The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race will decide control of the bench. Here's a closer look at the four candidates.

MADISON - Three judges and a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice are running for a seat on the state's highest court in a race that will decide control of the court at a time when legal challenges over the state's abortion ban and the Republican-favored legislative maps could come before the court.

Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Dorow, former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly, Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz will meet in the Feb. 21 primary election. The two candidates who receive the most votes will advance to the April 4 spring election.

Though the races are officially nonpartisan, candidates typically run as conservatives or liberals. The four justices who make up the conservative majority on the Supreme Court have split their support between Dorow and Kelly, with Justice Rebecca Bradley backing Kelly and Justice Patience Roggensack endorsing Dorow.

Within the court's three-justice liberal minority, Justice Rebecca Dallet and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley have endorsed Protasiewicz.

The court's current 4-3 conservative majority is in play in the election with Roggensack not seeking re-election.

Here's a look at the candidates:

Jennifer Dorow, conservative

Dorow, of Hartland, entered the race already familiar to voters after presiding over one of the most high-profile trials in state history, sentencing Darrell Brooks to hundreds of years in prison for killing six people and injuring scores more as he drove through a Christmas parade in Waukesha in 2021.

Dorow, 52, was appointed to the Waukesha County court in 2011 by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Before being appointed to the bench, Dorow worked as a defense attorney and a prosecutor in the Waukesha County district attorney’s office.

Dorow is a graduate of Marquette University and Regent University School of Law in Virginia. She has been licensed to practice law in Wisconsin since 1996. She serves as the chief judge of the 3rd Judicial Administrative District. Fundraising figures for Dorow were not available as of press time.

Dan Kelly, conservative

Kelly, a conservative attorney from North Prairie in Waukesha County, is running for a new seat on the court after serving on the court for four years before losing in 2020 to Jill Karofsky, a member of the court's liberal minority. 

While on the court, Kelly wrote a decision that found Madison could not bar guns on its buses, argued the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage undermined democracy, compared abortion to murder, and praised a decision that upheld Act 10, the 2011 law that scaled back collective bargaining for public workers.

Kelly, 58, earned his undergraduate degree from Carroll College in Waukesha and his law degree from Regent University School of Law. Before he joined the Supreme Court in 2016, he was in private practice at Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren and a small firm he set up. Kelly said he raised about $312,000 after formally getting into the race in September.

Everett Mitchell, liberal

Mitchell, who lives in Windsor, was elected to the Dane County court in 2016 and is the presiding judge of the juvenile division. He oversees cases within the county's high-risk drug court program. Mitchell is a former prosecutor for the county and was the director of community relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Mitchell, 45, has a bachelor's degree in mathematics and religious studies from Morehouse College, master's degrees in divinity and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School. He teaches a course on juvenile justice as an adjunct professor at the law school and is a pastor at the Solid Rock Baptist Church in Madison.

Mitchell, who declared his candidacy last June, raised $24,471 in the first six months of 2022 and had $27,767 in his campaign account on June 30.

Janet Protasiewicz, liberal

Protasiewicz, 60, was first elected to the Milwaukee County bench in 2013 after working as a Milwaukee County prosecutor for nearly three decades. She focused on prosecuting domestic abuse cases and other violent crimes.

Protasiewicz is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Marquette Law School and taught as a professor at Marquette. She currently handles cases in family court and has presided over homicide, sexual assault, misdemeanor, domestic violence, and drug courts.

She is the leading fundraiser in the race. Early campaign finance reports show Protasiewicz, who declared her candidacy last May, raised $756,217 in the second half of 2022, pushing her fundraising last year to $924,449, according to figures released by her campaign Monday.