Exclusive — Trump-Backed Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Brad Schimel Talks Saving State from Activist Court

The Wisconsin Supreme Court election on April 1 is considered by many the most important race of 2025, with wide-ranging consequences not just for the battleground state, but for 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 them close in on the Republican’s slim majority.

“This is going to affect not just Wisconsin — this will affect the nation,” Schimel told Breitbart News in an exclusive phone interview. 

READ MORE: Exclusive — Eyes on Wisconsin: State Supreme Court Race That Could Bring Trump’s Agenda to a Screeching Halt

Democrats’ view of the race as a pathway to power in D.C. is not mere speculation and has been touted openly. An 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. 

RELATED: Complaint Filed Against Dem WI Supreme Court Candidate over Email Touting Chance to Put U.S. House Seats ‘in Play’

“They got caught saying the quiet thing out loud, and they revealed what they’re up to. This is, as it was in 2023, a power play to attract enormous amounts of money from partisan donors and turn that into results on the court,” Schimel said, referring to the email. Crawford’s campaign has not responded to previous requests for comment, although Crawford has denied wrongdoing when asked by other outlets.

“When people talk about the timeline that President Trump has to push his goals, that timeline will be cut short or even shorter if they use the Wisconsin Supreme Court to gerrymander the maps as a court and change our representation in the House of Representatives,” Schimel added. 

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.

Schimel told Breitbart News he initially had no plans to run, as he enjoys his work as trial judge, but the 2023 election changed his mind.

“I watched what happened in 2023. We had a candidate who openly promised how she would rule on cases before the cases were even filed. And of course, right after she took the oath of office, those cases started getting filed,” he said. “We don’t have a justice system if judges aren’t reading the briefs, listening to the arguments, applying the law, [and] setting aside their own personal opinions and biases. That’s what we have on our court right now.” 

Schimel likened what he views as an activist court “to people going to a baseball game and the umpire comes out wearing a jersey for the opposing team.” 

“You’re not going to hang around and wait for the end of this game — you know how it’s going to end up. When our Wisconsin Supreme Court has members of the court wearing a jersey for a team, it’s much more serious than having that in a baseball [game] or other kind of game,” he continued. “This has real life consequences for Wisconsinites and they render the legislature meaningless when you have justices on the court who decide what the law should be. ” 

When asked about how the race is supposed to be nonpartisan, as well as the left’s attempt to make the election another referndum on abortion, Schimel noted, “Naturally, Republicans have come to lean toward conservative judges, and Democrats have gone with liberal judges.”  When Roe v. Wade was struck down in 2022, Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion restriction went into effect, but was put on hold in December 2023 and is expected to come before the state’s high court later this year.

“But there’s a difference when you talk about being a political conservative or liberal or a judicial conservative or liberal. A judicial conservative abides by the standard that judges don’t make law, that this is separation of powers, that the legislature holds that power, not the courts,” he detailed. “Judicial liberals are activists who want to form the law based on the power they hold as a court. That’s the difference. So there’s a natural polarization because generally, political conservatives agree with that judicial conservative philosophy and vice versa.” 

Crawford has declined to say how she would rule on the law, but she did say in an interview that the government should not regulate abortions, according to a New York Times article with the headline “One of 2025’s Biggest Battles Over Abortion Rights Has Already Begun.”

“I believe as a woman that I should be the one to make decisions about my own body and my health care, together with my doctors,” she said. “I trust other women to make those same decisions.”

RELATED – Exclusive: Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Susan Crawford Is ‘Extreme Abortion Activist,’ Mailers Warn

Schimel, who has spent a year and a half campaigning on the ground in all 72 counties, pitches himself as a chance to restore balance to the court. He also emphasizes his prioritization of public safety and touts the endorsements from more than 80 Wisconsin sheriffs and various law enforcement associations.

“I come from 35 years of public safety, 25 years as a frontline prosecutor, including eight of that as the elected district attorney in our third biggest county, and four years as the state Attorney General making sure our state was safe,” he explained. “And the last six years as a circuit court judge running to restore objectivity for this court, running to restore a sense of humility, respect for the limits on the power of a justice.” 

READ MORE: Soros-Backed Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Susan Crawford Defends Light Sentencing for Pedophile During Debate

“The other side…they’re wearing jerseys for a team. They’re delivering on a political agenda. We have to end it,” he continued. “Political agendas should be checked off in the political branch, not in the judicial branch.” 

“My opponent offers having represented in private practice some of the most radical extreme left-wing groups we can identify, like Planned Parenthood, the Madison Teachers Association, the League of Women Voters,” he said. “[They] have been her clients over the years, and she’s going to keep delivering on the promises she’s made to them.” 

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.

Recent polling is showing a tight race in the battleground state, with Crawford ahead by five points — slightly outside the survey’s 4-point margin of error. Polling earlier this month indicated that many voters didn’t know much about either candidate.

As of Thursday, 500,000 voters had cast ballots during early voting, and the number of people participating in in-person early voting compared to 2023 increased by 37 percent, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The increase over 2023 voting numbers “reflects surges of early voting in more conservative counties,” according to the report.

President Trump’s 2024 victory was notably only the second time a Republican presidential candidate has won Wisconsin in nearly 40 years — with Trump securing the first win during his 2016 run.  Both times, Trump saw a narrow margin of victory, although he has received increasingly more votes during all three of his presidential runs in the swing state.

In 2016, Trump beat out Hillary Clinton 47.8 percent to 47 percent, 1,405,284 votes to 1,382,536. In 2020, Biden won the state by a slim margin, 49.4 percent to 48.8 percent, but Trump pulled in more votes for himself than in 2016 at 1,610,184. In 2024, Trump won Wisconsin over Kamala Harris, 49.6 percent to 48.7 percent, and secured more votes than in 2020 at 1,697,626.

“Trump got about 1.7 million here in Wisconsin…[If] we get 60 percent of those voters, which is just a little over a million, if we get six out of ten Trump voters to go vote for Schimel, we’re going to win the Supreme Court,” Wisconsin GOP Chairman Brian Schimming told Breitbart News.

Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.