Chris Taylor, a liberal Wisconsin judge, won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday, defeating conservative appeals court judge Maria Lazar in the race for a ten-year term and expanding liberals’ majority on the court to a 5-2 split. The result hands another long-term lever of power to the same judicial machinery that decides what counts as law for everyone else, with the court now locked into a liberal majority until at least 2030, assuming every justice finishes out their terms. **Who Holds the Gavel** Taylor is a former Democratic state representative and current state appellate judge. His victory adds to a string of special election wins for Democrats, which Politico said suggests a difficult political environment for the GOP heading into November’s midterms. The race itself drew far less attention than last year’s contest, when Crawford beat her conservative opponent by over 10 points and Elon Musk, described as the world’s richest man and a Republican megadonor, poured millions into an effort to defeat Crawford, arguing the fate of “Western civilization” was at stake. That is the familiar spectacle: billionaires, parties, and judges all circling the same institution, while ordinary people are told to watch the scoreboard and call it democracy. The court’s composition matters because it sits above the people, deciding the terms of life through rulings that reach far beyond campaign slogans and polished legal language. **What the Court Has Already Done** Politico said the court’s liberals ordered new legislative maps in Wisconsin in 2023, effectively ending a GOP gerrymander that had lasted for over a decade. Last July, the panel overturned Wisconsin’s 176-year-old abortion ban by a 4-3 majority. It also said the court ruled last year that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers could use his veto pen to lock in a 400-year increase in funding for schools. Those decisions show how power moves through institutions that present themselves as neutral referees while shaping the conditions everyone else must live under. The court can redraw political boundaries, erase old bans, and bless executive maneuvers that lock in funding decisions for generations. The people at the bottom do not get to sit on the bench; they live with the consequences. **The Election Theater Continues** Politico said conservatives had not won a Wisconsin Supreme Court victory since a narrow 6,000-vote win in 2019, and that in the years since liberal judges Jill Karofsky, Janet Protasiewicz, Susan Crawford and Taylor had won easy victories in a Wisconsin spring electorate trending firmly to the left. The same report said the election attracted far less attention than last year’s race, despite the court’s continuing role in deciding major issues. Politico also said neither party expects the fall governor’s race to follow the same exact path as the spring Supreme Court campaign, with November elections in the battleground state routinely decided by slim margins. It named Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes as the top Democrats running for the right to face Trump-endorsed Rep. Tom Tiffany for governor in November. The whole setup remains a contest between managed factions, with the public invited to choose which set of officials will administer the same hierarchy. Taylor’s win may shift the balance inside the court, but the structure itself stays intact: judges, governors, donors, and party machines deciding the terms while everyone else is expected to wait for the next round of ballots.
