Former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel plans to announce a run for Wisconsin Supreme Court against Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in a bid to flip the court’s newly liberal majority, a source knowledgeable about the campaign told the Wisconsin State Journal.
Schimel plans to make the announcement in Waukesha on Thursday, according to the source who was not authorized to speak on behalf of the campaign. He would be the first conservative to throw his hat into the ring since liberals gained a 4-3 majority in August.
Johnny Koremenos, who managed Schimel’s 2014 and 2018 campaigns for attorney general, said he would volunteer to “help him get across the finish line,” adding that he will “support Brad in anything he wants to do.”
Bradley, who has said she will seek a fourth term, won her last election by a 16-point margin. She is the longest-serving current justice. The next Supreme Court election is in April 2025.
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The conservative media outlet Wisconsin Right Now first reported on Schimel’s plans.
Schimel was the state’s attorney general from 2015 to 2019. He lost a reelection bid to Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul by less than 1 percentage point in 2018. After his loss, then-Gov. Scott Walker, also a Republican, appointed Schimel to the Waukesha County Circuit Court.
Over his time in office and in his election campaigns Schimel, who was formerly a Waukesha County prosecutor for 25 years, touted his record of combatting opioid abuse and human trafficking and defending crime victims.
The former attorney general was an outspoken supporter of Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which he speculated could have been responsible for Republican former President Donald Trump’s 2016 Wisconsin win. He also defended the Republican redrawing of the state’s previous legislative boundaries and joined a multistate coalition challenging the Affordable Care Act.
The race is likely to keep a low profile until the conclusion of the 2024 presidential and U.S. Senate contests. But it promises to be a heavily contested race. Both parties have increasingly sought to resolve political disputes in the state’s high court given the gridlock between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Current lawsuits before the court include disputes over redistricting and the legality of private school vouchers. Legal battles in lower courts over abortion and Wisconsin’s top election official are likely to reach the Supreme Court.
Elections to the court are nominally nonpartisan, but political parties on both sides of the aisle contribute millions of dollars and hundreds of workers to support their preferred candidates. The last high court election, which saw liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz beat conservative former Justice Dan Kelly by 11 percentage points, was the most expensive judicial race in American history.