After a tight race that wasn’t called until late Tuesday night, incumbent Rebecca Bradley defeated challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg to earn a 10-year term on the state Supreme Court.
Bradley, nominated by Gov. Scott Walker last fall to fill the seat of the late Justice N. Patrick Crooks, had the advantage of incumbency going into Tuesday’s race. Despite several weeks of media coverage due to anti-gay comments Bradley made as a college student, she was able to defeat Kloppenburg by six percentage points with 89 percent of the vote counted late Tuesday.
In a victory speech, Bradley quoted Winston Churchill in describing the campaign and thanked supporters.
“When you’re going through hell, keep going,” she said at an election night event in Wauwatosa.
Meanwhile, in Madison, Kloppenburg was forced to concede after the Associated Press called the race around 11 p.m.
“It was a hard-fought race. AP has called it for Rebecca Bradley, and so it’s not the outcome you and I hoped for,” Kloppenburg said in her concession speech.
The mood throughout the night at the Brink Lounge, where Kloppenburg’s supporters gathered for a watch party, started out positive. As the night dragged on and after many guests waited several hours to hear the news they had hoped, the mood began to change.
Kloppenburg acknowledged the disappointment she said she and her supporters felt, urging the members of the room to “maintain our perspective.”
Her concession speech struck a hopeful tone for the future of Wisconsin courts because of the “shared hopes of Wisconsinites.”
“They believe that the courts should be places where justice is done without fear or favor,” Kloppenburg said.
Before stating how honored she was to have been considered for the state Supreme Court position, she mentioned that “change is inevitable, but progress is not,” and that citizens must fight diligently for the principles in the Constitution in order to move forward.
Kloppenburg’s supporters said they voted for her in the election because of her unbiased approach to the cases she’s worked.
“She’s just the kind of a woman you’d want as a judge,” said Debe Martin, who works with Kloppenburg at the Court of Appeals. “She’s fair and impartial.”
With the victory going to incumbent Bradley, another guest and Kloppenburg supporter, Riley Heninger, said that there will be no change.
“Things will be the same way they’ve been,” Heninger said.
