Jay Heck knew something was up Tuesday afternoon when he headed for his polling place on Madison’s east side. There, the longtime executive director of Common Cause saw something quite rare for a spring election — a line. He was told he was the 1,000th person to vote there that day.
“I got a chocolate chip cookie for being the 1,000th voter,” Heck says.
Rebecca Dallet, the liberal-leaning Milwaukee County judge running for a 10-year term on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, got something even better. She won the race, besting conservative Sauk County Judge Michael Screnock with 56 percent of the vote. This included garnering an astonishing 81 percent of the vote in Dane County. Dallet even beat Screnock in his own backyard, Sauk County.
Dallet’s election will alter the court’s ideological balance, leaving conservatives with just a 4-3 edge instead of a 5-2 domination. Also on Tuesday, voters soundly rejected a constitutional amendment favored by conservatives to eliminate the watchdog office of state treasurer.
“There was just great motivation on the part of people who were not comfortable with the status quo,” Heck reflects. “It demonstrates a strong pull in the direction that Wisconsin could be headed in the fall election.”
Dallet, who championed her determination to stand up for Wisconsin values, including those being “attacked” by President Donald Trump, said something similar to her supporters in Milwaukee Tuesday night: “People are engaged, they are hungry for change.”
About 1 million voters cast ballots, the most for a spring election since 2000, with the exception of 2011 when 1.5 million people turned out for a sharply contested Supreme Court election in the wake of Walker’s full-frontal attack on public employee unions. In that race, the conservative candidate narrowly prevailed.
Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged Dallet’s victory on Twitter with a warning to conservative voters: “Tonight’s results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI. The Far Left is driven by anger & hatred – we must counter it with optimism & organization. Let’s share our positive story with voters & win in November.”
Screnock was appointed to the Sauk County bench in 2015 by Walker, after defending the governor’s anti-union law against legal challenge, as well as helping defend the drawing of voter boundaries to favor Republicans. He ran a thoroughly disingenuous campaign, claiming, against all evidence, to be free of ideological or partisan leanings.
In fact, Screnock’s campaign was run by GOP political operatives and fully 40 percent of the money he raised for his own campaign in the officially nonpartisan race came from the state Republican Party. He was endorsed by the NRA and backed bigly by the business lobby Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which reportedly spent at least $1.3 million on ads painting Dallet as someone who goes the extra mile to protect child rapists.
In his election night remarks, Screnock said he was proud of how he conducted his campaign: “I stand before you with my head held high.” That’s a bold statement, given that the ad run on his behalf by WMC — which he refused to repudiate — was so distasteful and roundly criticized it may have turned voters against him. The ad identified a child crime victim, whose family pleaded with WMC to have it taken down. WMC kept it on the air.
Screnock ended up raising just over $1 million for his own campaign, including $417,846 from the Republican Party of Wisconsin. In all, he received $434,415 from political action committees; prior to a 2015 change in state law pushed through by Republicans, the maximum total a candidate for state Supreme Court could receive from PACs was $140,156.
Dallet raised more than $1.1 million; of this amount, $128,245 came from committees, including just $4,265 from the Democratic National Committee. She also received help from outside groups, including a group affiliated with former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, which reportedly spent more than $500,000 on Dallet’s behalf.
Heck says Tuesday’s result is consistent with January’s special election victory by Democrat Peggy Schachtner in a district that had previously leaned Republican. He believes it was also foreshadowed by the decision last week by Walker and GOP legislative leaders to stop fighting to block special elections in two other legislative districts.
“I think they realized that that would not go over well with the voting population,” Heck says, “and Walker wisely just said ‘I’ve got to bite the bullet.’” He thinks the special elections, now planned for June, will be highly competitive and that voters’ enhanced motivation will probably last into the fall, when Walker himself faces re-election.
This story has been updated to add Twitter comments from Gov. Scott Walker.
