Roggensack Continues GOP Backers’ Supreme Court Wins

Tuesday’s Supreme Court race results reinforced what has become a familiar pattern in Wisconsin as the Republican-backed candidate won for the fourth time in the past five elections.

Ever since the era of big money, highly-partisan Supreme Court races began in Wisconsin – about six years ago – Republican-backed candidates have mostly had their way. Justice Annette Ziegler won an open seat in 2007. Justice Michael Gableman flipped the court by defeating incumbent Justice Louis Butler in 2008. Justice David Prosser narrowly won a referendum-style election in 2011 and Justice Patience Roggensack won this year’s race in a landslide.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political science professor Mordecai Lee says it shows Republicans are very good at low-turnout spring elections. He says Democrats are not.

“They seem surprised that after all they can win high-turnout races like US Senate and President, but they’re almost consistently losing low-turnout races and that’s a message about the need for campaign techniques and funding and organization that frankly Democrats don’t seem to be very good at in low-turnout elections.”

Roggensack won all but eight counties and even won the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukeee County. Justice Ziegler followed nearly the same path to victory six years ago.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Director Mike McCabe says Republican-backed candidates and groups have generally outspent their rivals.

“It seems like the Republicans have made a really concerted to control courts and to make sure that they make a Herculean effort to tilt the scales in their favor. And it just doesn’t seem like groups on the left have made that same kind of committment.”

The exception to the rule was Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, who has served on the court since 1976. The Democratic-favored candidate won her 2009 race by a 20-point margin.