Undecided and uninformed voters may be swayed not to vote for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley after learning about controversial comments she made while in college, according to a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The liberal group One Wisconsin Now earlier this week revealed a series of editorials by Bradley, written 24 years ago while she was attending Marquette University. In the columns, she disparages the LGBT community and people with AIDS, and asserts that abortion is a "holocaust of our children." Bradley — who is currently running to retain her seat on the high court — has since apologized for her comments and said they "don’t reflect her worldview today."
Wisconsin is one of 13 states that chooses state supreme court justices in nonpartisan elections. Those elections don’t place the party affiliation of the candidates on the ballot. That leaves voters with little information to gather when voting, said UW-Milwaukee political science professor Sara Benesh.
"I think any info they get is going to help inform their vote. And this is certainly information that’s getting a lot of attention," said Benesh, referring to Bradley’s controversial remarks.
With less than a month to go before the April election, Benesh suspects voters will continue to hear about the controversial comments. That could help Bradley’s challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg, as the two compete for a 10-year term.
"I think beyond just the words and the opinions that (Bradley) espoused in those editorials, I think there’s a tone that maybe will butt up against what people expect in terms of a judicial temperament," she said.
Benesh said she believes it’s time Wisconsin join the majority of states that have moved away from nonpartisan judicial elections. She added that there’s a "fiction around judicial decision-making" that implies that justices simply rely on the text of statutes.
"And so these opinions, these attitudes about these justices matter. People should vote on the basis of these opinions, and it would be a heck of a lot of easier if we would have them just come forward and tell us their party affiliation. Instead we have to sort of read tea leaves and ascertain the information," she said.
Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walker has refused to comment on the editorials. The governor appointed Bradley to the state’s high court last October.