Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley is apologizing for columns she wrote 24 years ago as a student at Marquette University in which she called gays “queers” and said Americans were “either totally stupid or entirely evil” for electing President Bill Clinton. Credit: Rick Wood

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Madison — Newly appointed state Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in a student newspaper 24 years ago that she had no sympathy for AIDS patients because they had effectively chosen to kill themselves, called gays "queers" and said Americans were "either totally stupid or entirely evil" for electing President Bill Clinton.

In one piece, she wrote people would be better off getting AIDS than cancer under Clinton because it would get more funding.

"How sad that the lives of degenerate drug addicts and queers are valued more than the innocent victims of more prevalent ailments," wrote Bradley, who then had the last name of Grassl.

GOP Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged Monday he was not aware of her Marquette University writings before he appointed her three times to judicial positions. He said it was clear her views had changed.

Bradley declined an interview request, but in a written statement said she was embarrassed about the pieces she wrote "as a very young student, upset about the outcome of that presidential election" in 1992, when Clinton first won the presidency.

"To those offended by comments I made as a young college student, I apologize, and assure you that those comments are not reflective of my worldview," her statement said. "These comments have nothing to do with who I am as a person or a jurist, and they have nothing to do with the issues facing the voters of this state."

But at the time she wrote for the Marquette Tribune, she relished taking a controversial stance.

In a column that appeared soon after Clinton was elected, she wrote: "Either you condone drug use, homosexuality, AIDS-producing sex, adultery and murder and are therefore a bad person, or you didn't know that he supports abortion on demand and socialism, which means you are dumb. Have I offended anyone? Good — some of you really need to wake up."

Calling Clinton a murderer because of his support for abortion rights, she wrote that anyone who voted for him was "obviously immoral."

That column, as well as two Marquette Tribune letters to the editor she penned in 1992, were unearthed by the progressive group One Wisconsin Now, which distributed them Monday after a Capitol news conference. That group and the liberal People for the American Way called for her to resign from office — an idea Bradley's campaign manager called absurd.

They were released four weeks before voters decide whether to give Bradley a full 10-year term on the court in the April 5 election. She faces Appeals Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg, who decried Bradley for her writings.

They also come as a conservative group prepares to launch a television ad Tuesday attacking Kloppenburg for a ruling she signed onto that allowed a child sex offender to get an additional hearing, though the criminal's attempt to overturn his conviction so far has been unsuccessful. The Wisconsin Alliance for Reform is spending more than $700,000 on the ad over the next two weeks.

The column and letters to the editor include these statements:

■ "Perhaps AIDS Awareness should seek to educate us with their misdirected compassion for the degenerates who basically commit suicide through their behavior."

■ "But the homosexuals and drug addicts who do essentially kill themselves and others through their own behavior deservedly receive none of my sympathy."

■ "This brings me to my next point — why is a student government on a Catholic campus attempting to bring legitimacy to an abnormal sexual preference?"

■ "Heterosexual sex is very healthy in a loving martial relationship. Homosexual sex, however, kills."

■ "I will certainly characterize whomever transferred their infected blood (to a transfusion recipient) a homosexual or drug-addicted degenerate and a murderer."

■ "We've just had an election (in 1992) which proves the majority of voters are either totally stupid or entirely evil."

■ Clinton "supports the Freedom of Choice Act, which will allow women to mutilate and dismember their helpless children through their ninth month of pregnancy. Anyone who could consciously vote for such a murderer is obviously immoral."

Walker appointed Bradley to the Supreme Court in October to finish the term of Justice N. Patrick Crooks, who had died three weeks earlier.

It was the third time Walker had put her on the bench. He appointed her to a seat on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in 2012 and the District 1 Court of Appeals in May 2015.

"Justice Bradley appropriately made it clear today that a column written in college does not reflect her views as a Supreme Court justice, a Court of Appeals judge, a circuit court judge or as an attorney," Walker said in a one-sentence statement issued by his office.

Walker spokeswoman Laurel Patrick did not say whether Walker believed that he should have been informed of her college writings in advance or whether he would have appointed her to the court if he had known about them.

Scott Foval, a regional political coordinator for People for the American Way, criticized Walker for the appointment, saying he should have more thoroughly scrutinized her.

Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now, said Bradley's writings from more than two decades ago were relevant now because of the tenor of her comments and her unwillingness during the campaign to talk about her views on social issues and other matters that may come before the court.

In her statement, Bradley stressed that the pieces were written long ago and said bringing them up was "a blatant mudslinging campaign to distract the people from the issues."

Kloppenburg called Bradley's statements "abhorrent and disturbing."

"Her career since (writing for the student newspaper) includes being appointed three times to three judgeships in three years by Scott Walker who is against gay rights," Kloppenburg said in a statement. "Rebecca Bradley's alliance with conservative causes and Scott Walker speaks louder than any apology she tries to make."

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the Wisconsin Democrat who is the first openly gay person to serve in the Senate, offered a rebuke to Bradley, calling her writings "hate speech."

"These hateful and divisive writings raise serious questions about Rebecca Bradley's fitness to serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court as a fair, impartial and independent justice," Baldwin said in a statement.

Bradley has declined to say whether she agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year finding a constitutional right for gays to marry. She has never performed a gay marriage but would if asked, according to her campaign.

Bradley has declined to say how she voted in 2006, when Wisconsin voters adopted an amendment to the state constitution barring gay marriage and civil unions. That amendment was later thrown out by federal court rulings.

In a sign her views may have changed since her college days, Bradley in 2013 attended a fundraiser for the gay rights groups Fair Wisconsin. Bradley's campaign acknowledged she was at the event after the Log Cabin Republicans, a group representing gay conservatives, released a photo of her there.

Kloppenburg has officiated at same-sex weddings and has said it was an "exhilarating week" when the nation's high court made its ruling on gay marriage and issued decisions on access to health care and fair housing.

New campaign ad

The only poll on the race that has been publicly released shows a neck-and-neck contest. With 23% of likely voters undecided, Bradley had 37% and Kloppenburg had 36% in a survey last month by Marquette University Law School.

In the Feb. 17 primary, Bradley received 45% of the vote and Kloppenburg 43%, while third-place finisher Joe Donald had 12%.

In the latest sign the race is intensifying, the conservative Wisconsin Alliance for Reform will run an ad starting Tuesday on a ruling Kloppenburg and two of her colleagues issued last year allowing a man convicted of child sex assault to get a hearing to try to withdraw his guilty plea.

"We've heard it before: Liberal judges letting criminals off on technicalities. Judges like JoAnne Kloppenburg," the narrator says in the ad, which the group released to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday.

"Tell Judge Kloppenburg courts should protect children, not criminals."

The ad doesn't mention that the offender in question remains behind bars.

Daniel Fierro reached a plea deal in 2013 in Dane County Circuit Court that found him guilty of second-degree sexual assault of a child. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and five years of extended supervision.

He said he didn't understand the charge he pleaded guilty to and appealed when he wasn't granted a hearing to make his case on that point. Kloppenburg joined two other District 4 Court of Appeals judges in unanimously ruling Fierro was entitled to a hearing, stressing that "nothing in this opinion should be read as suggesting that Fierro's asserted failure to understand should be believed or not believed."

The hearing was later held in Dane County Circuit Court and Fierro was denied his request for post-conviction relief.

Fierro has again appealed, but a decision has not yet been reached.

The group behind the ad spent about $1 million earlier in the campaign backing Bradley. The group does not disclose where it gets its money.

So far, liberal groups have not run ads helping Kloppenburg.