Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor defeated conservative Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar on Tuesday, handing liberals a commanding 5-2 majority on the state Supreme Court, a margin that, as Fox News reported, will secure left-leaning control of the court until at least 2030.
With most votes counted, Taylor held a 19-point lead over Lazar, a margin far larger than either side expected. The result cements a trajectory that began in 2023, when liberals first seized the bench after a decade and a half of conservative control. Now they have widened the gap from 4-3 to 5-2, and the consequences for Wisconsin's political landscape could be enormous.
Taylor will replace a retiring conservative justice. The officially nonpartisan race drew attention because the court is expected to hear cases on abortion rights, congressional redistricting, and union rights, issues that touch every corner of the battleground state and carry national implications.
Unlike last year's Wisconsin Supreme Court contest, which drew a flood of outside money and out-of-state door-knockers, this cycle played out with far less national fanfare. That relative quiet may have worked in liberals' favor. Lower-profile judicial races often reward the side with more motivated base voters, and Democrats plainly had them.
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin wasted no time claiming credit. In a social media post, Martin declared that "Wisconsin voters showed up and sent another big message to Republicans, securing a liberal majority until 2030!" The tone was triumphant, and not without reason. Republicans have controlled the Wisconsin state legislature for fifteen years, yet the judiciary has now slipped firmly out of their reach.
Taylor struck a similar note at her victory celebration, telling supporters:
"Tonight the people of Wisconsin stood up for our courts and freedoms, our democracy, our elections and a strong state Supreme Court that will protect the independence of our beloved state."
Lazar, for her part, conceded but signaled that conservatives are not walking away from the fight. She told supporters that "the fight is not over and we will keep fighting for our courts because they are that important." Whether that fight can translate into results before 2030 is an open question.
The practical stakes of this election are hard to overstate. Since liberals took the majority in 2023, the court has already reversed several election-related rulings issued by the prior conservative majority, including one that had banned absentee ballot drop boxes. A 5-2 margin gives liberal justices even more room to move aggressively on contested legal questions without worrying about a single defection flipping the outcome.
Redistricting is near the top of the list. Wisconsin's congressional map has been a perennial flashpoint, and the court now has the votes to reshape it. That prospect should concern anyone who believes courts should not be in the business of redrawing political boundaries to suit one party's preferences.
Abortion policy is another front. Wisconsin's pre-Roe statute criminalizing most abortions has been in legal limbo, and the newly fortified liberal majority will almost certainly have the final say on its enforceability. Union rights cases round out the docket of politically charged disputes heading toward the bench.
For Republicans who have spent fifteen years building a legislative majority in Madison, the court now stands as a direct counterweight, one they cannot check through the normal legislative process.
The 2025 contest offers a cautionary tale. Last year, with the court's majority on the line, conservatives pulled out every stop. Then-Trump adviser Elon Musk headlined a rally days before the election, donned a cheesehead hat, and personally handed out $1 million checks to voters. Musk and his super PACs spent more than $2 million to support conservative candidate Brad Schimel's campaign.
It was not enough. The liberal candidate won by a larger-than-expected margin, capturing the 4-3 majority. This year, Musk appeared at a town hall meeting in Green Bay in March, but the pattern repeated itself, only worse. Taylor's 19-point margin dwarfed the previous liberal victory.
The lesson is not that money and star power are useless. It is that Wisconsin conservatives have a structural enthusiasm problem in judicial elections. When the stakes are framed around abortion and democracy, as liberals have successfully done in two consecutive cycles, the right has struggled to match the left's turnout energy. That gap will not close on its own, and the broader national debate over election rules and judicial power only raises the pressure.
Wisconsin is not the only place where the judiciary has become a proxy battlefield. Across the country, progressives have invested heavily in state court races, recognizing that state supreme courts often have the final word on redistricting, voting procedures, and social policy. The results in Wisconsin show that strategy paying dividends.
The judicial showdown came six months ahead of November's elections, and both parties will read it as a signal. Democrats will treat it as proof that their base remains fired up. Republicans will need to reckon with the fact that even in a state where they dominate the legislature, they are losing the courts, and losing them badly.
The debate between Taylor and Lazar, hosted by WISN 12 News at WISN-TV in Milwaukee on April 2, gave voters a look at the candidates' contrasting visions. But in the end, the ideological composition of the court mattered more to voters than any single exchange on the debate stage. That is the reality of judicial elections in a polarized era, and it is a reality that extends well beyond Wisconsin's borders.
What should trouble conservatives most is not just the loss, but the margin. A 19-point defeat in a battleground state signals something deeper than a bad cycle. It suggests that the right has not yet found a compelling message for judicial races, one that can compete with the left's well-practiced framing around rights and freedoms.
Meanwhile, voting policy fights continue at every level of government, and the courts that adjudicate those fights are increasingly populated by judges who ran on progressive platforms. That trend will not reverse itself through wishful thinking.
Taylor's win locks a liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court until 2030. That means every major legal challenge in the state, from redistricting to election administration to labor law, will be decided by a bench tilted heavily to the left. Republicans in the legislature can pass whatever they want. The court can undo it.
For voters who believe courts should interpret the law rather than advance an agenda, the Wisconsin result is a wake-up call. Conservatives showed up to vote. They just did not show up in large enough numbers, and the candidates they fielded could not close the gap.
Until the right treats judicial elections with the same urgency and discipline it brings to legislative races, results like this one will keep coming. Courts matter. Wisconsin just proved it, again.
