Bill Lueders: Wisconsin’s High Stakes Supreme Court Race

Good morning, and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I am Charlie Sykes. It is February twenty second two thousand twenty three. And I am joined by my fellow Cheese Head Bill Leaders, a writer based in Madison, Wisconsin, former editor, now editor at large of the progressive magazine and now a contributor to the bulwark. Bill, good to talk with you

again. Good to be here.

Now I was gonna say something, you know, like like who would ever think that Charlie Sykes and Bill leaders would be working together, but the fact is you I have actually been working together. You just reminded me for thirty nine years. That’s true. Okay. I’m sorry.

I feel old. Is nineteen eighty four when

I started doing some editing and then writing for Milwaukee Magazine when you were editor of that publication. And then you did some writing for Christmas when I was editor of that. That’s the was the then weekly, now monthly. Paper in Madison. And Yeah.

Yeah. And I’ve done stories about you for the progressive. You know, we’ve gone back

and forth. But you’ve been doing some great stuff for the bulwark, including coverage of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. And, you know, as I’ve said a couple of times here, there’s a lot of hype around this election as the most important election of twenty twenty three because it will determine so many major public policy issues here in one of the crucial swing states. And what I’ve said is the hype in this particular case is justified I mean, this is a big deal. It is a big deal here.

It is a big deal nationally. I’ve been covering these races for about four decades as you haven’t. I’ve never seen anything quite like what we’re seeing right now. Would would you agree with that? They’ve been contentious in the past, but nothing at the scale of what we’re seeing right now or or the national profile that we’re seeing.

Yeah. That’s true.

It’s going to be by far the most expensive States supreme court race in Wisconsin history and probably in the history of the country. It’s a very very much a contest between polar opposites. That’s happened before, but I think what we’re gonna see here is just a full flowering of the divide that has come to define our Wisconsin Supreme Court

to handle our nation? No. I I I agree with you there and also it’s we have had races before the pit, conservatives versus liberal. But these races are, you know, officially nonpartisan. But this year, it feels like everybody’s I torn the mask off and said screw it, you know, this is gonna be raw raw ideological.

It’s gonna be very, very political. It’s gonna be very, very partisan. And the stakes really couldn’t be higher, whether it’s, you know, the nineteenth century abortion law, gerrymandering, or as you’ve written the the future of democracy. I think the headline in, you know, NBC News was correct. Trump ally would ties to fake elector scheme advances in Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

So it’s it’s going to be like that. Okay. So you’ve written extensively about it. I have to I wanna get back to it. We’re gonna do a deep dive and all of that.

But, Bill, Couple of things that that I just had to to mention on the podcast before we got in. One involving our good mutual friend, Marjorie Taylor Green, hope the sarcasm comes through there. But also, I was really struck by Joe Biden’s speech in Poland. Yes, today. I mean, you over the last forty eight hours, we’ve had these sort of remarkable Tableau’s where you you have the president of the United States, making that surprise secret visit to keep at the same time that Vladimir Putin is giving one of his, you know, ranting state of the war speeches.

I mean, this is just high profile international stuff. And Biden then leads to takes a ten hour train ride from Ukraine to Poland, where he delivers this remarkable speech, you know, staged speech. It felt like a a pep talk for NATO. And let me play a little bit of a sound bite because, I guess, the point that I’m gonna make at the end, we’ll see whether you disagree with it is, this didn’t feel like the old Joe Biden. This was kind of a remarkable moment.

That’s place.

One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of keep. Well, I just come from a visit to Keith, and I can report, Keith stands strong. Yes. Keith stands proud. It stands tall.

And most important it stands free. When Russia invaded, It wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages. Europe was being tested. America was being tested.

NATO was being tested. All democracies are being tested. And the questions we face were simple, as they were profound. Would we respond? Or would we look the other way?

Would we be strong? Would be weak, would be you we would be would we be all of our allies would be united or divided. One year later, we know the answer. We did respond. We would be strong.

We would be united. And the world would not look the other way. We also face fundamental questions about the commitment to the most basic principles. Would we stand for the sovereignty of nations. Would we stand up for the right of people who live free from naked aggression?

Would we stand up for democracy? One year later, we know the answers. Yes, we would stand up for sovereignty, and we did. Yes. We would stand up for the right of people who live free from aggression.

And we did. And we would stand up for democracy, and we did. And yesterday, I the honor to stand with president Zelensky in Kiev to declare that we will keep standing up for these same things. No matter what.

Well, that was a pretty remarkable speech, and they’ll you’ll understand this. I am old enough to remember when Republicans would have gotten a real up their leg if they would have heard of Ronald Reagan or George h w Bush or George w Bush —

Oh, yeah. —

giving that kind of of a speech. To hear that from Joe Biden and then watching sort of the snarking, you know, reaction of Republicans. This really did feel like one of those many moments where the world feels turned upside down. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

I do. If it

wasn’t like it is a democratic speech. It was an American speech. It was in that fine tradition that you’ve just you’re reflected on of of presidents speaking about our fundamental values and what we stand for as a nation.

No, I I thought that was that was really a defining moment for Joe Biden. What what also struck me is that, you know, this was not inevitable. I I feel that as you were as I was watching this, I’m watching an eighty year old man who actually has grown and evolved, who had the flexibility to change his approach to the issue. Because this was not what you would have heard from a Joe Biden, you know, I mean, like, he’s been at, you know, kind of a blow hard for years and, you know, apologize for that. But that he’s really grown into this particular moment in history in

a way that was not inevitable. I agree. I think what we’re seeing is Joe Biden has sound strange to say about a need your old person, but he’s coming into his own, his president. The state of the union speech, the Ukraine visit, the speech that he just played in, or saw it as just, you know, a full flowering of his presidency into something that our old age could be proud of. I’m not sure people are, but they should be.

I’ve been into something of a of a step think

about him about his use of the bully pulpit, about his eloquence. I mean, he has not been known for his rhetoric and he has not, I think, effect effectively. Prior to this, use the bully pulpit. But but just to listen to him, it felt like over the last forty eight hours, seventy two hours, they do a watching a world historic moment. Mhmm.

And the contrast with the trivia of the much of the rest of our politics was really, really striking. And and the fact that that he has the flexibility of mine to over the last year with Ukraine that he’s learned lessons of the past that that he has been willing to revise and to step in a role that that I don’t think that he would have even imagined twelve months ago. That’s striking. He’s using words and he’s using values to advance the American cause here.

I I need to say hear that I do not support the United States Army and Ukraine. I’m a pacifist. Mhmm. I think it’s a bad idea for us to be giving weapons to anyone. I think that we should be leading in other ways, like the things that the president said yesterday in Warsaw, that should be what we’re doing and saying and and coming up with effective strategies to punish the Russians for their invasion and aggression, but not to send missiles flying into their territory and killing their people.

I’m not for that, and I don’t think — Yeah. — it’s necessary for for this situation to be effectively countered by the rest of the world? Well,

you and I disagree on that because I think that the the alternative alarming you Crain would be that Vladimir Putin would have given that speech in Kiev yesterday. I I am struck by the fact that you disagree with it, but still acknowledge you know, the strength of what Joe Biden is doing. So We should stay and we do creating as stronger, stronger

than we are now. I just don’t think that the the weapons component of it is is what we should lead with. That’s

what you and I have been doing for four decades. We’ve been respectfully disagreeing. Okay. So think we’ll probably agree on this one. And I apologize in advance for spending time on Marjorie Taylor Greenbies.

It always feels like, okay, we’re now going to kill more brain cells every time we we talk about her, accept that. You know, the the it is objective reality that with the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, she is more powerful than ever before that she has the speaker of the House of Representatives on a short leash. And that we have gone in the last, I don’t know, how many years, you know, from a Republican party whose leading voice was say Paul Ryan, who I’m gonna be talking with later this week, to now, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Marjorie Taylor Green apparently feels the need to continue to be in the spotlight. So earlier this week, she decided this was a good time to start talking about a national divorce by which she means the secession of the blue states and the red states or anything. And she’s doubling down on all of this.

So here’s a sound bite, where Martri Taylor Green goes on, of course. Some show hosted by Charlie Kirk. And she’s explaining her philosophy how this would work. Like, Well, let’s say that we divide it into two countries, blue states and red states. What happens if Democrats actually try to move to one of our states.

Bill, I need you to listen to this. This is the mind of Marjorie Taylor Greenless play.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a mass exodus from California and New York, where we’ve seen people lien those leftist policies moving to states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, states where they they like the tax policies, they They like the schools. They they like the consequences of Republican and red policies. What I think would be something that some red states could propose is well okay if if Democrat voters choose to flee these blue states where they cannot tolerate living conditions. They don’t want their children taught these horrible things, and they really change their mind on the types of policies that they support Well, once they move to a red state, guess what? Maybe you don’t get the vote for five years.

You can live there, you can work there, but you don’t get to bring your values. That you that you basically created in the blue states you came from by voting for democrat leaders and democrat policies. But this would be up to red states to be able to choose to do something like that so that their red states don’t get changed which is what’s happening. Unfortunately, when Democrat voters leave their Democrat states and they take their Democrat votes with them. That would be something that these red states would have to really consider and choose to do.

But I’m a big believer in freedom, Charlie. But I’m also a big believer in defending our ability to pursue life and liberty and happiness and the left is completely destroying that for those of us on the right.

So we preserve that by denying the right to vote for five years if they move to one of our states. There’s a lot to unpack their bill.

Yeah. It’s insane. I mean, but there’s something kinda refreshing about how unvarnished. Her extremism is and how, you know, forthright she is with her naughtiness. At the core of it though is this need for people on the right to portray the opposition in these apocalyptic terms.

You know, people are fleeing California because it’s just this hotbed of craziness and crime, and they they just can’t stand it anymore. They got to go away from the democrats who who run that country and go to some place. You know, safe and sane like Florida or Texas. You know, they have to portray it as these extreme terms that, you know, that justifies they’re crazy ideas. And and I know we’re giving her too much

credit, but let’s just take, like, thirty seconds to think through what she just said there that so let’s say that you were moving from New York to Florida, and she doesn’t want Democrats to be able to vote for five years. First of all, how do you decide that? I mean, what if somebody is I mean, do you have to, like, show your papers? Okay? So here’s my passport with my voting record.

And here’s my social media accounts to make sure that I’m not one of those woke leftes who should be deprived of their right to vote. Or what if you move from a state like Wisconsin where we don’t have voter registration by party and we’re evenly divided, are we a red state? Are we a blue state? Would we be allowed to vote in Oklahoma? I think the way that they’re going to do it is they’re

just going to look for the big d that is being granted onto people’s foreheads after they vote.

The real answer here, of course, is that she has not given any thought to this. You know, the first word that popped into my mind was just the pure thoughtlessness of all of this. She has not given five minutes consideration and yet, of course, she’s out there and even, you know, you know, even Sean Hannity is taking this very seriously as a, you know, as a deep thought. There’s no deep thought here. I mean, can we just underlying the fact that it would be completely unconstitutional to deprive someone of the right to vote because they vote differently than you do.

But also, the implicit sense of entitlement that if you’re in a red state that it must always be red, right? It’s our state. We can never lose an election

again.

You can’t come here and vote against us. And again, the fact that we take her seriously, is ludicrous except we have to take her seriously. Don’t we? I mean, take her seriously because of the position she’s in. Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s a religious idea that that drives many of our ideas and that of the far right is that of an invasion. The democrats are invading. The immigrants are invading. You know, we have to protect ourselves against these outsiders who are coming in to change the good thing that we’ve got. Exactly.

And, of course, end of the real enemies or or your fellow Americans. Okay. Conspiracy theories. Paranormal. UFO’s During the entire nineteen seventy one debacle of this red die number two, parents all around America were buying Frank and Berry, so only a few days after the cereal was released, kids all across the country.

Started being rushed to hospitals. All of them had one symptom in common. Fairees of the third kind on YouTube or wherever you listen.

Say,

you wanna talk Wisconsin? Should we talk Wisconsin?

Yeah. I’ll talk Wisconsin.

I’m sitting here in Mequon, Wisconsin. You are in the People’s Republic of Madison. Am I correct about that?

That’s correct.

So tell you what I wrote this morning. Tell me whether you agree or disagree or whether you wanna, you know, revise and extend your remarks on this. I think the Democrats got exactly what they wanted last night. They got the conservative that they wanted. They had a huge turnout in this particular race, the two progressives on the ballot was a nonpartisan four way race to advance.

One of the progressive candidates, Janet, want you to say it first. Pro to say what? Pro to say what? Yes. We’re from Wisconsin.

We should be able to say these things. Jenna Pro to say with. She topped the field. She about forty six, forty eight percent of the vote. You put that together with the other progressive means that the progressive’s got about fifty four percent of the total vote, pretty impressive in closely divided race with this kind of turnout.

And they got the conservative they wanted Dan Kelly, former Supreme Court Justice edges out, Waukesha County Judge, Jennifer Dorril, for the second spot on the April ballot. So Do you agree with that, Bill? The Democrats got what they they wanted, and they got the conservative that they wanted to run against. Yeah.

I’d even go further. I think this is a very important race and people should pay attention, but I kinda think that it’s possibly over. That Dan Kelly cannot win the state of Wisconsin. Dan Kelly has already shown that he can’t win election in the state. He was pointed to the Supreme Court in two thousand sixteen by Governor Scott Walker when he ran for election in two thousand twenty — Mhmm.

— he was defeated by a significant margin. He was thumped. Yeah. And

which, by the way, never happens in Wisconsin’s incumbent Supreme Court justices rarely lose He

lost and he lost big. So he’s already proven he can’t win the state wide race. He’s got deep ties to the republican party as much as he talks about politics as being, you know, poisoned to the judicial process he steeped in politics. When you ran in two thousand and twenty, he is campaign headquarters was in the same building as the state Republican Party. He’s been hired by Republicans in the legislature to defend a skewed maps that they come up with to ensure that they maintain control of the legislature.

It was just recently reported just in this last week that He’s received a hundred and twenty thousand dollars from the Republican Party just in the last year, including some of the time that he was a candidate for Supreme Court. To give them advice on elections, including advising that the people who are part of this plot to submit fake alternative

electors to claimed that Donald Trump won the election. This is you this story only broke a few days ago. And and I’m not sure it’s been fully processed yet. In even in Wisconsin politics, which has been inundated with this race. So this is from the Journal Sentinel.

Former state Republican Chairman Andrew Hit said in the deposition last year to the House Committee that investigated January six two thousand twenty one attack on the capital that he and Kelly and Kelly had, quote, pretty extensive conversations, unquote, about the fake elector scheme, Kelly was serving as the party’s special counsel at the time. The fact is that Dan Kelly, he has been out there, and it’s not just that he’s been playing Footsie with the election denialist. I mean, he’s got a long track record of taking some pretty sketchy positions. Is law degree is from a low rated law school, Regent University, which was founded by Pat Roberts, and I don’t necessarily hold that against him. But go back to some of the other things about him.

Because, I mean, there there are so many places we could start, the abortion issue, the the jury mongering issue. But as you highlighted in your piece for the bulwark, it’s also about democracy because this is a court that came within one vote of accepting I think maybe the only place in the country accepting that Trump campaign’s very close to the supreme court for

four three against the president, but three members, three conservative members of our supreme court voted to consider these crazy arguments that were being advanced by Donald Trump claiming that he won Wisconsin collection, which he did not. You know, Dan Kelly is just steeped in this extremism he submitted when he was selected for appointment to the Supreme Court writings on which he like an affirmative action to slavery, so they were essentially the same thing. He warned that allowing same sex else to wed will eventually rob the institution of marriage of any discernible meaning. He decried abortion as, quote, a policy that has as its primary purpose, harming children. I mean, this guy is as far right as they come, and it’s all on the rack occurred.

And I don’t think there’s an appetite for that. I mean, there was another election yesterday in Wisconsin for a pivotal state senate race in which the Trump backed conspiracy a migraine Republican was wrongly defeated by a much more saying Republican member of the legislature is all relative, but yes. Yeah. So, you know, I don’t think people want to go there particularly this issue of abortion. They’re trying to paint Janet Pertesay, which is kind of the screaming radical because she said that she supports the right a woman to make their own decisions.

Well, Dan Kelly is pretty clearly declared that he will not support that right. There’s no question whatsoever. That if he is on the court when the challenge arrives there, he is going to vote to keep proportional legal in the state and completely illegal. To where it doesn’t happen at all under any circumstances?

Okay. Because this is a podcast, but you can’t see what I’m holding up in my hand. I’m I’m holding this. Massive stack of mailers that I’ve received in the last several days from Dan Kelly and Dan Kelly supporters. I held this up on the readout last night on on MSNBC for people to see how many there were.

Almost all of them are Dan Kelly talking about how pro lifey is that nobody is more pro life than than he is, that he’s been endorsed by every single anti abortion group in the state. So yes, you could criticize her to say what’s for, you know, saying her position on a number of different issues. But Dan Kelly, without any subtlety whatsoever, has also you know, signaled that he is running all out on the abortion issues. So he has made the guaranteed that the race now on April fourth is going to be a referendum on abortion, and it’s very stark. A liberal majority on the court is likely well, I mean, is is certainly not going to uphold the eighteen forty nine abortion man.

We know the conservative majority would. So it’s a very very stark black and white binary choice for the voters. And given what we’ve seen from every public opinion poll, And from the midterm elections, this is not where Republicans and conservatives, you know, this is not the hill that they should be dying on right now. If they want to win these elections. I mean, I’m guessing that Wisconsin that the numbers would be north of sixty forty in favor of abortion rights and yet Dan Kelly has basically decided to turn the Supreme Court election into a referendum on abortion rights.

So I agree with you. And I think I tweeted out, you know, sort of a short reader’s guide. I think Jennifer Doro would have been competitive in this election. I mean, I think she’s very respected in Southeastern Wisconsin. She handled the, you know, the walka shop Christmas parade murder case extremely extremely well.

I think a lot of Republicans that I was talking with last night were absolutely convinced that she was the only one who could win this race. Whereas the consensus among the people I was talking with is that Dan Kelly is gonna get beaten like a drum. But that’s why they had to kill Jennifer Dora. The democrats thought the same thing. I mean, so she got hit from both the left and the right, and she’s out now.

Yeah. But the thing they’re

gonna do is they’re going to try to claim that Jennifer to say, which is someone who is coming to the court with her mind made up about everything. Someone who cannot be trusted with the job because of her political inclinations, which is really rich because she’s not that much of an idealogue. All she has said is that she supports the right of women to choose. She said that the election maps that are drawn to ensure that Republicans stay in power our rate. They obviously are.

There’s this completely factual statement she’s referred to the conservatives on the court has been radical extremist, which they are. I mean, if you go down the list, our supreme court is, you know, they’re all together cookie I mean, these are people who are just very, very far right, who have a history of affiliation with discriminatory groups and making pronouncements about abortion and women’s rights that are just shocking. You know, Brian Hagatore, who’s the swingboat, on the court founded a Christian school which reserves the right to this day to kick out students for being gay or for having parents who happen to be gay. I mean, this is where they’re coming from and they’re trying to paint Jennifer DeSanguitz as the radical here she is not. She is fairly mainstream.

In fact, on crime, she’s been frequently overturned by the appellate courts for being too tough on criminals, not the other way around. She’s got a a record of accomplishment on the bench and as a prosecutor for twenty five years in Milwaukee County. So I think they’re gonna have to completely fabricate the case against her, I have to believe that the people in Wisconsin and the people of this country can see through that.

Well, I think that in a in a normal these would all be vulnerabilities for her. I mean, I I think that she has been pretty outspoken about how she would rule in specific cases. But I think this is also part of this this trend that we’re seeing that the that these judicial elections and a man, by the way, I am an increasing step about whether or not we should be electing justices at all. But this is the trend is is that people are basically saying, you know, these are the outcomes that are at stake, and this is you vote for me. You’ll get this outcome.

You vote for the other guy. You’ll get a different outcome. And, you know, I think this is kind of a I may write this piece. I think I’ve said this. A requiem for the independent judiciary because it has now become so partisan, it has become so political.

But I guess the other problem is that Dan Kelly is certainly no less clear about how he would vote on all of this. I mean, his criticism, you know, last night, you know, he took Ameter And he said, you know, Jennifer to say, which is promised to set aside our law and our constitution whenever they conflict with her personal values cannot be allowed to stand never before has a judicial candidate openly campaign on the specific intent to set herself above the law to put her thumb on the scales of justice blah blah blah. Well, again, Dan Kelly makes no secret how he is going to vote on each and every one of these issues, so that becomes a wash. It’s also flatly untrue. We’ve

had previous supreme court candidates, Rebecca Dallas, and Jill Kirazky, who have come out and pledged their support for reproductive choice, and they want. We’ve had candidates, Lisa Newbauer, who ran against Hagadorn in two thousand nineteen, who was afraid to say that. She tried to tried to claim that she was completely detached from political leanings of any sort even though her husband was a former Chair of the State Democratic Party, and her daughter is a Democratic lawmaker who is now the minority leader of the the state assembly. She says, you know, I asked about abortion. She says, you know, I’ll approach you with an open mind.

Well, borders don’t wanna hear that. They don’t want the the judge in in these highly partisan contests to pretend that. Ideology has nothing to do with that. It does, it matters, and it’s completely fair for candidates to talk about their values and about

their ideology because it matters. I do think that there is there’s the balance between accountability and the independence of the judiciary, and it is swung now so far away from judges being judges, but let’s not litigate that. Now now you mentioned Judge Hagadorn, Justice Hagadorn, who surprised everybody by beating Lisa Nuebauer in that race, and he was the conservative. And, you know, he had been, you know, tagged for being a founder of that conservative school. I actually think that that whole thing backfired.

I think that that helped motivate conservatives to vote for Haggard on But what’s interesting about Hagadorm is that he shocked a lot of people by showing some judicial independence that he broke with the conservative block. In a number of cases, he was the swing vote, no, not going along with that stupid Trump vote. And he’s gone both ways on all of this. But this became a big issue in this year’s election where Dan Kelly, you know, the conservative, has been criticizing Brian Hagadorn for being independent, saying, I apologize for supporting him, basically saying, I won’t be that guy. I won’t be the guy who is the unpredictable vote.

I won’t be the guy that breaks with the block. I won’t be the guy who sets aside my personal idea on the law. And he really went out of the way. And Brian Hagedorn you know, has been behaving and I’m not close to him. I don’t even know him.

He’s been behaving exactly the way that we used to think judges should behave like, okay, I’m a conservative you know, I’m not gonna rule, you know, let the conservatives win on everything. I you know, I’m going to follow the law. I’m going to follow the constitution. And he has been abs absolutely vilified by the hard megawrite for doing that. And Dan Kelly is all in on that, which tells you the distinction between what a Dan Kelly on the court would be and what a Brian Haggard one would be.

There are two kinds of conservatives. Right? I mean and Kelly’s basically saying I’m I’m full maggie here. Don’t worry about me. I’m never gonna

break ranks. I’m never gonna go rogue on you. Yeah. That’s serious too, Charlie. They claim that they will not legislate from the banks.

They claim that they will not prejudge cases. They claim that they’ll approach every case with an open minded yet when a justice comes along who who does that, does it. They cast him out and then say, you know, be gone devil. We will not have anything to do with you. There’s a historical backstory, I think, to this, how our Wisconsin Supreme Court came to be so partisan You go all the way back to two thousand and four, and there was a conservative justice, Patrick Crooks, who sided with the Liberals on the court on some key cases, some criminal justice cases, and a product liability case and the state’s leading lobby group, business lobby group, Wisconsin manufacturers and commerce, just one frankly berserk.

They said that there would be busloads of personal liability lawyers coming to Wisconsin to take advantage of this bad decision that justice Crooks had supported. They turned on him the big boy. They didn’t oppose him any, but they they cast this message that You can’t do that. You can’t demonstrate that kind of independence. And they started throwing some really big money into the elections beginning in two thousand and seven where they just completely overwhelmed spending on behalf of Annette Ziegler, who is now at the chief justice of our Wisconsin Supreme Court against a a liberal opponent.

They just tossed tons of money and outspent her tremendously, and they’ve been spending large amounts of money since. And one of the things it’s done is we’ve kind of touched on here is it’s polarized the candidates because the people who get to run and get to be nominated and get to be in contention for the Supreme Court Are the people who can attract the big spending from either the extreme right or the far left? It’s

actually even worse than you think it is, Bill. I used to be part of that world. And I I remember it one time, and the names are not totally important here. When, you know, the the conservative establishment had decided on a certain candidate running for Supreme Court in a certain year. They had lined up behind this one candidate until a billionaire donor named Diane Hendrix from Janesville, decided that she wanted one of her personal friends to run instead.

Somebody who had presided over, I think her daughter’s wedding or something, and the guy was manifestly just completely terrible. To totally unqualified. But she gets on the phone to the people in in these business organizations and says, no, I want this guy to be the candidate and not to this other person. And guess what happened. They went along with it.

One billionaire chose that candidate. Here’s another little footnote for people who like who can tolerate digressions. I mentioned Brian Hagadorn and how the conservative movement just hates the fact that he does not vote with them all down the line. The the weird story that I’m gonna tell about Donald Trump and Brian Hagadorn. Mhmm.

So there was an election for governor last year, and we also had a Republican primary. The leading candidate for governor who I think probably might have won in and off your election, we don’t know. The former lieutenant governor Rebecca Clayfish had been with Scott Walker’s lieutenant governor for eight years and had, I think, had the support of most of the Republican establishment. She was opposed by a businessman named Tim Michaels who sort of parachuted in and god been living in Connecticut for years and hadn’t done much. But he comes in and he has one key thing going for him.

He had Donald Trump’s endorsement. And the story is that he went down and I may mangle some of the details else here, but not the the basic story. He and his supporters, like Ryan’s previous, go down the Mar a Lager to convince Trump to support him, Tim Michaels, over former lieutenant governor Rebecca Claifish, and one of the arguments they used, and I kid you not. Was that Rebecca Clayfish’s teenage high school daughter had gone to prom with Brian Hagadorn’s son. And Brian Hagadorn, because he had ruled against Trump, was considered to be so toxic.

Yeah. That there are people who think that was one of the reasons why Donald Trump decided that he was gonna throw a Beck of clayfish under the bus, and as a result, endorses Michaels who wins the Republican nomination for governor and then goes on to lose the general election.

Yeah. So

Brian Hagadorn story has

a long tail

long and very strange tail to it, doesn’t it? It’s

just another example of Trump, you know, knee capping his own party by favoring people who are too extreme to be elected. What also that understanding that the judges are supposed

to be loyal to me that if I’ve appointed you or I supported you or you’re supposed to be a conservative, you must rule my way because other, you know, I will retaliate against you. Yeah. Okay. So I agree with you that Dan Kelly is going to have a very, very uphill fight. One other thing on because you were mentioning money and then the importance of money.

I do a little bit of insight into how he got on the court in the first place. There were a lot of really, really good candidates that Scott Walker could have picked for this. Kelly was not the obvious candidate by any means. He had never, you know, served as a judge, you know, in any capacity whatsoever. But as you have written, he was the chairman of the federalist society unit in Milwaukee, and the national federalist society decided to go all in for him.

So they basically called up and said, you know what, if you want any of our, you know, outside money, you know, potentially millions of dollars, you have to go with Kelly. We’re not gonna back any of your other candidates. So you put Kelly on the court and you’ll get the outside money. And then, of course, Walker goes along and puts Kelly on who goes on to Blue. But what reminded me about that was the reports that Kelly was going around during the primary and saying, you know, you should go with me because I’m the only one that can bring in the outside money.

The outside special interest ideological money —

Yes. —

will come with me. So He treats that as if this is a major asset that because I am going to be so reliably and predictably right wing, that all of these national right wing money pockets will open for me and they won’t open up for anybody else. That’s how he got on the court in the first place. That’s how he wants to get back on the court. I think that was

his most persuasive argument here in the primary. It’s the thing that gave him the edge over Doro as he was able to effectively claim that he will have the ability to break in the big box and she might not have. The thing is though there was already guaranteed that this is going to be a hugely expensive election, and it’s going to be, obviously, I said before, a record setting and how much we spent. I kind of wonder if we haven’t gotten to the point where there’s so much money be spent on these elections that money is no longer the main factor. There is not gonna be a soul in the state of Wisconsin who won’t see a Brazilian commercials from either side that won’t see, you know, ad after ad after ad.

It’s just gonna be saturation coverage, everyone is going to get their message out Jan at Burnaby, which is going to have tons of money that she can use for her campaign. So, Dan Kelly, And I think maybe that kind of evens out where people are going to make a decision based on who they really want on the court. And then the moment that we have now, I don’t think The court is ready to brace a Donald

Trump supporting conspiracy, mongering, extreme conservative. How do I say this without something like it’s just the the oldest cliche in the world, which is it comes down to turn out. These races are determined by which side is the most motivated and historically conservatives were much more motivated in these off your low turnout elections. That’s why conservatives have dominated. That I think has changed.

It changed in twenty twenty when Dan Kelley went down the first time. You’re seeing the motivation of the voters yesterday. That turnout just blew out all kinds of records, you know, including the twenty twenty turnout. So if in fact the democrats, the progressive, turn out a big vote in Dane County and they turn out a big vote in Milwaukee, and that they hold down his margins in the WOW counties, they’ll be in a very good shape. Isn’t that really what it comes down to in Wisconsin right now?

You know, which side is the most fired up? Now there’s gonna be tremendous effort to, you know, to fire up gun rights activists and pro lifers, etcetera. To come out and defend America against Janet Protosaywitz. But I think at the moment, you’d have to say that the winds are very much at their back, especially because Dan Kelly, the more people find out about him, the harder it is going to be to sell him to some of these swing voters, particularly female voters, women voters, in Waukesha Ozaki, Washington counties with the so called Wau counties. I agree.

So let’s talk about this great piece you have in the bulwark today. I love the stuff you’ve been doing these roundups. MAGA sees the world as a dark and dangerous place. You run down a list. Of all the things that are keeping the far right up at night.

And it’s a great reminder. How much of their politics has become just obsessed with the things we are absolutely terrified of all of our paranoid preconceptions from COVID vaccines, to the borders, to the county public schools, to the executive branch regime, the right is scaring itself silly. So can we just run down the things that is giving maga ulcers these days, self induced ulcers

I love that phrase, which isn’t the subset of the piece that the right is scaring it so silly. It’s just so literally true. You know, there’s this meme that’s out there about how people are suddenly dropping dead because of the COVID vaccine. Every time somebody dies suddenly, there’s someone there rushing into claim that’s because they were vaccinated. You know, just this crazy stuff that Trump talked about, the Pink Care Communist who are teaching our kids in schools, which is this extreme portrayal of the danger that’s posed by the woke left to our children, which these people buy into and immigration about how the country is being overrun every day by immigrants flooding across the border with fentanyl in their hands.

I quoted from remarks that our senator Ron Johnson made to that crazy select sub committee on the weaponization of the federal government the other day where he talks about, you know, all of these threats against the Republic that are being waged by the scary people in the Biden administration. It’s messages just corrupt individuals within

federal agencies.

It’s just be afraid. Be very afraid. It’s the The message of the megawatt right is to scare people about the danger that they face unless they embrace these far right Republicans.

Well, that’s the brand though. I mean, this has been coming for some time. You keep the perpetual outrage machine constantly working. You have to ly up to any of things you’re you’re outraged about. And fear mongering has always been a feature of American politics.

It feels as if right now, all the incentives are to turn the dial up to eleven and just keep it there all the time.

Yes. And there’s another thing that’s happening that I I highlight there is this idea that Joe Biden can do no right. Almost by definition, everything he does is wrong from the mega right. So, you know, and even if he does something one way and they say, he should do it this way. And then he does it that way.

He’s still rough. You know, he just can’t win. I think people have to see too that it’s so shadi and opportunistic to declare that every single move that he makes, every single thing that he says is evidence of his own fitness.

It’s actually interesting to to watch so, like, with the balloon. If he’d shut down the balloon too early, he would have been reckless. If he waits, he’s weak. It’s just whatever he does. And I think this is important to understand as you listen to say, you know, Ron DeSantis commenting on Ukraine.

I mean, I don’t think he’s got deep thoughts about foreign policy. But the one thing that you can be absolutely certain of is that whatever Joe Biden does, he will say the opposite. Ben, you know, I mean, look, I mean, that’s there’s a certain partisan thing here. But they also seem to be just looking for things to be upset about. I mean, look, there are some big things that are legitimate in American politics be upset about the state of the economy.

You know? You can have a debate about, you know, immigration. You can have a debate about free trade. But they were like, look king for things. As you point out, one of the things that keeps on night is that the fear that woke culture is turning M and M characters into lesbians.

I mean, you really have to be reaching. To be thinking that this is something that I need to really be concerned about. I mean, and and Tucker Carlson. I mean,

he did indignantly. This was a big thing on his show. Right? Sure. Sure.

It’s a whole range machine that constantly needs to be fed with something that you would be

up all great, Joel. If you’re upset about M and M’s becoming lesbians, then But

wouldn’t it be nice if we could just back off a little and saved. For instance, we’d like the president’s remarks yesterday and worse saw that, you know, he represented the country well and he said some things that we can all agree on. I mean,

wouldn’t that be nice if that were possible within our political system? It would be. It actually would be. And that that’s what really struck me and, you know, go back to the beginning that I can imagine every Republican in America listening to that speech in a different era and reacting completely differently. Just close your eyes.

Imagine those words being spoken by Ronald Reagan any of the bushes. If John McCain had said something like that, they would have thought it was it was absolutely wonderful and there was maybe even a time when they they would have listed what John F. Kennedy say something like that. They would have thought, this is wonderful. This is an American moment and and now we’re never gonna get back to that.

Yeah. Bill leaders, thank you so much for coming on the podcast for all of your contributions. Bill is a writer based in Madison, Wisconsin, former editor, now editor at large at the progressive. One of our most valuable contributors to the Bulwark and a good friend of mine for thirty nine years, you can read his piece today, which is, like, it it’s really a great compilation. A catalog of the GOP’s paranoid preoccupations.

You can read that in today’s board. And of course, he’s also been extensively covering the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race built. Good talking with you again. My question earlier. And thank you all for listening to today’s Bulwark podcast.

I’m Charlie Sykes. We’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll do this all over again.

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