Reactionary outrage feels great, but scapegoating won’t win back the court.
In the raw hours after the latest Wisconsin Supreme Court election slipped away, the knives came out almost instantly. Social media lit up and threads boiled over with one name: Brian Schimming. The state GOP chairman, they declared, had blown it again. Fundraising shortfalls, poor ground game, weak messaging—everything could be laid at his feet. The buck stops with the chair, after all, right? Fair enough on paper. However, turning Schimming into a singular scapegoat is not just lazy; it is a self-defeating analysis that guarantees conservatives will keep losing these high-stakes judicial races for years to come. There is simply more to the formula.
Yes, the chairman bears responsibility. No one is saying that the party is faultless, but the mere mention that there is a more nuanced position to be had is met with immediate blowback for not simply calling for Schimming to resign. This is not to say that he has done enough to retain his position.
Wisconsin Republicans have struggled for years with the kind of sustained operation that Democrats have built in judicial and down-ballot races. Money is tighter on our side, and the ability to treat “nonpartisan” Supreme Court contests as the partisan fights they truly are has been inconsistent at best. If the party cannot compete on resources or turnout mechanics, that is on leadership. No one is disputing that.
Sole blame is a cop-out. It lets everyone else off the hook and ensures the root causes remain unaddressed. Conservatives will keep watching liberal majorities entrench themselves on the court while we chase the next easy scapegoat.
I would argue that candidate quality is the singular biggest problem contributing to Tuesday’s loss. Lazar is, by all conservative metrics, a competent and well-respected justice. Her dedication to impartiality and judicial restraint is admirable in a vacuum. In the real world of Wisconsin politics, to telegraph this is electoral suicide. The conservative legal community will probably not like to hear this, but it is reality.
For better or worse, voters want to hear the issues discussed by judicial candidates. The legal establishment resents this and I do too. But I resent the idea of witnessing a 7-0 liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court more. So, time to get with the times. Brad Schimel had a good attempt to straddle a line between a political partisan and a non-partisan judge. However, the branding by the left as a bought-and-paid-for Elon Musk asset was a major messaging hurdle that defined Schimel for the rest of the race. Future candidates will have to be more aggressive in this regard if they want to energize our voters. You can message intelligently while still holding to “judicial ethics”; it just requires being creative.
Another major and unavoidable mistake was Lazar’s insisting she was “not a conservative” and “not a Republican.” She went further, signaling to liberal voters to go out and support her. “Do you want one view on the Supreme Court?” Yes, they absolutely do and without question. I’m not sure what indicated that other than the last two previous elections. God bless Lazar for having that much faith in our system, but again, that is not the reality we live in. This could be described as unintentional self-sabotage.
When the candidate makes it difficult for the party to rally its own voters, she undercuts the partisan energy needed to overcome Democratic turnout. Money and infrastructure problems at the party become symptoms, not the disease. However, in the case that the party is already struggling to fundraise, this makes the prospect even more impossible (we are here).Going forward, we should have nominees who will own the conservative label, who will frame the race in terms voters actually understand, and who will not spend precious airtime reassuring us about “judicial ethics” that no one outside of the Bar Association understands.
None of this absolves the state party apparatus.
Infrastructure and fundraising failures are real and chronic. It is an essential issue that must be addressed. But they did not occur in isolation. Lazar also struggled with fundraising, clear messaging, and infrastructure. An important distinction that I believe many are missing is that the party is not a substitute for the work of the candidate. The state party is there to supplement and augment the candidate’s efforts. To provide extra resources on top of what the candidate has already done. In many respects, how does the state party augment the work of a candidate who barely calls herself a conservative? Do you see the predicament the party found itself in?
Maria’s admirable personal qualities did not translate into the political toughness the moment demanded. That is not her fault alone; it is the fault of a system that elevated her without demanding she run like the stakes required. Continuing down the same road is how we lose the next race, and the one after that.
Blaming Brian Schimming feels satisfying. It gives frustrated conservatives a target and spares them the uncomfortable work of self-examination. We can all contribute a little bit more. But scapegoats do not deliver majorities. Root-cause analysis does. Until we start treating these judicial races like the political campaigns that they are, and start requiring some ideological clarity in judicial contests, the structural fixes in Madison will be little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
If the only lesson Republicans draw is “fire the chair,” we will be writing this same column after the next Supreme Court election—only with a different name at the top.
