GOP in full retreat in swing state as Democrats lock in Supreme Court majority

The hotel ballroom in downtown Madison was packed with cheering supporters as Chris Taylor gave her victory speech Tuesday night after her huge, 20-point win over her conservative opponent Maria Lazar, cementing a 5-2 liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The four other liberal women on the Court high-fived Taylor as she took the stage. The deliriously joyful crowd repeatedly interrupted Taylor’s remarks with shouting and applause, including to chant the name of her dog when she mentioned it during a lengthy list of thank-yous: “Ollie! Ollie!”

Democrats are so hungry for success they are ready to throw their arms around any champion, including canines — yellow, blue, whatever.

Eager to catch that wave of enthusiasm, many of the seven gubernatorial hopefuls in the Democratic primary field hovered around the ballroom. After the results were tabulated, party operatives began circulating statistics showing Taylor’s big margins of victory in Republican-leaning counties, using those results to forecast a crushing blue wave in November. Democratic Party Chair Devin Remiker called Taylor’s win “an indictment of Trump and Tom Tiffany,” the GOP candidate for governor.

Without question, Taylor’s 60-40 percentage point drubbing of Lazar is good news for Democrats, who poured money and organizing energy into the nominally nonpartisan race. And it’s a serious loss for Republicans, who backed Lazar, an anti-abortion election skeptic. But Taylor’s lopsided victory does not mean that Wisconsin has turned, overnight, from a 50-50 purple state that narrowly elected both Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump into a liberal stronghold where Democrats can expect to run the table in November.

The reality is that Republicans gave up. After repeated, double-digit losses in the last three Supreme Court elections in a row, including the 2025 record-breaking $100 million race — when Elon Musk proved that all the money in the world and even outright bribery couldn’t convince Wisconsin voters to embrace the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel — they threw in the towel. This year, the state Republican party gave $64,000 to Lazar, compared to the $775,000 the Democratic party gave to Taylor. Republican donors also held onto their wallets. Final fundraising reports ahead of the election showed Taylor had raised more than $2 million while Lazar reported about $472,000.

The Wisconsin GOP has concluded that spring judicial elections are a lousy bet, especially in the Trump era. Democratic voters are energized for these races, while Republican voters, especially the MAGA base, turn out in low numbers. The voters who care about April judicial races are disproportionately college educated liberals, as political analyst Craig Gilbert explains.

All of these are reasons to take Democratic optimism pegged to Tuesday’s results with a grain of salt. After all, liberal Justices Jill Karofsky and Janet Protasiewicz posted big wins in the Wisconsin Supreme Court elections of 2020 and 2023, followed by Trump’s 2024 Wisconsin victory.

Still, Taylor’s 20-point triumph matters. For one thing, the failure of the Republicans to put up much of a fight for Lazar comes at the same time that the GOP leaders of both chambers of the Legislature have announced they are calling it quits, along with several key members of those bodies who would face tough reelection battles now that the state’s voting maps are no longer rigged in their favor. The whole Wisconsin Republican Party seems to be in retreat.

The only thing that got legislative Republicans off the couch recently was the UW Regents’ decision to fire their ally, University of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman. They are so outraged they’re planning to hold long-delayed confirmation hearings this week just to fire the regents. Nothing motivates Wisconsin Republicans like spite, and the defense of their own diminishing power.

After steadfastly refusing to confirm most of Gov. Tony Evers’ appointees during his entire two terms in office, they are coming back into special session, not to strike a deal to fund schools or lower property taxes or address any of the other issues that matter to voters they didn’t get around to by the end of the session, but to take revenge on the regents and showcase their own pettiness. It’s their last power grab before they lose their gerrymandered power altogether. The regents were apparently willing to take the risk to get rid of Rothman, who is no longer needed to make nice with a soon-to-depart Republican majority.

Taylor’s huge win on Tuesday bolsters the growing sense among Wisconsinites that the Republicans are about to lose more than one judicial race. By not fighting harder, the Republicans showed their own lack of confidence. And who can blame them? As Taylor’s victory party kicked off, the news was all about whether Trump would make good on his pledge to annihilate an entire civilization in Iran — a threat so unhinged even Sen. Ron Johnson felt compelled to renounce it.

Trump’s approval numbers are in the toilet. He is, as investigative reporter Ken Kippenstein points out on Substack, the first president in U.S. history to get no public approval bump at all for going to war. Members of Congress and even some former Trump supporters are openly discussing the need to invoke the 25th Amendment to put the Republican Party’s national leader in a straitjacket.

Add to that the cost of gas, groceries, and the deliberate destruction of affordable health care and you have a recipe for a massive midterm rebellion. The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is part of that picture, even if it’s a lopsided measure of Democratic energy and Republican depression.

Plus, the new, now locked-in majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be a bulwark against GOP efforts to limit voting rights and interfere with fair elections.

All in all, it’s pretty terrible news for Republicans. That barking dog that’s chasing them might have a nasty bite.