Rebecca Dallet beats Michael Screnock in race for Wisconsin Supreme Court

MADISON - Rebecca Dallet trounced Michael Screnock on Tuesday for a seat on the state Supreme Court, shrinking the court's conservative majority and giving Democrats a jolt of energy heading into the fall election.

It marked the first time in 23 years that a liberal candidate who wasn't an incumbent won a seat on the high court.

“I attribute it to Wisconsin voters standing up to special interests," said Dallet, a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge. "I think they're ready to have fair and independent courts.

"I’m the candidate with the most experience, really standing up for the rights of Wisconsinites every day and I think people saw that and spoke out today and I’m quite excited by it, by the results.”

Dallet's sizable margin alarmed Republican Gov. Scott Walker enough that he posted a series of messages on Twitter warning he could be the victim of a "blue wave" this fall.

With 88% of wards reporting, Dallet led Screnock 56% to 44%, according to unofficial returns.

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Dallet won big in Dane and Milwaukee counties. Screnock, a Sauk County judge who campaigned with the backing of the state Republican Party, did well in Waukesha County and other GOP strongholds but did not get enough votes elsewhere to offset Dallet's massive success in metropolitan areas.

"I am proud to have run a campaign that remained focused on my judicial philosophy and my experience in spite of tremendous outside influence from liberal special interest groups that were willing to say and spend anything to elect their preferred candidate to the bench," Screnock said in a statement.

The election will swing conservative control of the court from a comfortable 5-2 to a narrow 4-3. Dallet — to be seated in August for a 10-year term — will replace conservative Justice Michael Gableman, who did not seek re-election.

Dallet said she planned to talk to all of the justices. Dallet was endorsed by the court's two liberals, while most of the conservatives backed Screnock.

With Democrats around the country fired up about this fall's midterm elections, Dallet was able to bring an unusual level of national attention to the Supreme Court race. She secured the endorsements of former Vice President Joe Biden, former Attorney General Eric Holder and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.

For his part, Screnock said he was focusing his race entirely on Wisconsin and didn't understand why a figure like Biden would be weighing in on the race.

The race drew outside spending that was expected to exceed $2 million.

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The last time a liberal won an open seat was in 1995 when Justice Ann Walsh Bradley was first elected. (Liberals have done a better job at hanging onto seats once they join the court; both Bradley and liberal Justice Shirley Abrahamson have repeatedly won their re-election bids.)

Dallet's win will mean six of the justices will be women. Only one other state — Washington — has that many women on its high court, but in percentage terms, Wisconsin will have the highest representation by women because Wisconsin's court has a total of seven seats while Washington's has nine, according to the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics.

Now, Wisconsin is tied with Oregon for the highest percentage of women on its court. Both states have five women, or 71%, on their seven-member courts.

Walker saw Dallet's victory as a warning to Republicans in posts on Twitter late Tuesday.

"Tonight’s results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI. The Far Left is driven by anger & hatred — we must counter it with optimism & organization," he wrote in one tweet.

"Next, they'll target me and work to undo our bold reforms," he warned in another tweet.

Walker’s response paralleled his January tweetstorm, when he told Republicans they got a "wake-up call" after Democrat Patty Schachtner won a special election to a seat in the state Senate that had long been held by Republicans.

Liberals used Dallet's win to tweak Walker and what it could mean for Republicans this fall.

"Scott Walker, you hear that WAKE UP CALL?" Scot Ross of One Wisconsin Now said in a statement.

Screnock campaigned as a traditional conservative jurist, saying he would interpret the law as written and decrying judicial activism. Dallet stressed her work as a prosecutor, contended judicial ethics rules needed to be strengthened to fix a "broken" court and said she was running because people's rights were "under attack."

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At Dallet’s party at craft brewer Good City Brewing on Milwaukee’s east side, she singled out spending by the National Rifle Association and other outside groups.

“Special interests impacted both sides of the aisle," she said. "We beat the NRA. We beat the millions of dollars flooding into our state."

Past Supreme Court elections typically have been low-turnout events, with less than 20% of eligible voters showing up at the polls, according to data from the state Elections Commission. This year, rain and snow hit Wisconsin, but it did not appear to deter voters, at least not in the southern part of the state.

Democrats had been banking on an energized base to help them win an open seat on a court that conservatives have reliably claimed in recent years. Republicans had said they believed they could count on their time-tested methods of making sure they got conservatives to the polls to win the seat.

Dallet, 48, worked for 11 years as a prosecutor. After a brief stint as Milwaukee County's chief court commissioner, she was elected as a judge in 2008 and re-elected in 2014.

Screnock, 48, spent the first part of his career in municipal government, attending law school later in life. As an attorney at Michael Best & Friedrich, he represented farms and businesses in environmental cases and did legal work for the governor and GOP lawmakers. Walker appointed him to the bench in 2015 and he was elected to a full term a year later without opposition.

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Dallet and Screnock differed on important court decisions from recent years.

Dallet questioned the wisdom of court decisions that upheld Act 10, the 2011 law that all but ended collective bargaining for public workers. As a lawyer, Screnock defended Act 10 in court.

Dallet opposed a 2015 state Supreme Court decision that shut down an investigation into Walker and other Republicans. Screnock said he believed the court got that ruling right by finding that candidates and political groups can work together on campaigns.

Dallet said there was "no reason" for assault-style rifles like the AR-15, while Screnock got the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.

Attention toward the end of the campaign focused on an ad by the state's largest business lobbying group, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, that criticized Dallet for sentencing a man to two years in prison for attempted sexual assault of a child when she could have put him behind bars for up to 20 years.

The victim's family called for the ad to be taken off the air because the ad made it easy to identify the victim. WMC declined to alter or remove the ad and Screnock defended that decision, saying the group had a right to run ads as it wished and he would not weigh in on matters of public interest because he is a judge.

On Tuesday, WMC Chief Executive Officer Kurt Bauer filed a complaint with the state Judicial Commission alleging Dallet had violated the state's judicial ethics code by misrepresenting facts about WMC's ad. Specifically, Bauer said Dallet's campaign called the WMC ad false when it was not and referred to the ad as being one by Screnock rather than WMC.

If the commission were to determine Dallet violated ethics rules, it would have to present its findings to the Supreme Court. Only the high court can make a ruling on whether judicial ethics rules have been broken and, if so, what to do about it.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Screnock and Republicans hammered Dallet for holding a fundraiser in San Francisco and telling the crowd there "your values are our Wisconsin values that we’ve lost along the way."

Dallet had the financial edge in the race, raising more than $1 million. Screnock raised about $800,000, with more than $300,000 coming from the state Republican Party.

As is typical in these races, political groups were on track to outspend the candidates. A preliminary estimate by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign found about $2.2 million was being spent by those groups.

Meg Jones of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report from Milwaukee.