The groups that helped buy liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz her seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court are on the attack as talk of impeaching the newly elected jurist heats up.
It’s the latest fight in a pitched battleground state battle over judicial bias, recusal, and the “will of the people.”
Stephanie Bloomingdale, president of Wisconsin AFL-CIO, released a statement this week calling threats of impeachment — and the risk that would mean to the Left’s coveted majority on the state’s high court — a “desperate” and “authoritarian” political maneuver.
“In an eleven-point landslide victory this spring, the people of Wisconsin decisively elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz to the State Supreme Court. Now, in a shameless, politically-motivated attempt to disregard the will of the voters, Assembly Speaker [Robin] Vos threatened to impeach her before she heard a single case,” Bloomingdale said. “This desperate authoritarian attempt to preserve partisan advantage is an affront to our democracy. It must be opposed by Wisconsinites of all political parties.”
Last month, days after Protasiewicz began her 10-year term, Vos (R-Rochester) told WSAU talk show host Meg Ellefson that impeachment is a possibility if the liberal justice does not recuse herself from cases she commented on during her campaign.
“If there’s any semblance of honor on the state Supreme Court left, you cannot have a person who runs for the court prejudging a case and being open about it, and then acting on the case as if you’re an impartial observer,” Vos said.
He addressed the Republican-led state redistricting plan ultimately upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Just a day after Protasiewicz took her seat on the bench and returned Supreme Court control to a liberal majority for the first time in 15 years, a coalition of far-left law firms and Democrat voters filed a lawsuit with the new liberal-controlled state Supreme Court to overturn the Republican-drawn legislative maps.
The lawsuit was right on cue.
Conservatives, however, asserted Protasiewicz disqualified herself from the case because during the campaign, she made biased comments about the maps, calling them “rigged” to benefit Republicans.
“They do not reflect people in this state. I don’t think you could sell any reasonable person that the maps are fair,” she said at a January candidates forum. “I can’t tell you what I would do on a particular case, but I can tell you my values, and the maps are wrong.”
Protasiewicz was knocked for several comments she made on the campaign trail — from abortion law to government reforms — that critics said reeked of partisanship and signaled to her liberal base how she would interpret law on the state’s high court.
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin also dumped $10 million on Protasiewicz’s election effort. The party would seem to want its money’s worth in the most expensive state Supreme Court in U.S. history.
Last week, Democrats announced a $4 million campaign to target Republican lawmakers who talk about impeaching Protasiewicz.
Interestingly, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler accused Republicans of “extortion” in considering impeachment.
“Republicans are holding a political nuclear football,” he said at a press conference announcing the multi-million dollar attack ad effort against Republicans who dare speak the word impeachment.
Vos told NewsTalk 1130 WISN’s Dan O’Donnell last week that the Democrats’ efforts “just goes to show how unbelievably biased this was because they’re willing to put up $4 million against anyone who would stand up against what should be common sense where justice is supposed to be blind.”
In short, Vos said Assembly Republicans aren’t backing down.
On Wednesday, Vos announced he is forming a panel to look into impeachment criteria. The panel, according to The Associated Press, will be made up of three former state Supreme Court justices who will work anonymously until they release their recommendations.
“[Impeachment] is my last option,” Vos told News Talk 1130 WISN’s Jay Weber on Wednesday. “They’re making it seem like I’m foaming at the mouth to have an impeachment process. But that is the last thing I want to have happen which is why we have taken what I would say is a pretty radical step to offer a different path.”
Republicans on Tuesday introduced a measure that would allow maps for 2024 to be drawn by nonpartisan legislative staff and then voted on by the GOP-led Legislature.
Vos has said he’s optimistic impeachment won’t be necessary and that Protasiewicz will ultimately recuse herself from the cases she has “prejudiced.”
But there are millions of reasons why the left has no intention of going gently into that good night in their efforts to protect Protasiewicz. Her supporters, including Big Labor and lots of liberal big money interests, spent at least $24.4 million to elect her, according to a review by WisPolitics. A sizeable portion of that money came from labor groups.
“A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund, a coalition of labor unions and progressive social advocacy groups, has spent more than $5 million on ad buys,” the report states “… Major national unions like American Federation of Teachers have contributed $500,000, while the International Union of Operating Engineers PAC has forked over $300,000 to A Better Wisconsin Together.”
Is it any wonder that Bloomingdale and her Wisconsin AFL-CIO are using part of their union dues to call on members to contact their elected representatives and “make it clear to Speaker Vos and others in the Legislature that the people of Wisconsin will not stand for any further attempts to strip us of our democratic rights by attempting to overturn a free and fair election.”
Conservatives in the battleground state likely to again play an outsized role in deciding the 2024 election feel the same way about apparently biased liberal justices they fear will help rewrite legislative maps for the benefit of the Left.
– – –
M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Janet Protasiewicz” by Janet for Justice.
