A Bad Day For Good Government

Yesterday, despite it being a glorious brisk and bright April day in Wisconsin, was a tough one for good government in a state that once prided itself on it.

But before we get to that let’s talk about the good news. These days the very definition of good government is one without Donald Trump in it. So, yesterday’s twenty-point blow out victory for the Democratic-backed candidate for Supreme Court bodes well for November. This result was only partially about the court itself. It was mostly about liberals and some independents showing up to voice their extreme displeasure with Trump. It demonstrates once again that liberals are supercharged, traditional Republicans are dispirited and MAGA voters didn’t know there was an election going on.

But look deeper and things aren’t so great. Democrat Chris Taylor got 90% of the vote in Madison. Count me with the 10%. When Taylor represented Madison’s uber-left east side in the State Assembly she was so extreme as to be regarded by many as unhinged from time to time. She does not have a judicial temperament. She told us in her campaign just exactly how she’ll vote on hot issues that will come before the court. And she now joins four other liberal justices who are just as partisan, if a bit less manic. All of the court liberals showed up at Taylor’s victory party to cheer her on as if this was just another partisan race and she had won another term in the Assembly. The court majority demonstrates again and again that they don’t understand what the role of the court is.

It’s not that Taylor’s opponent, Maria Lazar, would have been much better, though her record was not nearly as strongly partisan as Taylor’s. Nonetheless, she was supported by the Republican Party and a collection of hard-right groups. So, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for her either.

Taylor’s election was ensured two years ago when she announced early and then backed off in favor of liberal Susan Crawford. Taylor never intended to run in 2025. She meant to lay down her claim for 2026, Crawford won last year, and this year Taylor collected on her IOU with the left. There was no primary. No nonpartisan candidate stepped up in light of the liberal-left steamroller clearing the way ahead of Taylor.

We’ll go through the same thing in the next election with Clark County Circuit Court Judge Lyndsey Brunette. She followed Taylor’s lead, announcing a feint of a campaign this time and then deferring to Taylor. She’s already announced for the seat being vacated by Annette Ziegler a year from now. She will be our next justice in 2027. The fix is in for her just as it was for Taylor this year and for Crawford last year. We will have no real choice of a nonpartisan candidate and even other liberals need not apply.

As I said from the beginning, I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either Taylor or Lazar, so I wrote in the name of the kind of justice I want — the late David Souter. What we need is to jettison these awful elections and move to a merit appointment system as more than half the states already have. They realize, as we should have learned by now, that justice on a supreme court is simply not the kind of office that lends itself to an election.

Nonetheless, we have what we have, which is a court of seven justices, only one of whom has a sense of true fairness. That’s Justice Brian Hagedorn, who will likely be defeated if he runs for reelection in 2029. That’s because the left will target him and the right will see him as a traitor.

Taylor’s election would have been bad enough for one day, but then yesterday evening the UW Board of Regents went ahead and fired System President Jay Rothman. They did it in closed session and provided no explanation. It has only been a week or so since the public has had any inkling at all that Rothman was on thin ice. Regents met with him behind closed doors and tried to pressure him to resign, again providing him with no reason for their displeasure.

Rothman’s record has actually been quite good. He’s been able to find a way to work with a Republican legislature that has been openly hostile to the UW for a decade and a half. In this last budget he pulled off a near miracle, getting them to fork over $256 million more for the System, the biggest increase in recent memory. In order to do that he had to meet them part way on some of their demands, including scaling back DEI, establishing some minimum teaching hours for professors, getting a little tougher on campus protesters and closing down some lightly attended two-year campuses. It was all minor stuff in comparison to the new money. So, the Regents owed him an explanation for tossing him to the curb. More importantly they owed Wisconsinites an explanation.

Now, I have experience in firing managers. I had to do it a few times as mayor of Madison. And I understand that there are circumstances where you can’t talk about it. There is often a nondisparagement agreement between the parties, used to avoid litigation and to ease the person out.

But that’s not in play here because Rothman himself has talked openly about his firing. He’s opened the door for the Regents to come forward with their reasons for their move. There’s no reason for their silence and it is unacceptable. They are public officials who have be held to account.

Thankfully, legislative committees in each house have set up hearings for later this week. They’ll certainly call Regents to the table to demand an accounting. The Regents owe it to the citizens of Wisconsin to explain.

And finally, there’s Gov. Tony Evers who looks feckless in this whole thing. The Regents are all appointed by him. All he’s said about it is that it’s up to them. He’s offered no support for Rothman, but little backing for his own Regents either. It’s inconceivable that the board didn’t get his blessing. Evers too needs to come forward with an explanation for his role in this.

So, all-in-all it was a rotten day for fair, competent and open in government in Wisconsin. Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to November when good government should take a step forward with Democrats taking back the House and drastically cutting Trump’s power. Keep in mind though, that even then, voters will not be endorsing any agenda of the deeply unpopular Democratic Party. Rather they’ll be rejecting Trump. It will be a fundamentally negative election.

And if liberal Democrats keep engineering backroom deals to elect partisan hacks to the high court while they sack competent administrators without good reason, they’ll continue the cycle of rejection elections.