Rebecca Dallet, at left, will face conservative-backed Michael Screnock in the general election.
Fittingly, there was no election night party, no gathering of supporters sipping beers and munching pretzels and baby carrots. At 9 p.m. on Tuesday, as the results of the primary for Wisconsin Supreme Court became clear, the door to Madison attorney Tim Burns’ campaign office was locked. His campaign manager would not let a reporter come by to talk.
The primary eliminated Burns from contention, setting up an April 3 general election face-off between Michael Screnock and Rebecca Dallet. Screnock, a circuit court judge in Sauk County, is a conservative backed by Republicans. Dallet, a circuit court judge in Milwaukee, has the support of liberals and has positioned herself as anti-Trump.
Burns’ defeat was, for progressives, a crushing blow, and not just because he is a self-described “champion of liberal, Democratic and progressive values” who had the backing of prominent Democrats across the state. The primary election had represented the easiest pathway in years for progressives to reclaim something approximating a balance on the state’s highest court.
Had Screnock been eliminated, the general election contest would have been between Dallet and Burns, guaranteeing that the current 5-2 domination of court conservatives would be reduced. As it was, Burns and Dallet together garnered more votes than Screnock, who came out on top in the three-way primary with 46 percent of the vote. Only about 12 percent of eligible voters bothered to vote.
In the primary alone, Screnock received more than $500,000 in outside support from conservative groups, as well as more than $140,000 to his campaign from the Republican Party of Wisconsin, topped off with maximum $20,000 contributions from Beloit businesswoman Diane Hendricks and her daughter Kim Hendricks just days before the election.
“One million has been spent on Judge Screnock in the primary,” Dallet told Isthmus in an interview Tuesday night. “One million dollars. That is the reason that Judge Screnock is in this race; he has that money behind him.”
Yet Dallet devoted much of her energy during the campaign to attacking Burns, including a digital ad that never mentioned Screnock but hammered Burns as “not qualified.” Does she now regret this, given that Burns may have been an easier candidate to beat in the general election?
Here’s her response: “I think it would have been great if the people of our state weren’t influenced by special-interest money poured into a race as in the last decade. Unfortunately, that has been the pattern and that’s what happened here. And so now we as the people in our state have to stand up against that special-interest money and get back to a court that we can have confidence in.”
Conservatives have won five of the last seven contested state Supreme Court contests, aided by a total of $12 million in spending by outside groups, compared to $5.7 million in outside spending by groups backing liberals, according to an analysis by Isthmus using figures compiled by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. In fact, conservatives have won every election that did not involve well-known liberal incumbents.
Screnock, like other court conservatives, has tried to pass himself off as being above politics. In a statement, he said the primary election results “serve as proof that voters across Wisconsin value the importance of a fair and impartial judiciary focused on upholding the rule of law and respecting our Constitution and the separation of powers, regardless of their political affiliation.”
But besides his substantial financial support from conservative groups, the Republican Party and heavy-hitting GOP donors, Screnock has the backing of the NRA and anti-abortion groups (as a young man, he was twice arrested for blocking access to a Madison abortion clinic), all of whom surely believe he will see things their way.