KAUKAUNA, Wis. Nowhere in the country have Republican lawmakers been more aggressive in their efforts to grab a partisan edge than in Wisconsin. After gerrymanding the legislature past the point where it can be flipped, they are now pushing intensely to gain more control over the state’s voting infrastructure ahead of the 2024 presidential contest.
Two crucial elections in the coming months are likely to decide whether that happens.
The skyrocketing stakes of the first, the November race for governor, became apparent last week when Tim Michels, a construction magnate backed by former President Donald J. Trump, won the Republican primary.
His victory raised the prospect that Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat who has vetoed a series of Republican ballots, could soon be replaced by a Trump ally who has embraced calls to dismantle the state’s bipartisan electoral commission. , who invoked conspiracy films about the 2020 election and even expressed openness to the false notion that Mr Trump’s loss can still be revoked.
The second election, an April contest to determine control of the narrowly divided Wisconsin Supreme Court, could be even more important.
And three of the four conservative judges in the court voted to hear Mr Trump’s objections to the 2020 election, which could have led to the reversal of Wisconsin’s results. The Victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr. with 20,000 votes in the state was only valid because Judge Brian Hagedorn, a Conservative, sided with the court’s three Liberals.
Electing a liberal judge to replace the outgoing conservative, Justice Patience D. Roggensack, would give Wisconsin Democrats a chance to enact a host of measures that currently have no chance of being passed by the Republican-led legislature. power to be assumed. By bringing new lawsuits to the courts, they could potentially undo the gerrymanded legislative districts; undo the dropbox decision; and nullify the state law of 1849 criminalizing abortion, which came back into effect in June when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Roe v. Wade.
The next two Wisconsin elections are inexorably linked. Michels has said he will try to change the state’s voting laws on his first day as governor. If he is indeed elected and acts swiftly, there could be new voting procedures before a new judge is elected in April for a 10-year term – and the court in conjunction with Mr Michels would have wide latitude to set voting rules for the 2024 presidential election, when Wisconsin is expected to be a central presidential battlefield again.
“If they’re going to pick things that they know will push a Democratic vote, it’s going to affect absolutely every Democrat, including Joe Biden,” Mr Evers said in an interview on Thursday. Referring to Mr Michels, he added: “His election would certainly be aimed at suppressing the vote of Democrats, no doubt about it..”
During the primaries, Mr. Michels to replace the Wisconsin Elections Commission with an agency that would effectively be under Republican control. And while he never explicitly agreed to decertify Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election, Mr. Michels didn’t rule it out, saying enough to appease Mr. Trump — who has repeatedly called for such a move.
At campaign stops and during primary debates, Mr. Michel’s films about the 2020 election that propagate conspiracy theories that falsely suggest that Mr. Trump was the real winner. He claimed without evidence that there was fraud in the state and promised to prosecute the perpetrators.
“I’ve seen the movies ‘2000 Mules’ and ‘Rigged’. And I’ll tell you, I know there was a lot of voter fraud,” Mr. Michels said at a recent meeting in Kaukauna, a small industrial town in the state’s politically swinging Fox Valley. “If I am sworn in as governor I will look at all the evidence that is there in January and I will do the right thing. Everything is on the table. And if people break the law, break electoral laws, I will prosecute them.”
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Since winning the primary on Tuesday, Mr. Michels has devoted less energy to highlighting his support of Mr. Trump and his focus on electoral issues. On Wednesday, he removed a statement about his support for Trump from the homepage of his campaign website. After this DailyExpertNews reporter be it on TwitterMichels campaign has revived the line on his site.
Mr Michels’ campaign staff did not respond to requests for comment.
In perhaps the best illustration of Michels’ general election spin, he promised those in attendance at a Trump rally a week ago that “my number 1 priority is electoral integrity” — but in his Tuesday night victory speech, he said, “Jobs and the economy will be my number 1 priority.”
Instead, he’s tried to remind listeners of what they liked about Mr. Trump, pinning Mr. Evers to Mr. Biden, whose Wisconsin approval rating was 40 percent in June, according to a Marquette University Law School poll. . In his first post-primary TV adMr Michels calls Mr Biden and Mr Evers “two peas in a pod”.
“Donald Trump was a successful businessman, Donald Trump was tough,” Michels said in the radio interview. “I would like to compare Joe Biden to Donald Trump.”
To what extent Mr. Michels could change Wisconsin’s electoral system would be largely determined by the Republicans who control the legislature — most of whom supported his opponent in the Republican primary, former Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch.
State Senator Kathy Bernier, a rare Republican state legislator in Wisconsin who has publicly stated that Mr. Trump has lost the 2020 election fairly well, said in an interview last week that he had shown an ignorance about electoral governance during Mr. Michels’ primaries. in Wisconsin that reflected his lack of government experience.
“Mr. Michels is a fish in water,” said Ms. Bernier, who announced her retirement in January after calling for the Republican investigation into the 2020 election to end. also some ideas that were not workable, but good ideas. He needs some advice and training in all sorts of things.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court election is one of many elections in the coming months that will effectively determine which party controls the high courts in Kansas, Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio. But nowhere is the stakes higher than in Wisconsin, given the extent to which the court backs Mr. Trump’s attempt to undermine the 2020 election.
“Next year’s state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin is critical to preserving a free and fair electoral system in Wisconsin, as well as necessary to preserving representative democracy in our national elections,” said Jake Faleschini, the legal director. of the state courts at the Alliance. for Justice Action Fund, a liberal organization that focuses on state court elections.
While Mr. Evers has presented himself as a human guardrail against a Republican takeover of the state’s electoral system, the Supreme Court elections in April will affect the state’s voting laws for years.
Two Liberal candidates, Janet Protasiewicz, a judge in Milwaukee County, and Everett Mitchell, a district judge in Madison, have already started their campaigns. Former Judge Dan Kelly, a Conservative appointed by Governor Scott Walker who lost reelection in 2020, is considering running again but has not announced a bid yet. The candidates will all compete together in a single unbiased primary in February, with the top two advancing to general elections in April.
“If the more conservative candidate wins, you’ll have a court that’s a lot like the one that’s in its most conservative form right now,” said Rick Esenberg, the president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, the conservative legal organization that handles the case. has filed. that led to the court ruling banning drop boxes. “If you were to legally win that seat progressively, there would of course be significant consequences there, if the court were to move to the left.”
Wisconsin Democrats are already envisioning a political transformation of the state if they win the April election and get a 4-to-3 majority.
“In terms of the ability to change Wisconsin in two years, this could be a completely different state,” said Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator from Madison. “That’s our real chance not only to stop the bad stuff, but to restore real democracy and accountability to Wisconsin, things like abortion rights and fair elections where your candidate could actually win.”