It’s become a parlor game. How can each side come out on top in what now seems like the inevitable impeachment of newly seated Wisconsin Justice Janet Protasiewicz?
What seems likely to happen is that Assembly Republicans will vote to impeach and then the Republicans who control the Senate will just not act. That would essentially freeze Protasiewicz out since the law says that impeached justices can’t act in their official capacity while their case is pending. And, of course, since she would still be in office, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers couldn’t appoint her replacement.
One idea is that Protasiewicz should just resign so that Evers could go ahead and appoint another liberal. But there are at least two problems with that. Of course, the most basic one is getting Protasiewicz to go along. She has neither violated a law nor done anything corrupt — the two standards for impeachment. Sure, she violated the spirit of the code of judicial conduct by going too far in indicating how she’ll vote on key cases, but she didn’t cross the line by promising her vote. The commission that rules on these things has reviewed complaints against her and found them to be without merit.
The other problem is that Republicans can just keep impeaching justices that Evers appoints. They won’t care that their impeachments have no substance because the idea isn’t to get a conviction in the Senate, but to simply ice out every Evers appointment.
A better strategy is to recall conservative Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley. It would take 360,000 signatures to get that on a ballot. Given the level of anger over this and the money that will pour in to fight impeachment (the Democrats will blow well past the $4 million they’ve budgeted), I have to believe this wouldn’t be hard. I also have to believe that they would have a fair chance of winning the vote as well, and replacing Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley with liberals, given the way virtually any issue involving abortion — even in deep red states — has come out on the pro-choice side.
Democrats don’t need a reason for a recall but it could be about just calling out Republicans on their own game. If Protasiewicz’s sin is that she would rule on a case on redistricting that Democrats would benefit from after she got money from the Democratic Party, then the same applies to the conservative justices. Both Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley got money from the Republicans.
You could also go after the third Republican justice, Brian Hagedorn, over this, but Hagedorn has been reasonable on other issues and he has not been outspoken on Protasiewicz as the other two have. He’d be a tougher recall bet.
Protasiewicz wasn’t a great candidate and she stumbled in her campaign, but she won fair and square and by 11 points. She shouldn’t have to resign. Better to recall the hypocritical conservative justices and get them off the Court and replaced with either liberals, or better yet, honest, thoughtful nonpartisan jurists.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 