page an article describing him as “The Most Radical Drug Court Judge in America.” Much of what he does is admirable. Sitting in juvenile court, he insists children be treated with “dignity and respect.” He is working to change court room practices — not requiring restraints or handcuffs, for instance. He teaches a course at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School titled Race, Racism, and the Law.
Jennifer Evans Dorow is chief judge of the 3rd District of County Courts. She is a 1992 graduate of Marquette and a 1996 graduate of the Regent University School of Law in Virginia Beach, VA, a university whose motto is “Christian Leadership to Change the World.” She returned to Waukeshaw and married Brian Dorow in 1998, a security specialist who had been dean of criminal justice at Waukeshaw Technical College. From 2000 to 2004, she practiced as a defense attorney, was an Assistant District Attorney from 2004 to 2009, established a private practice in the firm, Huppert & Dorow, of which she is still a partner, and was appointed to the Circuit court in 2011 by Governor Scott Walker.
She was named Chief Judge in 2017 and has presided successfully over difficult cases, among them the trial of the perpetrator of the Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack. Jennifer Dorow is running as a Judicial Conservative. She could easily be running as a Christian Judicial Conservative. She is being judicious in not commenting on Roe or Dobbs, but earlier called Lawrence v Texas Supreme Court overturning anti-sodomy laws as “judicial activism at its worst.”
Jennifer Dorow is almost certainly opposed to same sex marriage. She appears to be opposed to homosexuality which is unlike Everett Mitchell, who was proud to officiate at the first same sex marriage at Solid Rock Baptist, There is an abortion case working its way through the Wisconsin courts. Her approach to that case is predictable – and not in the way that Janet Protasiewicz would see the law as predictable.
Daniel Kelly was formerly on the Wisconsin State Supreme Court. He had been appointed to fill a vacancy on the Court by Governor Scott Walker in 2016, but lost the 2020 election to Circuit Court Judge Jill Karofsky. He was born in Santa Barbara, California and grew up in Arvada, Colorado. His undergraduate education was at Carroll University, a Presbyterian school in Wisconsin from which he graduated in 1986. Like Jennifer Dorow, he has his JD from Regent University — “Christian Leadership to Change the World.”
He clerked after law school for five years, four of them in the Court of Federal Claims. From 1998 to 2013, he was a litigator at a firm in Milwaukee, representing corporate and political clients, including the Wisconsin Legislature on the issue of redistricting. He co-founded a firm in 2014 where he stayed until appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. While on the Court, one decision he wrote prohibited the city of Madison from banning passengers on city buses from carrying weapons. In another, he wrote the Supreme Court need not defer to state agency rules. After losing the 2020 election, he joined a conservative nonprofit. There, he wrote a guide to assist state legislators in their oversight of the executive branch, described Social Security as akin to slavery and suggested that slavery and affirmative action were related in that both are based on forcing people into unwelcome economic relationships.
If I had a magic wand that would ensure that both Janet Protasiewicz and Everett Mitchell could be in the run off, I would use that wand. Absent that, I urge readers to support Janet Protasiewicz’ candidacy for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Her election is crucial for the people of Wisconsin. It is crucial for all of us. State Supreme Courts create a kind of momentum for the country as they address the rights that we value. Make sure she is one of the top two in the non-partisan primary on February 23 . As one of two finalists, Janet Protasiewicz will be in a position to win the run off on April 4. You would be able to help her again to win the run off.
AN OPPORTUNITY TO PROVIDE FINANCIAL SUPPORT
Special Election January 10, 2023 – Virginia State Senate
City Councilman Aaron Rouse
Take Back the House in 2024
Inc Mary Peltola (AK AL) (Won: 48.8% before ranking; 55-45 afterwards)
Businessman Adam Frisch (CO 03) (Lost: 49.94-50.08; 546 votes)
Inc Jared Golden (ME 02) (Won: 48.2% before ranking; 53.1-46.9 afterwards)
Non-profit Head Jevin Hodge (AZ 01) (Lost: 49.56-50.44; 2,195 votes)
Law Professor Kirsten Engel (AZ 06) (Lost: 49.3-50.7; 5,232 votes)
Inc Yadira Caraveo (CO 08) (Won: 48.38-47.69; 1,632 votes)
Inc Jahana Hayes (CT 05) (Won: 50.39-49.61; 2,004 votes)
Inc Pat Ryan (NY 18) (Won: 50.5-49.5; 2,608 votes)
Inc Gabe Vasquez (NM 02) (Won: 50.35-49.65; 1,350 votes)
Inc Val Hoyle (OR 04) (Won: 50.6-43.1; 25,317 votes)
Inc Seth Magaziner (RI 02) (Won: 50.5-46.8; 7.463 votes)
Len’s Political Note #525 Get the House Back in 2024, Part 1
Len’s Political Note #526 Get the House Back in 2024, Part 2
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