State Supreme Court candidates (from left) Tim Burns, Rebecca Dallet and Michael Screnock
Here is how conservatives have come to rule the Wisconsin Supreme Court: They throw their hats in the ring, raise a little money and count on special interest groups to spend a whole lot more on their behalf.
Conservative groups have dumped more than $12 million in outside spending into the seven contested state Supreme Court races since 2007, according to an Isthmus analysis using figures compiled by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. That compares to $5.7 million in outside spending by groups backing liberals. Outside spending during this period easily topped spending by the candidates’ campaigns.
Conservatives won five of those races, giving them a 5-2 majority. The court has provided critical legal cover for Gov. Scott Walker and legislative Republicans on everything from affirming Act 10, which crushed the state’s public employee unions, to shutting down the John Doe probe into alleged misbehavior by Walker’s campaign.
State Supreme Court races are officially nonpartisan but have in recent years invariably come down to a choice between a clear conservative and a clear liberal, even if the candidates don’t always accept these labels.
The conservative candidate in the Feb. 20 primary is Sauk County Circuit Court Judge Michael Screnock, a Walker appointee. His two more-liberal rivals are Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Rebecca Dallet and Madison attorney Tim Burns. The two top vote-getters will square off in the April 3 general election.
The race is for a 10-year term to replace Justice Michael Gableman, who opted against seeking reelection. Gableman and other conservative justices, past and present, have thrown their support behind Screnock.
But their hopes could be dashed in the Feb. 20 primary, likely a low-turnout affair. (Less than 15 percent of eligible voters took part in the 2016 primary, compared to 67 percent in the general election.)
“It’s possible the primary will produce the two left-leaning candidates,” says UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center, citing the recent election of Democrat Patty Schachtner in a traditionally Republican state Senate district. “I think there’s just more energy on the left end of the continuum at the moment.”
As a lawyer with the GOP’s go-to law firm, Michael Best & Friedrich, Screnock helped defend Act 10 and the Republicans’ redrawing of voter boundaries to partisan advantage, earning an appointment to the bench by Gov. Scott Walker in 2015. On two occasions, when he was 19 and 20, Screnock was arrested for blocking access to a Madison abortion clinic, recently saying this is “not something I’ve ever regretted doing.”
Dallet, in an interview, calls Screnock “an extremist.” Moreover, as Burden observes, he has been running “not an enthusiastic campaign.”
Screnock failed to answer candidate questionnaires from the Wisconsin Justice Initiative and the Wisconsin League of Women Voters. He has appeared at just three events with his rivals, one in Madison and two in Milwaukee, including one before the conservative Federalist Society.
“Judge Screnock has basically shown that he doesn’t want to appear in front of people who may not be politically like-minded to him,” Dallet says. She thinks this is also whom he would strive to represent on the court.
Screnock’s campaign website was astonishingly threadbare until this week Wednesday, when he finally got around to posting new content, including his endorsements from conservative Supreme Court justices, other judges, and members of law enforcement. His campaign staffer, Jack Penders, did not respond to repeated requests from Isthmus for an interview with Screnock.
Burns boasts endorsements from political players including U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan and former Rep. Dave Obey, state Sen. Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, former Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton, and Bernie Sanders’ offshoot group, Our Revolution. Dallet lists nods from about 200 current and former state circuit court judges and even more elected officials.
A Wisconsin Democracy Campaign review concluded that Screnock is the poorest of the three contenders, reporting investments worth between $55,000 and $550,000. Both Dallet and Burns are likely millionaires. Dallet, at last accounting, had raised $500,000, including $200,000 from herself. Burns raised $258,000 and Screnock brought up the rear with $104,000, neither with self-loans.
But Screnock may not need an energetic campaign or full coffers to survive the primary. Outside groups including Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which has spent an estimated $5.6 million helping elect conservatives in the last decade, and Wisconsin Alliance for Reform, which poured $2.6 million into the 2016 race to elect conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, have reportedly locked in about $500,000 in ad time prior to the primary.
Screnock, in his campaign materials and statements, has stressed that justices should not “legislate from the bench,” casting his opponents as judicial activists.
Dallet counters that judges are not legislators but have a duty to curb abuses by the legislative and executive branches. Burns, who boasts about his work fighting “giant insurance companies,” has gone further, saying during one campaign event, “If expanding rights is legislating from the bench, count me in.” (Fun fact: an attorney at the national law firm Burns works for, Perkins Coie, ordered up the Steele dossier alleging that Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia.)
Both Dallet and Burns are trying to appeal to voters on the left end of the political spectrum. Dallet put out a statement ripping President Trump’s “racist” remarks on immigration and aired a campaign ad vowing to protect the civil rights and values he threatens..
“Our rights are under attack, our values are under attack,” she says, citing dangers to women’s rights and the environment. She calls the court she hopes to join “broken” and hopes to curb the often painfully obvious tensions among the court’s current members. “I think I could be a voice of common sense and someone who can bring the civility that’s lacking.” Good luck with that.
Burns is running an even more pointedly political campaign, vowing to be “an unshakeable champion of liberal, Democratic and progressive values.” At the Federalist Society debate last month, he ripped into the event sponsors, saying the conservative lawyers group had “provided the brain power for the re-concentration of wealth in this country” and “weakened our democracy to the point that we elected a perverse show dog named Trump to lead our great nation.”
Dallet, with some justification, purports to have the most experience, having worked as a prosecutor for 11 years before serving 10 years as a judge, handling more than 10,000 cases and presiding over about 230 jury trials. Burns has never been a judge and Screnock has logged less than three years on the bench after eight years as an attorney.
Burns argues that he alone among the three contenders has appellate court experience, having clerked in the 1990s for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals. He says the current state Supreme Court is “dominated by right-wing fanatics who have big business and special interests in mind but seldom ordinary Wisconsinites.”
So, if elected, what would he do about it?
“To be quite honest, I am the first step toward making this a progressive court in the spring of 2020,” he says. (Abrahamson is up in 2019 and conservative Justice Daniel Kelly must be retained or replaced in 2020.) Until then, he says, “I expect to be writing a lot of dissents.”
Tim Burns
Vital stats: Age 54, married, three children
Background: Mississippi native, lives in Madison. J.D. from University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law, partner at the Madison office of Perkins Coie, specializing in insurance law. On national board of the American Constitution Society, a progressive-leaning group. No judicial experience.
Soundbyte: “Tim is one of America’s leading attorneys in standing up to large insurance companies.”
Favorite justice-themed book: The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, on mass incarceration in the U.S.
Rebecca Dallet
Vital stats: Age 48, married, three children
Background: Ohio native, lives in Whitefish Bay. J.D. from Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Worked as assistant Milwaukee district attorney and special assistant U.S. attorney; former adjunct professor of law at Marquette University. Elected to Milwaukee Circuit Court in 2008.
Soundbyte: “I’ve spent more than 20 years in our Wisconsin court rooms fighting to ensure justice for the people of our state.”
Favorite justice-themed book: Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson, about injustices committed by the justice system.
Michael Screnock
Vital stats: Age 48, married, three children
Background: Wisconsin native, lives in Reedsburg. Worked as a city administrator and finance director in Reedsburg, Washburn and Ashland. Obtained law degree from UW-Madison in 2006 and worked at Michael Best & Friedrich. Appointed to Sauk County Circuit Court by Gov. Scott Walker in 2015, elected without opposition in 2016.
Soundbyte: “Judges must respect the different roles of the court and legislature and should not legislate from the bench.”
Favorite justice-themed book: Candidate not made available for interview.
Editor's note: This article originally stated that Judge Michael Screnock has appeared at only two forums with his rivals. He has appeared in three, including one in Madison Feb. 7.
