Wisconsin voters on Tuesday chose a state supreme court judge to fill the seat of retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley, in a race that could widen the court’s liberal majority. Chris Taylor, a liberal judge on the state’s court of appeals and a former Democratic lawmaker, was facing Maria Lazar, a conservative appeals judge and former deputy state attorney general.
A Taylor victory would give liberals a 5-2 bloc on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, extending the 4-3 majority they won in 2023. That flipped the court for the first time in more than a decade and came in what was then the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history, according to the Brennan Center. The stakes again drew big money in 2025, when the court race topped $100 million and attracted Elon Musk’s involvement before Susan Crawford won.
This year’s contest was quieter and less expensive than those two previous state supreme court elections, but it still came with a clear partisan edge in a court that is officially non-partisan. Taylor significantly outraised Lazar, yet more than half of voters remained undecided in a March Marquette Law School poll conducted less than a month from election day. That left the outcome in a state of suspense even as both candidates appealed to voters in one of the nation’s most closely watched swing states.
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Bradley has served on the court since 2015 and was the author of the opinion that banned dropboxes, a ruling liberals later overturned after taking control. The court has repeatedly been pulled into disputes over how Wisconsin runs its elections, a pattern that has turned the bench into a central battleground in state politics. Victoria Bassetti, a democracy expert, said Wisconsin has been in the crosshairs of extensive litigation over the way the state runs its elections and added that the race may look like a sleeper contest but is anything but low-stakes, because these issues never go to sleep in Wisconsin.
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That is what made Tuesday’s result matter beyond the empty seat itself. A Taylor win would not just preserve liberal control; it would deepen it at a moment when the court is likely to remain central to election fights in Wisconsin, where legal challenges have become part of the political landscape.
