Democratic-backed candidate Chris Taylor handily defeated Republican-backed Maria Lazar on Tuesday in a Wisconsin Supreme Court election that locks in a liberal majority on the state's highest court for at least five more years, and sets the stage for an even wider ideological gap next year.
The victory marks the fourth consecutive win for liberal judicial candidates in Wisconsin dating back to 2020. Taylor, a state Appeals Court judge and former Democratic state legislator, will fill an open seat left by a retiring conservative justice. With her on the bench, liberals are guaranteed to hold their majority until at least 2030.
And the bleeding may not stop there. Another conservative justice is set to retire next year, giving the left a shot at 6-1 control of the court, a margin that would make the Wisconsin Supreme Court one of the most lopsided in the country.
Taylor, who worked for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin before entering politics, spent a decade as a Democrat representing Madison in the state Assembly. She became a judge in 2020. Throughout the campaign, she centered her message on abortion rights, a theme that has powered liberal judicial candidates in Wisconsin since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Lazar, a judge since 2015 who previously spent four years in the state Department of Justice under a Republican attorney general, tried to cast Taylor as a partisan operative. She labeled Taylor a "radical, extreme legislator" and a "judicial activist." In 2022, Lazar called the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe "very wise", a position that may have cost her with swing voters in a state where abortion access polls well.
The money gap told its own story. Taylor spent roughly nine times as much as Lazar on television ads, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. That kind of disparity doesn't happen by accident. It reflects a Democratic donor class that has learned to treat state court races like national elections, and a Republican infrastructure that hasn't kept pace.
In her victory speech, Taylor framed the result as a populist rebuke of wealth and influence:
"Once again, Wisconsin showed the entire nation that we believe that the people should be at the center of government and the priority of our judiciary, not the billionaires, not the most powerful and privileged, but the people."
That line might land better if her side hadn't outspent the opposition by a factor of nine.
Liberals first seized control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023, ending 15 years of conservative dominance. That earlier race, in which Milwaukee Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly to flip the court to a 4-3 liberal majority, was a preview of what was to come.
Since then, the court has moved fast. It struck down a state abortion ban. It ordered new legislative maps, dismantling districts drawn by Republicans. It reversed several election-related rulings, including one that had banned absentee ballot drop boxes.
Each of those decisions landed squarely on issues where conservatives had built legal ground over more than a decade, voter ID protections, redistricting, and abortion restrictions signed into law by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. One by one, the liberal majority has been tearing that work apart.
The stakes extend to labor law as well. A circuit court judge ruled in December that the law effectively ending collective bargaining for most public workers, one of Walker's signature achievements, is unconstitutional. That case is expected to reach the state Supreme Court, where the outcome now seems preordained.
Wisconsin Republicans have controlled the state Legislature since 2011. But that legislative power means less when a liberal court can redraw the maps, rewrite the election rules, and strike down the laws the Legislature passes. The court has become the left's most effective policy tool in a state where voters keep sending Republicans to the statehouse.
Wisconsin's judicial races have become nationalized contests. Last year's Supreme Court race drew involvement from President Donald Trump, billionaire George Soros, and Elon Musk, who personally handed out $1 million checks to voters in the state. Liberals held their majority in that contest as well.
Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, writing about the court's direction, warned that Republicans must win in April or the state "may never be a battleground state again." Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming echoed that urgency, telling supporters it could "literally mean the success of President Trump's term."
They lost anyway. After the result, Schimming called on Republicans to "stay united and continue fighting for our conservative values." It was the kind of statement parties issue when they have nothing else to say.
The pattern in Wisconsin should alarm anyone on the right who pays attention to Democratic wins in competitive races across the country. When the left identifies a leverage point, a court seat, a special election, a ballot initiative, it floods the zone with money and messaging. Conservatives too often show up underfunded and unprepared.
That said, the picture is not uniformly bleak. In Virginia, for example, a Republican recently won a special election in a rout, puncturing the narrative that Democrats have unstoppable momentum in off-cycle contests. The difference often comes down to candidate quality, spending discipline, and whether the state party apparatus is functional.
The court is poised to be in the spotlight again in 2028, when the next presidential election arrives. With a liberal supermajority likely by then, every election dispute in Wisconsin, from ballot procedures to recount rules, will be adjudicated by justices who owe their seats to the same donor networks and activist coalitions that backed Taylor and Protasiewicz.
Democrats also have their eyes on November, when they'll try to hold the governor's office and flip the state Legislature. If they succeed, the combination of a friendly court and unified government would give them unchecked power in one of the nation's most closely divided states.
Republicans, meanwhile, face a structural problem they've been slow to address. The left has figured out that courts and voting rules are where elections are shaped long before voters show up. Conservatives keep learning that lesson the hard way.
The internal challenges facing both parties are real. Democrats are dealing with their own strategic reckonings at the national level. But in Wisconsin, they have executed a clear, disciplined plan to capture the judiciary, and it has worked.
Four straight losses. A 9-to-1 spending gap. A liberal majority locked in through 2030 at minimum, with 6-1 control on the horizon. At some point, the Wisconsin Republican Party has to ask itself harder questions than Brian Schimming's call to "stay united" can answer.
The conservative bench in Wisconsin is shrinking because conservatives keep retiring into elections they can't win. The donor infrastructure is outmatched. The messaging, Lazar's attempt to brand Taylor as a radical, didn't land with enough voters. And the issues that animate the left's base in judicial races, especially abortion, continue to drive turnout in ways the right has not figured out how to counter.
Wisconsin is a warning. When one side treats court races like the most important elections on the calendar and the other side treats them like afterthoughts, the results are predictable. And the consequences, redrawn maps, rewritten election rules, dismantled laws, are felt for a generation.
Conservatives who wonder why they keep winning legislatures but losing ground should look at Wisconsin's Supreme Court. That's where the left governs now, whatever their internal squabbles may look like elsewhere.
You can hold every seat in the statehouse and still lose the state if you let the other side own the bench.
