From the beginning, the contest was defined by two issues: democracy and abortion.
The Supreme Court in Wisconsin, a state often described as a “democracy desert” in the Midwest, has allowed Republicans to draw highly partisan maps that practically cement their control of the state legislature. They’ve overruled Democratic governor Tony Evers, who called the court’s decision last year to accept the maps another “erosion of democratic institutions” in the state, which was also a target of Trump’s illicit efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Most notable among those efforts: a lawsuit seeking to have more than 200,000 ballots in Democratic-leaning areas invalidated. The state Supreme Court rejected the Trump campaign’s suit, but only narrowly in a 4-3 vote. If Kelly had won, his opponents warned, there would be no guarantee that the will of the people would be followed in 2024, when the state will once again be a presidential battleground. Protasiewicz’s victory, by that token, will help ensure the integrity of next year’s election, and possibly opens the door for Wisconsin to become more democratic in the years following.
“Wisconsin has been stuck in an authoritarian doom loop,” Wikler said when I got him on the phone Wednesday morning, his voice still full of energy from the Protasiewicz victory the night before. “The result is a purple state that has policies that look like Alabama or Mississippi,” he said. “This election changes everything.”
Abortion—one of the most animating issues of the 2022 midterms—also loomed large over this race. Following the fall of Roe last year, a more than 170-year-old state ban on abortion was allowed to take effect once again in Wisconsin, dramatically limiting access to reproductive health care in the state. That law is being challenged by Wisconsin attorney general Josh Kaul, and the case is likely to end up at the state Supreme Court. During his campaign, Kelly attempted to downplay his conservative record, but has previously made his view of abortion clear: It “involves taking the life of a human being,” he wrote in 2012. Protasiewicz, meanwhile, has been outspoken in favor of reproductive rights, drawing criticism from Kelly but earning the support of influential pro-choice groups like EMILY’s List, which made its first-ever endorsement in a statewide judicial race in throwing its weight behind the Milwaukee judge this year.
“This election…has huge consequences,” said Dr. Kristin Lyerly, an OB/GYN, member of the Committee to Protect Health Care’s Reproductive Freedom Taskforce, and a plaintiff in Kaul’s challenge to the 1849 ban. “And women’s rights are at the core of that.” Lyerly, a sixth-generation Wisconsinite temporarily practicing in Minnesota because of the abortion law, told me ahead of the April 4 election that she hoped a “progressive majority that actually serves the people” could change the dynamic in the state. “Everything,” she told me, “is at stake.”
Voters, for their part, seemed to recognize just that. Not only was the race the most expensive of its kind—it also saw record-breaking turnout for a spring election, thanks in part to high levels of engagement among young voters who often waited in long lines to cast a ballot, according to Kristin Hansen, Wisconsin state coordinator with the Fair Elections Center’s Campus Vote Project. “Students knew how consequential this election was,” Hansen told me Wednesday morning. “The activity on campuses rivaled that of the [November elections], if not bettered it.”
