Will Wisconsin decide who wins in 2024? Politics Weekly America podcast

This is The Guardian.

In Norway, a woman's boyfriend forgets who she is. Overnight in Detroit, a man is arrested, but he was never at the crime scene. In Spain, disturbing pictures of young girls have appeared and no one knows who's behind them.

Something strange is happening, a collision between people and artificial intelligence.

Discover more in the Guardian's series Black Box. Listen to the whole series right now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's talk about the 2024 presidential election, let's talk 2024, 2024 race.

2024.

But there are actually several important races to keep an eye on this year, and one in particular is fast approaching.

Early voting is underway in the high-stakes race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Voters in Wisconsin will head to the polls on April 4th to determine who will replace Justice Patience Roggensack on the state Supreme Court.

Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasewicz, the Liberal candidate, sparred on a debate stage here this week with former Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly.

It's down to the final two, a liberal and a conservative, and the outcome will determine majority control of the court for at least the next two years. It is expected to be the most expensive election of its kind in history. So what's at stake here? I'm Joni Grieve in for Jonathan Friedland, and this is Politics, Weekly America.

The weather in Wisconsin from like March to May is really unpredictable, and it's actually been fine, except last Saturday there was a huge snowstorm.

Alice Herman is a Guardian u.

Wisconsin is a swing state. In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats won one of the two biggest races for governor, and Republicans won the other one, which was for a Senate seat. And then, similarly, in 2016, the presidential election went to Trump by a very, very small margin, and then in 2020, the state went for Biden. So it is like, absolutely a purple state, a swing state.

Sam, In your reporting, people have told you that this race is, quote, the most important election in the country before November 2024.

Well, there's a unique set of factors that are coming together to make this an incredibly important election. It's sort of a once in a generation set of circumstances. First is the simplest. Control for the Wisconsin Supreme Court is up for grabs. There are seven members on the court.

So Sam, tell us a little bit about the candidates. On the liberal side, we have Janet Protasewicz, a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, and on the conservative side, there's Dan Kelly, a former state Supreme Court judge, who actually lost his seat back in 2020. Let's start off with Kelly. What was his record when he was on the bench last time, and what are the attack lines?

This time around, well. Dan Kelly was appointed by former Governor Scott Walker, and when he was on the bench, he was seen as a pretty solid conservative vote.

It involves understanding that everyone has political beliefs, but you need to set those aside, and you need to have a methodology. So that when you analyze cases and write opinions, it squeezes out all personal views and personal politics.

He is not seen as someone who is particularly friendly to abortion rights. I think he's been endorsed by many anti-abortion groups, He is not friendly to LGBTQ causes. And after he left the bench in 2020, he went to work for the State Republican Party. The party hired him as a special counsel.

Alice, I'm going to go to you to tell us more about Janet Protasewicz. Because, although Kelly hasn't yet been available to talk to The Guardian, you did get some time with Protasewicz. Why did she want to enter this race and what issues is she running on? And it took a lot of time and thought because everything goes on the back burner for your life, I mean, everything.

So in our conversation, Protasewicz talked a lot about her concern for democracy in Wisconsin and in the U.

The issues that we all care about, all the issues that we care about, are going to come in front of this court. But primarily, primarily, our democracy is on the line.

Based on our conversation, that struck me as kind of the main reason that she wanted to run. Her campaign has focused pretty heavily on on questions of democracy, but also on gerrymandering, Wisconsin's skewed electoral maps and abortion. She has been very open about her personal support for abortion rights. Although she has been careful not to talk about how she would rule in the event that the abortion ban comes before her in the Supreme Court.

I mean, I think that there are so many issues that I'd be hard pressed to say that. It's a referendum on abortion, but it's certainly an issue that concerns people.

But, that being said, you know, groups on both sides of the abortion fight have weighed in, with, you know, individuals and organizations that support abortion rights also supporting Protasewicz and anti-abortion rights groups supporting Kelly. So those are kind of the main issues that she highlighted in our conversation.

Protasewicz has suggested that a victory by Dan Kelly would be really harmful for democracy. And she's convinced that another case will come to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, questioning the validity of the election in 2024.

Yeah, so I mean, she basically pointed to the fact that Wisconsin's a battleground state.

We're a purple state, we have really close elections. I think it's highly likely, probably more than highly likely, that the results of the 2024 presidential election are going to come in front of our Supreme Court.

And said, You know, there was a challenge in 2020, and why would that not happen again? And and she did seem quite convinced that that this would be presented before the Supreme Court in 2024..

And Alice, you also spoke to voters in Wisconsin from talking to people at gas stations.

People talked a lot about abortion. That was probably the top issue that people I spoke with cited as as their primary concern in this election.

I'm a believer in individual rights, and regardless of my views on abortion, I don't think it's the government's view to place.

So we are pro against abortion, pro life. Yeah, the fact that that actually has nothing to do with the judicial system, that's that's a state law.

My baby having a new baby right now, but I don't want no abortions.

They should be, they should be an option, though they shouldn't. Nobody should stop that for nobody, because you don't know where, nobody.

Going if you want to know whether Wisconsin sort of reflects the national mood, I think that is the case. Just having spoken to a lot of people on the ground, that's a top issue I spoke with, said. It was the only issue they were paying attention to, and that it was the reason that that they were going to get out to vote. It's that important.

Car theft, stealing and stuff.

You know, Oak Creek's pretty good so far, but you know, it's just a matter of time.

Like, crime was a huge issue for people on both sides of the race. And I think that has to do with the fact that so much of the focus of both campaigns, through their ad campaigns, has has focused on crime. Even though it's, it's not, it's not clear exactly how the Supreme Court would address issues of community safety. That was something that was really striking for me, but again, abortion was probably the top issue that that came up in conversations that I.

Had with voters, and I think that might explain, at least in part, why there's so much money involved with this campaign. Sam I believe it's expected to break all records for this kind of election.

Is that correct? Well, Joni, it actually already has broken all the records. There's just been a staggering amount of money that's been spent on this race, just to give you an idea. The previous record for spending on a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin was 10 million dollars, and that was set pretty recently in 2020. Spending in this race is around 30 million dollars, just a staggering amount of money for a state Supreme Court race. That typically doesn't attract this kind of funding or attention.

And I'm also fascinated by who is funding this election. Because a lot of it centers on one very influential family in Wisconsin, where different members of the family are actually picking opposite sides in the race. Can you explain that to us, Sam?

It's the Uline family, and they're best known as being Conservative Republican Party megadonors, and they are well known on the national scene. But in this race? In Wisconsin, two members of the family, Richard and Elizabeth, have set up a PAC that they're using basically to become the biggest donors to Kelly's campaign. The PAC is called Fair Courts America. But on the other side, one of their cousins, Lynn Bradley, is donating heavily in favor of Protasewitz. She's maxed out her donations to the Protasewitz campaign, and she's also donating heavily to a PAC that is supporting Protasewitz.

And I want to make sure that we talk about the role of election deniers in this race. And Alice, you wrote a piece on this very topic. We know that. In 2020, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected an effort by Trump allies to challenge the election result, and that decision was made with just a one vote margin. Alice, If Trump ends up winning the Republican nomination next year, his allies might be looking to Wisconsin for help again. Isn't that right?

Without speculating about what's going to happen in 2024. I can say very confidently that the right wing, and in particular groups and individuals who deny the results of the 2020 election, have taken a really strong interest in this race. And that's sort of expressed in two ways one, you have donations that have come directly to the Kelly campaign, and then you also have independent expenditures that are coming in from outside groups. So, for example, like, on the side of just the endorsements and sort of vocal support that Kelly has gotten from election deniers. You have Charlie Kirk, who runs TPUSA or founded TPUSA. And he bragged about sending protesters to the Capitol on January 6th, and he's basically said, You know, Kelly's our guy.

So, with those high stakes in mind, Sam does it feel like Democrats are taking this race much more seriously than they might have in the past?

There's no question they are dedicating tremendous financial resources, organizing, raising awareness in a way that we just haven't seen in the past. And I think there are two key moments you can point to that, explain why that is for Democrats, two key moments from Wisconsin. One is. In 2019. There was a state Supreme Court race that Democrats lost, and they were heavily criticized after that race for not investing the resources that they should have at the time.

We always like to ask a what else? question on our podcast. And Sam, I'm going to stick with you on this because I know you've been following the many twists and turns of the defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News has showed us the network's panic in the weeks following Donald Trump's 2020 election loss. Can you just give us a quick update on the latest from that legal battle?

This lawsuit is headed towards a trial set to begin in the middle of April. It's sort of in the final stages of the pre-trial phase. And the central issue in this trial between Dominion and Fox is whether Fox knowingly broadcast false claims about Dominion voting equipment. As Donald Trump and allies were trying to overturn the 2020 election. And Dominion, in what is very unusual for a defamation case, has been able to obtain reams of evidence from Fox. Showing that its hosts, producers, top executives at the network all knew that what the network was saying was false, but decided to broadcast it anyway. I think it's fair to describe it as a blockbuster trial.

I'm Levine and Alice Herman, thanks so much for joining me on Politics Weekly America.

Thank you, Joni.

Thank you so much for having me.

Before I go, I just want to let you know about a report released this week which looks into the founding of the Guardian in 1821 by John Edward Taylor and his financial backers. The goal was to see if there were any links between the Guardian's founders and transatlantic slavery. You can read more about that and follow the Guardian's full exploration of the findings on our website. Jonathan Friedland will be back with you next week when to mark 25 years since the signing of the Belfast Good Friday agreement. He'll speak to Irish-American journalist Neil O'Dowd. Neil will share the extraordinary story of how he built a secret channel between President Bill Clinton and the Irish Republican movement in the 1990s.