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Usually, I don’t like writing articles about things that others have already written on extensively. Op-eds should first and foremost be topical and out-of-the-box. The race between Dane County Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel has taken headlines for the sheer amount of funding from outside interests, some notable donors being Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and billionaire Elon Musk (the latter spending a whopping $22 million and giving three $1 million checks to three sweepstake participants). Voter turnout was also quite high for something usually viewed as a local mundanity.
However, Wisconsin’s just-finished Supreme Court election and its result are a clear message to certain (arguably foreign) national interests: No, we don’t want your “Dark Enlightenment,” your tariffs and your desire to invade Canada. We want to have Wisconsin run on Wisconsinite principles, just as it always has, and it always should. Of course, both candidates argued that they would step aside from politics, in the tone of those principles: Crawford has repeatedly expressed great concern over Elon’s input into the election, and Schimel has stated multiple times he is against activist judges of any party. That is, of course, except the time he talked about establishing a Trump support network. Schimel however had the grace to concede his loss, hushing shouts by some supporters that the opposition cheated (a common running theme among American conservatives). The tone of moderation was quite welcome, and I’d say in many ways, embodied Wisconsin values outwards for the rest of the country.
Certain factors may have played into Crawford’s win, including several hot-topic issues such as abortion and labor rights. The walk backs on Roe v. Wade and Act 10 have been a big blow to abortion and labor rights, so naturally many would turn out to seek change against that. An invigorated Democrat base still stung after the 2024 presidential loss is also likely, especially with a candidate who doesn’t speak in word salad like the most recent Democratic presidential pick Joe Biden did. But maybe it was simply because a rapidly unpopular federal administration and its allies chose to shoehorn Elon’s face into Schimel’s campaign until even state Republicans themselves expressed deep discomfort. I would too, if a big donor to my party said such hyperbolic gibberish like “a seemingly small election could determine the fate of Western Civilization.” This is of course coming from the same man currently trying to siphon as much money as possible from the country’s coffers. The rapid inflation of money and rhetoric by Musk has also made some Wisconsinites more aware of just how radicalized external politics has become, and the need to vote against that. A very blatant attempt to buy a court race by a penny-pincher who throws Sieg Heils at inaugurations, permits open terrorist worship on his media and peddles falsehoods is practically alien to the Wisconsin Idea.
The Wisconsin Idea came to be in the trail of the late 1800s, which saw a rise in the ultra-rich, the greater concentration of cities and a government too ineffectual or corrupt to deal with such abuses (sounds mildly familiar). Under Republican Robert La Follette, this new “program” was made to counteract such decline and to make Wisconsin a more efficient state. Such efficiency initiatives included greater investment in sciences, education and economic reforms to ensure healthier worker-employer relations. FDR’s own New Deal was mostly drafted by Wisconsinites who had grown up or lived with the societal and cultural effects of the Wisconsin Idea. The push for a balance between all branches of society for greater efficiency and a better country has seemingly been lost in the race by Elon, Trump and others to just cut everything, regardless of whether it needed to be cut or not. Then again, these are the same people who think FDR was a communist.
This sort of hyper-libertarian, con artist thinking now dominant in DC isn’t going to fix America’s many problems anytime soon. The fetishization of tariffs, tossing legal immigrants into El Salvador’s mega prison and targeting allies for annexation or election interference has already created a slew of new problems nobody needed but which the current administration, and by extension, Schimel’s backers, are insistent upon. We don’t know how things are going to go from here, but Wisconsin’s choice for Crawford is a good reminder that we still have a state culture that can maintain itself, just as La Follette had intended over a century ago.