Wisconsin's Supreme Court. National Review/public domain.
Wisconsin conservatives are celebrating a win with Judge Brian Hagedorn winning against liberal Judge Lisa Neubauer in the Supreme Court race. National Review. Hagedorn won with an almost 6000 vote lead out of 1.2 million votes cast. Hagedorn was seen as an underdog candidate in a race with no public polling. GOP internal polls had Hagedorn losing and Democrats have made gains in Wisconsin, including the critical governor's office, but Hagedorn was able to win. Democrats vilified Hagedorn as an anti-LGBT candidate, using his Christian beliefs against him. This may have backfired as GOP officials say that it helped spurn turnout for the GOP voters. Neubauer may contest the count of the election but an almost 6000 vote lead would be hard to overcome. If the election holds it will give conservatives a 5-2 majority in the court until 2020 where the Democrats could flip it back down to 4-3. But their chances of flipping the court to a liberal majority will be delayed for at least a few years.
My Comment:
As you may know I am from Wisconsin and voted in this election. I went for Judge Hagedorn because of his position on gun rights and I am pleased that he won. With Tony Evers now governor we need a conservative court to help counter him.
Turnout at this election was pretty low. From what I understand it was way down in Milwaukee, a Democrat stronghold. However, it was up in most other areas that are dominated by the GOP. It's pretty clear that the GOP did a much better job of getting out the vote.
I don't know if I agree with the National Review article that said Hagedorn was attacked by the left to a major degree. It's very possible that he was, but I never saw anything like that. Indeed, in the lead up to the election, I saw almost no information about the election at all. I don't watch local news or tv stations so I may have missed the ads. I did get some mail about the election and that at least reminded me that one was coming but I did my own research.
I do wonder why the Democrats lost here. I think in general the GOP is pretty motivated right now. They are sick and tired of what the Democrats are doing and the 2018 midterms were a real wakeup call. We were extremely motivated to win this election and our turnout supports that.
The Democrats though are likely demoralized. Most of the news for them has been pretty terrible. The Mueller report pretty much guaranteed that President Trump will, at the very least, end his term in office and will likely win a 2nd. The Presidential race is a mess with a clown car of candidates and the front runner stuck in a major sex scandal. There was also the Virginia scandals and the Jussie Smollett incident. None of this was good news for the Democrats and it may have affected turnout.
I also think that the Democrats strategy isn't working anymore. They are in full attack mode and I think it is turning off independent voters. It seems that instead of promoting Neubauer, they just attacked Hagedorn. Attack ads have a place, but eventually you have to make your case. Democrats haven't been doing that.
Does this election have 2020 implications? Wisconsin was a 2016 win for Donald Trump and flipped red for the first time in decades. 2018 reversed the trend with the Governor's office flipping and the Democrats holding onto the Senate. Is the Hagedorn victory a sign of things to come?
I am not sure. I think the main reason why the 2018 elections went the way they did is because Trump wasn't running and conservatives didn't come out to support him. The Democrats were still high on the Mueller Kool-Aid and were motivated in a way the GOP wasn't. I think the situation will likely be reversed in 2020 with Trump being very popular among the GOP and the Democrats being demoralized. This election may hint that Wisconsin will remain a red state in 2020.
Finally, I doubt there is any chance that Hagedorn's victory will be overturned. His almost 6000 vote lead is not going to change by that much. The recount will be a waste of time and I think it's possible that Neubauer might not even bother. It would be a waste of her money and would almost certainly not overturn the results.
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