Early voting has started in Wisconsin ahead of the April 1 election, and voters have some critical decisions to make. They’ll decide the next Wisconsin Supreme Court justice and choose the next state Superintendent of Public Instruction. These two positions are nonpartisan, but each race is still heavily divided by politics.
Residents will also decide the future of Wisconsin’s voter ID requirement. It’s been state law since 2011 and permanently went into effect in 2016. But Republicans put it on the spring ballot hoping it will become a constitutional amendment, making it harder to contest or overturn in the future.
To help better understand this election, I reached out to Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel contributor Kristin Brey. A Wisconsin native, she’s covered politics for years, providing commentary and analysis on candidates and the issues. You’ve likely come across one of her videos on social media.
If you haven’t encountered her work yet — or have and were curious about the person behind them — we spend a few minutes at the start of our conversation getting to know Kristin before diving into the spring election.
The following has been edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full conversation using the player above and get more information about voting and the spring election at MyVote Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee’s website.
We'll start with the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, for the highest court in the state. Wisconsin is having this race because longtime liberal judge Ann Walsh Bradley is retiring after 30 years. What are your thoughts on just the fact that this race is happening right now in this political climate that we have?
Well, it's so interesting because we have another one next year. This is not going to end, especially if [conservative judge] Brad Schimel wins. If he wins, in 2026 we'll have another Supreme Court election that could also tip [the court] back to being liberal. If Susan Crawford wins, it's going to stay liberal until 2028.
One of the last things Scott Walker did when he was still governor was change the state finance laws. And so, prior to that, it was reasonable amounts of money that went into these races. It was very important, but I think the amount of legislating through the courts wasn't as intense as it is now because we're so divided, especially since Governor Evers has been governor.
The amount that the Republican legislature wants to do that he vetoes, that they then either put to a referendum … or they sue. And when it was a conservative court, they got more of the things they wanted. So it's intensified how much actual law gets decided through the courts now, thus making it that much more vital for who is on the court.
Crawford is backed by Democrats. Schimel is backed by Republicans and conservatives, but not just in Wisconsin. This is also at the national level, where they have people campaigning for them and donating and giving them money. However, the court position is nonpartisan. What are some of the major decisions the court could be deciding in the near future? Abortion rights and labor unions, which is Act 10, are two of them.
Those are the two big ones, I would say.
There are two different abortion cases. There's the challenge to the 1849 abortion ban that went into place when Roe v. Wade fell. And that, as of right now, a Dane County court judge deemed that not viable. So, right now, you still can up to 22 weeks … access abortion care in Wisconsin. They’ve had the hearing for that case but haven’t ruled on it. So if they don't rule on it before the new judge is inaugurated in August, the new makeup of that court will decide that case.
There is also a separate case brought by Planned Parenthood challenging that there is a constitutional right to abortion looking at Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Constitution.
There is also another Dane County judge who ruled the collective bargaining parts of Act 10 are unconstitutional. And I think a lot of people would say that was the fork in the road as far as Wisconsin politics and how it became as divided as we are. That would be a really big deal if they struck down because that's the heart of Act 10 — banning collective bargaining for public employees.
Redistricting is a big one. We had new maps going into our November election, and despite it being a very good year for Republicans across the country, Democrats still picked up 14 seats in the legislature. Republicans still have the majority in both chambers [in Wisconsin], but it's a little bit more representative than it had been, where it was basically a super majority.
We know that Crawford supports a woman's right to choose. Schimel opposes it, but he says he will let voters decide. Where do they fall on the other issues?
Well, this is what's tricky, right? Because I'm getting stronger and stronger feelings on whether it's a good idea for us to elect our justices, but that's a different story for a different day.
Because they had their debate last week, and what they need to say as they're campaigning is that they will look at the law. They will be impartial. They can't comment on open litigation. So it's hard to pin down what they're actually going to do because they have to hear the case.
And that's why it's hard to make nonpartisan, impartial positions campaign for something.
But I think what we know is Susan Crawford was a former assistant attorney general when she was a private practicing lawyer. She defended a lot of Democratic causes, between trying to strike down the voter ID laws, rights to abortion, transparency in government — versus Brad Schimel, who was the attorney general for Scott Walker. He lost very closely to Josh Kaul in 2018. I know, there are — at least where the Elon Musk comes in — his conversations about upholding a Trump agenda.
The implication is that one is going to be more liberal, and one is going to be more conservative about a lot of these issues as far as how they will vote that aligns with the party who was backing them.
As we've stated, the court leans more liberal, four to three, but with Walsh leaving, this could change everything. The court could be more conservative. Let's talk about the implications.
Well, it's interesting because Brian Hagedorn, who — when he ran in 2019 and won — was kind of projected as this uber-conservative, and he is a conservative person. But he's actually one of the people in the court who actually looks at the law, so he's weirdly a swing vote.
So it will be, ideologically, that if Brad Schimel were to win, it could be three and three, and then that swing vote. Because Brian Hagedorn was the deciding vote when Trump was trying to challenge the election, and he voted against Trump because he was looking at the law. And that's what we would want all of them to do, ideally
But if it were a more conservative court, some of the Democratic gains in this last year, or last two years, I should say, since Janet Protasiewicz was on the court, could be on the line.
Now we move to the race for state Superintendent of Public Instruction. The Department of Public Instruction is a state agency that advances public education and the libraries in Wisconsin. The state superintendent leads this office, and oversees education policy, money for schools and teacher licensing. Right now, Dr. Jill Underly is running for re-election against Brittany Kinser, a former teacher, principal and education consultant.
I've gotten to interview both. I think the similarity is they both genuinely care about children's education. And I think most people who are involved in children's education genuinely want better schools. The big divide is how to get there. And the big divide becomes advocating for school vouchers, school choice, charter schools, which ultimately splits the money between two different school systems.
I'm a public-school kid. Well, I did both. I left my private elementary school to go to the public school in Madison because I was like, “I need more diversity in my life.” I don't think I used those words, but it was very much like, “I don't fit in here,” and I did great at the public schools in Madison. I very much believe in public schools, but I also would never be so pretentious to tell another parent, “You shouldn't have access to the best school that you can send your kid to.”
Underly has a long career of pro-public school. She was a teacher, a principal, a district superintendent, and I think she was assistant superintendent before she won in 2021. So she is very much the public-school candidate.
Brittany Kinzer, her entire background pretty much is charter schools, privatization of schools. She works as a consultant, she was a lobbyist, CEO of a pro-charter-school organization. And I think when I interviewed her, it was before she had announced her candidacy for this, but she had started a Wisconsin Reads literacy program.
It's interesting, this position, because she is on record a Democrat. And yet, that issue [school choice] gets adopted by Republicans. So she is backed by Wisconsin Republicans. She is running a more conservative campaign, even if she herself is not a conservative.
It’s hard because we live in Milwaukee. And especially after this last year, I don’t care how pro-public school you are, you can’t die on the hill that MPS is working. That is part of the oversight the superintendent has — oversight into all 421 school districts.
That goes into the question that MPS is not obviously the only school district in the state, but it needs a lot of attention. So whoever gets chosen for this, how does that, or how could that impact the future of MPS?
I would need to know more, because the oversight of last year when the paperwork didn't get filed, it is unclear to me. I feel like the journalists were doing the best they could to try to get transparent answers of, “Where was the oversight from the public instruction department? How much more should they have gotten involved sooner when they kept missing deadlines?” I'm not familiar enough with policies and how it's supposed to go, but something was missing there.
I just found this out this year: We're the only state who elects this top position and also does not have a state education board. So they don't report to the governor. They don't report to a board. They only report to voters every four years when they're re-elected.
It's a very powerful position, and they propose a budget of what they say the schools need. Obviously, that's up to the legislature as they craft that, and we're in a budget year right now. They will decide how much is allocated to schools, and then it's partially up to the superintendent as far as this is the money that we have, how does this get dispersed, to interpret the law as far as the legislature makes it and the governor signs it, that affects schools.
But also, if Trump dismantles the Department of Education and sends it back to the states, even though the states are already in charge of education, it's basically just pulling funding and especially pulling funding for special education and losing protection for different civil rights so kids with disabilities can go to school. This position becomes even more important as far as how much more power they have.
Student achievement. Some people say Underly lowered the threshold for student achievement, and now that's changed the standards. She has said she actually implemented other standards for students. Kinzer wants to boost achievement — reading, writing, math — and thinks that students will do well with those challenges under her leadership. How do voters really break that down? You could also throw in the fourth- and eighth-grade rise in test scores, but that's still just a snapshot.
It is just a snapshot.
The changing of the standards was an interesting move — and to not have better messaging around it, to not have better mapping, because that was the big criticism. If you change the standards, even if the argument is that it more accurately reflects achievement and how schools are doing, but as far as I understand there was no clear throughline to be able to compare this to last year. It's like wiping everything clean and starting over without any understanding of how this translates to an actual progression, like on a timeline.
With Brittany Kinzer I think there is an understanding of an outside viewpoint, a change-agent potentially.
This race is usually not that close, and it's been pretty much always the pro-public-school superintendent wins. There's a lot of people who I think are frustrated with the state of our schools. If that's totally fair, I don't know, because you look at Act 10, you look at the fact that we have a teacher shortage, you look at still the fallout of COVID, you look at that screens in schools, the gamification, all this ed tech and stuff, and there's a lot of things beyond the scope, I think, of what a state superintendent can do that is impacting kids.
One last question before you go is on the state referendum. We have one on the ballot here in Wisconsin. And it asks voters if a ballot photo ID, with exceptions, should be required by law to vote. Anything quick you can mention on that?
What’s funny about that is it's already a law. It's been a law since 2011. And so you probably, every time you go to vote, know that you have to show your ID. What this referendum is asking is if we should change our state constitution to require voter ID.
The reason why Republicans have passed this through two legislative sessions, because we don't have a direct referendum, you and I can't get enough signatures to get something on the ballot. It has to come from the legislature. Why they're doing this is so that it's a lot harder to ever undo.
Because if, say, Democrats ever had a trifecta in the assembly, the senate and the governorship, they could undo the voter ID law if it wasn't in the constitution. Or if another legal challenge came and a judge decided to rule against it, it's a lot easier to do that if it's just a law and not in the constitution. So if this passes, it changes the constitution. If it doesn't pass, literally nothing changes.
