State Supreme Court Candidates Discuss New Republican Ad, Makeup Of The Court

The Wisconsin Republican Party has launched an ad campaign against state Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet.

The advertisements mention a fundraising trip Dallet took San Francisco last week, and highlights comments she has made that Wisconsin has “lost values along the way.”

The Milwaukee County Judge said Tuesday afternoon that she hasn’t seen the campaign, but following a forum hosted by the Rotary Club of Milwaukee, Dallet said Wisconsin’s has lost its fair and independent courts.

“We do not have them right now in our Wisconsin Supreme Court,” she said. “We’ve lost the confidence in the courts that we’ve lost along our way.”

Dallet’s opponent, Sauk County Judge Michael Screnock, also said he hadn’t seen the GOP advertisements. But he criticized Dallet for taking the fundraising trip to San Francisco.

“She’s been claiming to be representing Wisconsin values throughout this campaign, and instead of campaigning in Wisconsin, she was in San Francisco,” he said at the forum.

Also at the forum, Dallet and Screnock debated whether the state Supreme Court should “go back” philosophically to where it was a decade ago.

Screnock said that in 2004, Democratic Governor Jim Doyle appointed Louis Butler to the high court, giving more liberal and moderate justices a majority.

“And we saw in rapid-fire succession, decision after decision after decision, that came out of that court that was representative of the policy preferences of four justices on our Supreme Court at that time. And the state woke up!” Screnock exclaimed.

Dallet disagreed, saying for the last 10 years, conservative judicial activists have ruled the state court. She added that the people backing Screnock want to keep it that way.

“That’s the business lobby, that’s the Republican Party, that’s the money that’s coming in again to elect him to this seat,” Dallet said.