This year, Wisconsin will vote for a new Supreme Court justice. Incumbent Rebecca Bradly has announced that she will not be running for reelection. Chris Taylor and Maria Lazar have filed to run for the seat. Both are currently judges on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n
This seat will not flip the ideological majority of the Supreme Court, so it has lacked the extensive outside funding and support that last year\u2019s Supreme Court race saw: Elon Musk and groups related to him provided over $25 million for advertising for conservative candidate Brad Schimel. This made Musk the single largest contributor to any judicial election in the history of the United States. Musk also created a petition offering financial compensation in exchange for signatures against activist judges. Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate, won the seat.<\/p>\n
So far, Maria Lazar has been estimated to have spent just under $100,000 on the race, while Chris Taylor is estimated to have spent just under $2 million. Many of Taylor\u2019s T.V. commercials have mentioned her support for survivors of domestic abuse and her support of abortion rights. Others have criticized Lazar\u2019s agreement with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the guarantee of abortion rights in the U.S., as well as her general anti-abortion stance. Many of Lazar\u2019s commercials critique Taylor\u2019s support for \u201cnon-citizen voting\u201d and claim that she wants to weaken voter ID in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
Lazar has also campaigned on her impartiality, stating that she will keep politics out of the race and remain as unbiased as she can. Lazar has also claimed that she is the more experienced candidate, referring to her 11 years on the bench compared with Taylor\u2019s three years as an appellate judge.<\/p>\n