President Trump became the highest profile politician to weigh in on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race late Friday, urging his supporters to back conservative candidate Brad Schimel.
Trump in a late Friday post attacked “Radical Left Liberal Susan Crawford” — the liberal judicial candidate running against Schimel for an open seat on Wisconsin’s highest court — and attacked her record on sentencing criminals and abusers.
“She is the handpicked voice of the Leftists who are out to destroy your State, and our Country — And if she wins, the Movement to restore our Nation will bypass Wisconsin,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. “All Voters who believe in Common Sense should GET OUT TO VOTE EARLY for Brad Schimel.”
He also included a link to a website that encouraged voters to “swamp the vote” and laid out the timeline for requesting absentee and mail ballots and in-person voting for the April 1 election.
Crawford and Schimel are competing to replace outgoing liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. The state Supreme Court has a 5-4 liberal majority with Bradley, but her retirement brings the court to an even partisan split.
Tens of millions of dollars have been poured into the race, easily surpassing the record set in 2023, the last time there was an open seat on the state Supreme Court that also determined partisan control of the court.
Crawford defended her handling of sentencing, including one case mentioned during a debate between her and Schimel earlier this month involving a defendant who was convicted of sexual assault of a child. Asked if she regretted her decision to offer a lower sentence than one recommended by prosecutors, she said during the debate “I don’t regret that sentence because I followed the law in that case.”
Her campaign attacked Schimel in a statement responding to Trump’s Truth Social post, targeting him over his handling of the rape test kit backlog when he was Wisconsin attorney general and for making a plea deal with a defendant whose attorney had contributed to Schimel’s campaign.
Schimel has previously defended his handling of the rape test kit backlog, calling it a “capacity question” and noting they were able to expedite rape kit testing during his time as the state’s top prosecutor when three labs agreed to help test the kits.
The conservative candidate has also said campaign contributions he received from a defendant’s lawyer did not pose a conflict of an interest and that he receives donations from many attorneys. He told WPR in a statement in January that “there’s nothing about this that has resulted in anything underhanded.”
“Schimel has spent his entire career on bent knee to right-wing special interests, we assumed he had this endorsement locked up months ago,” Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in part of his statement, adding that voters would “reject” Schimel on April 1.
Her campaign has also invoked tech billionaire Elon Musk’s support for Schimel in ads targeting Crawford’s GOP challenger.