Curmudgeon's Corner

Supreme Court Race Brings Out the Worst in Some

Posted by Al Campbell on March 20, 2013

Wisconsin, Political, Quality of Life, People Making A Difference

Wisconsin will elect a Supreme Court Justice on April 2^nd as we have discussed before.  Justice Patience Roggensack is running for her second term and she is being challenged by Ed Fallone, a Marquette law professor.  He has finally begun running ads and has chosen to be disingenuous in his advertising.  He uses the name of another Justice, David Prosser, and invokes an erroneous charge against Prosser against whom he is not running.  The sole connection is Fallone’s attempt to tarnish Roggensack by somehow connecting her to another Justice whom Fallone suggests did something of which he has never been accused by his accuser.

The dysfunction of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is laid, by Fallone, at the feet of Roggensack without nary so much as a wink and a nod.  Apparently Professor Fallone believes that only those Justices who have a conservative orientation are to blame for the dysfunction.  At worst, the conservative Justices are no more dysfunctional than are the liberal Justices.

Since Roggensack is seen as one of the conservative members of this group, and since that group often is a four to three majority block, this election is very important to both sides.  Fallone wants to win, obviously, and seems to not be too concerned with his use of non-factual “facts” in his effort to unseat Roggensack.

Fallone has not been too successful in fund raising thus delaying the start of advertising until very recently.  He does not seem to have been able to attract other advertising from like-minded groups either, even though there are those groups out there.  That would seem to suggest that even those of his own political persuasion believe he has no real chance of winning this race and don’t wish to waste their money.

This could prove to be dangerous if the supporters of Roggensack think they need not vote since she’ll win anyway.  Stranger things have happened in politics.

It is very important that Roggensack retain her seat on this court since it will ultimately decide on Act 10 and probably most everything else that gets passed in the next two or three years.  The Democrats are challenging everything that gets approved hoping they can defeat some of these laws in the courts when they hadn’t sufficient votes to get their own way in the legislature.

If the changes being made in this state are all going to be run up through the court system, then it is imperative that Roggensack be re-elected and returned to that seat for another ten years.  There has been some mention that she’ll then be 82 or 83 years of age meaning she wouldn’t be able to properly discern positions on cases presented.  Isn’t the current Chief Justice, who is part of the liberal element already at or beyond that age?  How is it that this is bad if a conservative is involved but can be ignored when a liberal is involved?

Double standard anyone?  The liberals have nominated a not-too-impressive candidate and now must resort to anything, even to creating their own facts, in their effort to win in spite of their candidate’s appeal or lack thereof.