Wisconsin Republicans are trying to save their gerrymander by bullying
Wisconsin Republicans are trying to save their gerrymander by bullying
As if consistently losing isn’t enough
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There’s some stiff competition, but Wisconsin Republicans are making a compelling case that they are the biggest sore losers in politics.
After two years of humiliating attempts to overturn the 2020 election, GOP leaders are now trying to gum up the works at the state Supreme Court, where they lost their majority in epic fashion earlier this year. Now that the court is officially controlled by liberal justices for the first time in 15 years, GOP lawmakers and conservative justices themselves are trying everything they can to hold on to their structural advantages.
Republican lawmakers have spent the month demanding that newly elected liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz recuse herself from any upcoming challenges to the state’s electoral maps, which she called “rigged” and “unfair” while campaigning this spring. Because voting rights groups filed such challenges during Protasiewicz’s first week on the job, the situation has escalated quickly: House Speaker Robin Vos has threatened the new justice with impeachment if she does not recuse herself, while a number of Republican legislators filed a motion to force Protasiewicz’s recusal.
Conservative justices, of course, have already ruled against previous challenges to those maps, which all but ends any pretense of their impartiality on the issue. And while it can be argued that legal opinions shouldn’t be construed as personal opinions, as Democratic state Rep. Francesca Hong points out, the state’s conservative justices have done little to hide their own biases with regard to other issues facing the court.
“Justice Rebecca Bradley had very painful homophobic writings exposed back in 2016 and she’s ruled against trans folks in two different cases,” Hong told Progress Report. “Justice Protasiewicz’s opponent, Dan Kelly, was seen at Trump events, and had ruled previously on abortion-related cases. It’s not new for justices to reveal which way they may lean in terms of political ideology.”
Such is the nature of judicial elections, which have become as fierce and ideologically-driven as any partisan contest. In fact, Kelly trashed Protasiewicz in an utterly pitiful concession speech in April, while Republicans floated the idea of impeachment before she even took office or made any public statements.
(Not for nothing, but Protasiewicz was also objectively correct about the maps: Wisconsin’s maps are regularly rated the most unfair in the country, producing Republican supermajorities despite the fact that voters have voted Democrats into almost every statewide office since 2018.)
Republicans also have little legal footing for their demands: In 2017, the conservative majority on the court voted to reject a proposed rule change that would have required justices to recuse themselves from cases that involved their donors and other parties that spent money to get them elected.
(Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the largest business lobby in the state, did not spend at least $8.3 million to elect ethical justices who would recuse themselves when corporate interests were at play.)
Justice Annette Ziegler, the second-longest tenured conservative on the court, was a pioneer of refusing to recuse herself from cases in which she had a direct conflict of interest.
“Annette Ziegler has an incredibly sketchy, questionable, shady background,” Hong says. “[Ziegler] has ruled on cases where her husband, who is a banker, had financial interests and his work interests at play.”
Ziegler was elected chief justice in 2021 and then again in May. To her great chagrin, the title means far less than it did a few months ago; the new liberal majority voted at the beginnng of August to overhaul the way the court system operates, firing the court director and creating a committee charged with handling much of the administrative work traditionally done by the chief justice.
Displeased with both the decisions and how the liberals went about making them, Ziegler blew a gasket, challenging colleagues in a series of increasingly and unintentionally funny emails in which she accused them of conducting an illegal coup and ruining the traditions of a court that she has spent 14 years degrading.
Once again, conservatives screwed themselves here by changing the rules to their benefit in the 2010s. Whereas the chief justice used to be the most tenured member of the court, conservatives changed it to a position elected by their peers. Ziegler has two years to go in this term as chief justice, but it’s the liberal majority’s prerogative to shape the responsibilities and improve its functioning. They also invited Ziegler multiple times to work with them on the matter, something that the chief justice left out of her rants.
“We are simply creating process so that a majority of the court can effectively work in the face of an intransigent and uncollegial chief who apparently insists on a public debate about issues for political purposes, rather than allow a court majority to function as it always has,” liberal Justice Rebecca Dallett, the lead on these changes, said in a recent statement.
The anger is somewhat understandable. entirety of the conservative project in Wisconsin, starting with laws enacted under the odious former Gov. Scott Walker, is now in danger of being dismantled. The state’s abortion ban will be overturned; Act 10, the anti-union law that has devastated public sector unions, is likely to be in the crosshairs; and the controversial school voucher program could be rolled back.
The conservative Supreme Court’s ban on ballot drop boxes is almost certainly going to be overturned, as will other anti-voter laws. And while the liberals will have to defend their majority in two years, fair legislative maps should mean that the state Supreme Court won’t be the only way forward.
“The fact that they are no longer able to play by their rules is really the precursor for why they're throwing a massive tantrum,” Hong says. “The backlash is mostly just because they are refusing to concede power, and I think that shows why democracy right now is really threatened at multiple levels here in Wisconsin.”
It’s probably unlikely that Vos follows through with his promise of impeachment, as he’d have to convince every member of his caucus to vote for an unprecedented and unpopular move, knowing that Gov. Tony Evers could likely just appoint a new justice and put them in danger of facing competitive elections next year. Then again, conservatives set up the traps that led them to this desperate place, so don’t discount the possibility that they could do so again.
Mississippi: A realtor from Jackson will become the first openly gay member of the Mississippi legislature. Fabian Nelson won the runoff for the Democratic nomination for HD 66 by a landslide, taking 69% of the vote. With no opponent on the ballot in November, the 38-year-old says he plans to get to work right away and lists health care, including Medicaid expansion, and education as two of his major priorities.
Colorado: A teacher whose firing galvanized a student walkout at a Denver high school last year was selected by the local Democratic Party to finish the term of a former state representative who resigned after winning a city council seat.
Tim Hernández took less money and far less job security to stay on as an “associate teacher” at a North High School, as he was one of the few Latino faculty members teaching a predominantly Latino student body. A beloved mentor and teacher, he was demoted and then his contract was not renewed, Hernández said, because he argued with school administrators over DEI policy. When students walked out in protest, he joined them, which made headlines after the school system then suspended him.
Now he’s a teacher in Aurora, and plans to run for a full term in the state House next year.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell made like the British shoegaze band Ride and went blank again today, suffering an apparent neurological episode in front of reporters for the second time as many months.
McConnell, gaunt and pale, was beginning to answer a question about a potential re-election campaign when his speech, already slowed by a concussion and series of other injuries, trailed off into a mumble, his eyes glazed over, and his body froze in near-perfect stillness. The moment lasted about 30 seconds, and politics aside, it was truly unsettling and unfortunate to watch.
It’s hard, of course, to put politics aside when you’re talking about the guy who masterminded the vicious right-wing takeover of the nation’s judiciary and thereby locked in generations of suffering, but the issues raised by McConnell’s rapidly deteriorating condition transcend partisanship. The nation’s leaders are older than ever, and while age does often confer wisdom, between McConnell and Dianne Feinstein’s tragic state, it’s clear that too much power is in the hands of people who are medically and mentally incapable of responsibly wielding it.
It’s going to keep getting worse, too. The average age of a US Senator is 64 years old, while more than a third of the Senate is 70 or older, including eight octogenarians. There’s no real partisan lean to the senators in this demographic, which includes some of the most outspoken progressives and hardline conservatives, so this is more of an institutional issue. Staffers and motivated supporters are good at covering up for lawmakers who aren’t fully able to execute their responsibilities, but there’s only so long they can hold out before the downturn becomes obvious.
I’ve gone back and forth on whether I support a mandatory retirement age for high-ranking public officials, who I think should ideally have some skin in the game when it comes to making decisions that will have long-term consequences, such as climate policy. They should also be allowed to rest and enjoy their final years, or to at least be comfortable and removed from intense public scrutiny, pity, and humiliation. At the same time, it may not be legal to discriminate in such a way, even if some states have similar policies for their courts; and again, there are some great older lawmakers.
What’s most crucial, I think, is that there should be more mechanisms in place for younger people to supplant older lawmakers in party leadership and primary elections. Feinstein insisted on running in 2018, and while she was likely not totally cognizant of what that would mean, her staff and the Democratic Party lined up to crush any real primary threats. Peter Welch, who is in his 70s, just became a first-time senator. McConnell is obviously unwell and Charles Grassley hasn’t made sense for years now, yet nobody in Iowa dare challenges him. Power is so consolidated that it becomes a protection racket for those who won’t or can’t let go of it.
Watching them all shuffling around the Capitol, or knowing that they are likely to suffer serious illness and/or major decline while ostensibly running the country, is both sad and unnerving. We need rules that foster public involvement in government, which means loosening the grip of the establishment and making people believe that better is possible. Beyond policy, the issue with having so many old and tenured leaders is that they represent the inevitable.
Stay the course and we are going to continue to have representatives who are rendered incapable of representing anybody, and a public that is increasingly disconnected from the possibility of governing.
Here’s a proposal: Both McConnell and Feinstein resign at the same time, and once their successors are nominated, their respective parties agrees to vote to approve their chosen committee assignments. Who says no?
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