This Wisconsin Election Has Huge Implications

One common theme in coverage about Tuesday's judicial election in Wisconsin emerges quickly: It's "the single most important American election of 2023," is how Reid J. Epstein puts it in the New York Times. The "most consequential election of 2023" reads the headline above an analysis in the Atlantic by Ronald Brownstein. Similar sentiments abound. A look at coverage explaining why:

• The election: Liberal Janet Protasiewicz is running against conservative Dan Kelly for a seat on the deadlocked state Supreme Court. The seven-member court has been under conservative control for 15 years, and a win by Protasiewicz would change that, per the AP.
• The stakes: The fate of abortion rights in the state is getting the most attention, but a win by Protasiewicz could also lead to the redrawing of gerrymandered legislative maps that have helped Republicans control the state legislature in the battleground state, per Politico. On abortion, if Protasiewicz wins, Wisconsin would almost certainly become the first state to allow abortion again after banning it in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, per the Times.

• Big picture: Protasiewicz has "centered her campaign on portraying Kelly as a threat to legal abortion and an accomplice in Donald Trump’s schemes to undermine democracy—the same issues that helped Democrats perform unexpectedly well in last November’s elections," writes Brownstein in the Atlantic. "Kelly and his allies have centered his campaign on presenting Protasiewicz as soft on crime, the same accusation that Republicans stressed in many of their winning campaigns last year." The outcome might suggest where voter sentiment is headed for 2024, particularly among crucial suburbanites.
• Also on 2024: If Kelly wins and the GOP keeps control of the court, "he's likely to be more sympathetic to any 2024 cases that contest the presidential election results," per Axios. "He was a central figure in pushing Wisconsin's 'fake elector' scheme after the 2020 election."
• A record: The race is supposed to be nonpartisan, but Democratic and Republican groups have been pouring money in to support their favored candidate. As a result, this has become, by far, the most expensive judicial election in US history, reports the Washington Post. As of late last week, total spending was north of $45 million.

(More Wisconsin stories.)