Chali Pittman
Huma Ahsan with her team of volunteers in her house in Fitchburg
Huma Ahsan, second from left, with her 'kitchen cabinet' of volunteers at her Fitchburg home on Election Night.
Voters rarely get an option when picking their Dane County Circuit Court judge. Most races for the judges who handle criminal, juvenile and civil trials, are sleepily uncontested.
In the past eight years, 25 Dane County Circuit Court races have come and gone without a single challenger. The last contested race was in 2018. It was for Branch 1, and the winner was Susan Crawford, who last year was elected to the state Supreme Court.
This spring, voters had another set of choices for Branch 1. And voters picked the incumbent. Ben Jones made the most of his advantages — he had more cash, more institutional backing, and the better half of a year on the bench. On Tuesday, Jones captured 55% of the vote to beat immigration attorney Huma Ahsan by roughly 20,700 votes, winning a six-year term on the county court.
"I appreciate the trust of the voters of Dane County, and I promise I'll work every day to uphold the rule of law and defend our democracy," his campaign wrote in a statement after the race was called.
Before he was on the bench, Jones was an education lawyer. He worked at the state Department of Public Instruction, where he was made chief legal counsel in 2019. He started there in 2017, under the leadership of a familiar name: Tony Evers, then the state superintendent.
In May, Evers, who has been serving as Wisconsin’s governor since 2019, appointed Jones to the Dane County bench to fill the vacancy left by Crawford when she was sworn in to the Supreme Court.
Both Evers and Crawford supported Jones’ campaign. "Judge Ben Jones is a great addition to the Dane County Circuit Court. His character, intellect, and commitment to public service will serve the people of Dane County well," the governor wrote on the back of Jones' Election Day mailer.
Crawford urged others to vote for him, and after Jones' $62,000 donation to himself, was one of his biggest contributors. Her campaign gave $5,000, though a double counted entry on the state campaign finance website shows a total of $10,000, above the legal limit. The Jones' campaign says it is working to address it.
Jones received a slew of other endorsements, including from County Executive Melissa Agard and at least nine Madison-area legislators. Both Jones and Ahsan were endorsed by Dane Dems. Six current Dane County judges endorsed Jones.
That web of support is precisely what local immigration attorney Huma Ahsan ran against. She applied for the Branch 1 appointment herself, she confirms to Isthmus Tuesday night while waiting for results to roll in at her Fitchburg home. She wasn't selected.
"The governor's going to appoint whoever he's going to appoint. There's nothing that you can do. It is unfettered discretion. They can appoint anybody to fill any vacant slot," she says. "But here's my point: The governor doesn't own Branch 1 — the people do."
Sachin Chheda, a progressive strategist who served as campaign manager for Jones, points out that judicial applications are reviewed by a committee and that members make a recommendation to the governor. He adds that the "committee has advanced more people of color, more people from nontraditional career backgrounds, more women than any governor before."
Chali Pittman
A mailer promoting Ben Jones in a mailbox.
Ben Jones was appointed by Gov. Tony Evers and endorsed by Supreme Court Justice Susan Crawford.
Ahsan is the founder of Madison Immigration Law, which she has run since 2009, specializing in asylum cases, deportation defense, and DACA. She's also a former chief justice of the Turtle Mountain Court of Appeals and formerly worked for the Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center at UW Law School and the Ho-Chunk Nation. She had been planning for another attorney to take over her practice if she won. Instead, she's helping that attorney set up her own firm.
Ahsan’s house is packed with volunteers, supporters and politicos and there is an abundance of food. She's easy to pick out from the crowd for two reasons: her bright yellow skirt, and a trail of laughter. She says she was hoping to specialize in hearing civil cases, which is Branch 1's current rotation. She's concerned about the findings of a DAIS report that only a third of domestic violence restraining orders get approved. She starts to discuss landlord-tenant issues before being called away by a new arrival.
Ahsan's kitchen table cabinet is made up of her longtime friends, all women, who haven't done this before. They taught themselves to text bank (sending out more than 200,000), to phone bank (making more than 100,000 calls), to knock on doors, and to file campaign finance reports. And with one exception, they have the same complexion as Ahsan, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants. If she had been elected, Ahsan says she would have been the first Muslim-American judge in Wisconsin.
"We had a really hard race. It would be wonderful if we won, but we didn't. The people chose, and unfortunately, it wasn't me. That's democracy."
After the race is called, the crowd slowly begins to thin. Ahsan points to her friend's children, Eesha and Ani, standing next to her. They, most of all, are why she decided to take a chance.
"All the kids saw this. All the community saw this. People in this room have never phone banked before, never text banked, never did a ground game. If you're gonna run as a person of color, you're gonna need all of that. You're gonna need to connect with the people, because that's how the next generation is gonna win."
Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify that the donation made by Justice Crawford’s campaign to Ben Jones’ campaign was $5,000, not $10,000, according to campaign manager Sachin Chheda. Campaign finance reports show two entries of $5,000 made on the same day. A comment by Chheda about the judicial application process was also added. Also, the children referenced in the article were mistakenly referred to as Ahsan's children. They are the children of a friend.
