Despite the nonpartisan status of the judicial branch, party politics has once again infiltrated a Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
As Marquette University law professor Ed Fallone and Milwaukee lemon law attorney Vince Megna battle with Justice Pat Roggensack for her seat on the state’s high court ahead of Tuesday’s primary election, the candidates’ personal ideologies have come into question while political groups have begun to take sides in the race.
“The courts are political,” University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor David Canon said. “They are another political institution just like the executive and the legislative branches, so it shouldn’t be surprising that politics enters into races when we elect our judges.”
While this year’s Supreme Court campaign is not as partisan as the 2011 election between Justice David Prosser and Joanne Kloppenburg, which took place in the wake of the collective bargaining debate, Canon said the race is more political than usual partly because it follows a year in which Wisconsin had six statewide elections.
“The extremely political year we had last year with the recall election and the presidential race especially made the partisanship and polarization that was evident in Wisconsin over the past couple of years even more evident, and I think that does carry over to this election,” Canon said, adding that he expects more political players to intervene after the primary.
From the moment he launched his campaign, Megna has openly identified as a Democrat, an unusual move for a judicial candidate, saying he wants to be honest with voters.
“Every justice has opinions on these issues, it’s just that they just don’t tell you,” Megna said. “If I would not have told people what my opinions are, I still would have those opinions.”
Additionally, Megna has repeatedly alleged the race is just as partisan as any other state election and labeled Roggensack a Republican. Megna has even made one of his core campaign messages that he can bring balance to a court he feels is dominated by right-wing justices.
“There is a four-person conservative Republican majority on the court,” Megna said. “We know how political-type cases are going to go.”
Megna’s opponents, however, reject the notion that the race is partisan.
While conservative donors such as the Republican Women of Waukesha County, the Fund for Parental Choice and ABC Supply Co. President Diane Hendricks have largely financed Roggensack’s campaign, the incumbent insists she has earned support from voters of all political stripes because of her independence and experience as a judge.
“To make it nonpartisan in Wisconsin, you really have to run a bipartisan campaign,” Roggensack said. “You have to get support from identifiable Democrats and identifiable Republicans and a whole lot of people in between. And that’s what I’ve done.”
Roggensack, who has also received endorsements from Republican-leaning organizations such as Club for Growth and Wisconsin Right to Life, said she believes the involvement of interest groups does not politicize the campaign.
“I do believe that any organization that is interested in the election should get involved,” Roggensack said. “That’s what the electoral process is about.”
Although Megna has been open about his affiliation with the Democratic Party, Fallone is the candidate garnering support from key voices on the left, including two of the state’s powerhouse unions, the AFL-CIO and the Wisconsin Education Association Council, as well as former Democratic U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold and a bevy of state Democratic lawmakers.
However, he stressed these endorsements would not impact his judicial rulings if elected.
“I am not beholden to any interest groups and I can come onto the court and focus solely on the cases without falling into a camp or a partisan ideology,” Fallone said.
Like Megna, Fallone signed a petition supporting the recall of Gov. Scott Walker in the fall of 2011, but argues he can put aside his personal political beliefs and decide cases fairly using the broad expertise of the law he has gained as a professor.
“Every judge comes to the bench with a political history,” Fallone said. “Every judge has supported different political candidates and every judge puts that aside and they assume the robe and they decide cases based solely on the law.”
The two candidates with the most votes in the primary will move on to face each other in the April 2 general election.
