The Wisconsin Supreme Court election on Tuesday is considered the most important race of 2025, with wide-ranging consequences for both the battleground state and the nation.
The race is between Trump-backed Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge and former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel and Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, who previously represented left-wing groups like Planned Parenthood as an attorney and is endorsed by groups like the pro-abortion EMILY’s list. Early voting is ongoing through March 30.
The race follows a blowout Wisconsin Supreme Court election in 2023, in which liberal-leaning Janet Protasiewicz beat conservative candidate Dan Kelly and flipped the balance of the court to 4-3 majority liberal. While conservatives have the chance to take back the majority once more with the retirement of liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, Democrats view the battle as a chance to push policy and redraw legislative maps that could ultimately lose Republicans two U.S. House seats and help Democrats close in on the Republican’s slim majority.
“If you told me 16 months ago when I started this campaign that we are going to be the number one race in America here in Wisconsin…I would’ve said there’s not a chance. This is just the Wisconsin Supreme Court — but it’s bigger than that. I mean, my opponent is selling congressional seats here, running for this court. They are off the hook. They don’t care about the constitution or the law anymore. They’re on a political mission to take power and control, and it’s going beyond Wisconsin,” Schimel said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.
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While judicial races are nonpartisan, both sides of the political aisle are heavily invested in the results of the election. Wisconsin justices serve ten-year terms, and another chance to change the court will not arise until 2028.
“Two years ago, the liberals took over our Wisconsin Supreme Court. They got the majority on the court, and since they did, they have been going through a political agenda,” Schimel said. “They are striking down all of the laws they don’t agree with. They’re just checking off this list of all these things on their wishlist.”
“And it goes bigger than just Wisconsin, because of course, my opponent got caught by the New York Times. They got the email inviting all these national billionaire donors on to say, if they get her elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, they would redistrict the congressional maps in Wisconsin and turn two Republican congressional seats into Democrat congressional seats,” he detailed. “Which of course means that it’s very unlikely that, as we go into the second half of President Trump’s term, that he’ll have a majority in the United States Congress to get anything done anymore.”
The email invitation obtained by Breitbart News to a briefing on Jan.13 with Democrat donors, Crawford, and Wisconsin Democrat Chairman Ben Wikler has a subject line that reads: “Chance to put two more House seats in play for 2026.” Notably, aides of Reid Hoffman helped to organize the event, the New York Times reported. Hoffman, allegedly a past visitor to Epstein Island, later contributed to the race, along with other left-wing billionaires.
“But winning this race could also result in Democrats being able to win two additional US House seats, half the seats needed to win control of the House in 2026,” the email reads.
The two seats are currently held by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) in the 1st Congressional District in southeast Wisconsin and Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) in the 3rd Congressional District in the western part of the battleground state.
Schimel noted that “in spite of the uphill battle they created” President Trump won the state in November 2024 because the Wisconsinites “want to restore normal in our state.”
“We have to restore objectivity or our Supreme Court in this election now on April 1 to make sure that Wisconsin follows the law — not make the law from the bench as these justices have been doing,” he said.
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to hear several high-profile cases, including a challenge to an 1849 abortion restriction (which is currently on hold by the courts), and a lawsuit against Wisconsin Act 10, a law limiting collective bargaining for public sector employees passed in 2011 by Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
Election integrity is also of concern among conservatives: soon after the election of Protasiewicz in 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court liberal majority notably undid a prohibition on ballot drop boxes in the state and prompted the Republican-controlled state legislature to redraw State Assembly and State Senate maps. The April ballot also includes a proposed amendment seeking to enshrine voter ID requirements into the state constitution.
Schimel pointed out Crawford’s history of being against voter ID as well her work as the lead attorney who fought against it in the state Supreme Court after it passed in 2011.
“We couldn’t use it until elections in 2016 because of the lawfare that she led against it. When she ran for Dane County Circuit Court judge, which is the role she’s in now — that’s our most liberal county — when she ran there, she bragged about being the lawyer that led that charge,” he said. “She bragged about being the lawyer that went after other conservative reforms. Now she’s pretending that she doesn’t have an opinion, but she did invite [during] an interview, she invited a lawsuit because… we have a constitutional referendum on the ballot to ask voters of Wisconsin whether they want that voter ID [law] enshrined in the constitution.”
“She’s tipping her hand as to what they’re going do to strike this down. In Wisconsin, voter ID is well over 70 percent popular. It’s going to pass as long as voters get out from the conservative side and vote for this. But she’s already signaled if she’s on the bench, [that] she’s going to look for ways to take it down,” he said.
RELATED: Left-Wing Megadonors Supercharge High-Stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court Race
The 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election has drawn massive out-of-state spending and has shattered the previous national spending record for a judicial contest — $56 million for the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race — at more than $81 million. A review by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that 77 percent of Crawford’s donors come from outside of Wisconsin, compared to only 15 percent for Schimel’s donors.
“This is crazy that people from California are going to decide who’s on our Wisconsin Supreme Court. That’s wrong. I’m running for the people of Wisconsin and well over four-fifths of my money and donors come from people who vote right here in Wisconsin. We’ve got to make sure we turn that into votes on April 1st,” Schimel said.
“The people supporting my opponent are all in on boys in girls’ sports, boy, boys in girls’ bathrooms — all that stuff. That’s who’s on her side. That’s who’s funding her campaign,” he added.
Recent polling is showing a tight race in the battleground state, but has also indicated that many voters didn’t know much about either candidate. Schimel said “the only poll that matters is the one on April 1.”
“The polls I’m seeing, actually the credible polls I’m seeing, have us neck and neck, that this is tied, which means I’m ahead, because conservatives have been consistently under polling nationwide, but specifically in Wisconsin,” he assessed. “So in an even match right now, this is absolutely ours to take.”
VICTORY!
— ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) March 29, 2025
WE DID IT!
We texted 71,000 Western Wisconsin voters courting their votes for Brad Schimel.
A new campaign is uploaded & we included red, rural counties across the entire state.
You want it? Come and take it.
CC: @EarlyVoteAction app
“The other measure that I think is more important than the polls is what you’re seeing on the ground. I, just 15 minutes ago, got done encouraging a huge team of door knockers that were heading out. We’ve got energy. We’ve got people that are writing postcards, making phone calls, emailing, putting up signs, door knocking. All of these things are happening with an energy I’ve never seen for any spring court race,” he said.
“[The] energy [is really] off the charts for our side. Their side is lackluster. They’re angry, and they don’t have anything to rally around. We do here because we know that everything is at stake,” he added.
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
