Tense but substantive: State Supreme Court candidates do battle in lone election debate

The two candidates for Wisconsin State Supreme Court showed up for their lone debate on April 2 well-prepared and ready to do battle.

Both even had quick answers for a light-hearted question: Which U.S. Supreme Court justices would you most like to have dinner with? Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia for Maria Lazar; Ginsberg and Elena Kagan for Chris Taylor.

Beyond that, the two engaged in civil but sometimes testy exchanges over such issues as abortion, voting rights, gerrymandering, Act 10 and their judicial temperaments. Lazar accused Taylor, a former Democratic state representative, of being too partisan, while Taylor cited Lazar for being beholden to right-wing interests and for having worked in the Scott Walker administration.

Taylor and Lazar, both currently appellate court judges, are running on April 7 to replace Justice Rebecca Bradley, one of the three conservative judges on the bench who chose not to run again after her 10-year term was up. Liberal justices have a 4-3 majority on the court. A Taylor win would advance that to 5-2 and would ensure their majority at least through 2030. 

Contributions way down this year

Because Bradley is one of the three conservatives, a Lazar win would not change the makeup of the bench. As a result, less than $10 million – as opposed to the nearly $150 million last year when the majority was at stake – has been poured into this campaign, with Taylor so far raising $8 million to Lazar’s $1 million.

Lazar chided Taylor for having raised money from out of state, an amount she cited at 27 percent. But Taylor pushed back on that, then went on the attack herself.

“I am so proud of the tens of thousands of grassroots supporters I have,” she said. “Unlike my opponent, my average contribution is less than $100, while my opponent is being supported by right-wing megadonors, and they know she's going to be their rubber stamp.”

Both Lazar and Taylor have received large amounts of cash from their respective political parties, though Lazar insists she is not a Republican and spent much of the evening touting her independent status. She contrasted that with Taylor’s political career as a Democratic representative and as a policy director with Planned Parenthood.

Abortion disagreement

On the matter of abortion, Lazar bristled at Taylor ads suggesting she was anti-choice, though she has stated her personal opposition to abortion and referred to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade as a “very nice” one.

“I said it was good that it brought that national ban and put it back into each individual state,” Lazar argued. “It's not a national ban or a national law.”

The tension reached its highest point when Taylor accused Lazar of not caring that leaving abortion law to individual states put women in danger.

“That is the reality of overturning Roe versus Wade, which you called ‘wise,’” Taylor said. “It's not been very wise for victims of rape and incest who now live in states where abortion has been outlawed. It's not very wise for women who have lost their lives in states because they couldn't get help when a pregnancy went wrong. I am a mother of two beloved children, and my husband and I went through a lot of heartache to have our children. There were a lot of tears shed, but I got access to good medical care.”

Though Taylor has warned that abortion rights with Lazar on the court would be diminished or endangered, Lazar insisted otherwise. She said she would uphold the Court’s recent decision that overturned the 1849 abortion law.

“I will honor that 20-week compromise,” she said, referring to the limit at which women can legally obtain an abortion in the state. “I think that it falls within the parameters of where people in the state believe it should be, and if they don't, the answer is to go to the legislature and the governor, not the courts.” 

Voting Rights, Gerrymandering and the 2020 election

On the matter of gerrymandering, Taylor pointed out that Lazar was the Assistant Attorney General under Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, when the maps that gave Republicans a significant partisan advantage were drawn, and arguing that they were deemed the most gerrymandered in the country.

Lazar argued that she was only advocating for the state of Wisconsin, as was her duty as Assistant AG.

“The map in Wisconsin has straight lines and it follows communities of interest, and it follows the Constitution,” she said of the 2011 maps that were ordered to be redrawn in 2024 by the State Supreme Court.

After much back and forth over the issue of election fraud, Taylor got Lazar to admit that the 4-3 decision in Trump v. Biden, when President Trump tried to invalidate the results of the election in 2020, was the correct one. Until the debate, Lazar had never come out and admitted Joe Biden won the state.

“It's interesting my opponent will not answer the question about whether she thinks the Trump V Biden case was correctly decided,” Taylor pushed. “Our election hung in the balance by one vote.”

Lazar conceded the election was valid.

“Joe Biden did win,” she said. “And I support that one-hundred percent, and I think we should be looking forward. I don’t think we should be looking back.”

Taylor called out Lazar for receiving the endorsement of Michael Gabelman, whose law license was recently suspended for misconduct during a lengthy investigation into the 2020 election, and who was integrally involved in the election-denial movement that year. Lazar said she was not responsible for people who may choose to endorse her.

Each conceded on matters that the other side has used as campaign issues in the recent past. While in the legislature, Taylor opposed Voter ID implementation, but she has vowed to uphold the law. Lazar agreed during the debate that mail-in ballots were safe. 

Federal intrusion into judicial matters

One of the few points of agreement came on the issue of threats and intimidation toward judges. The matter came up during a question about the conviction of Judge Hannah Dugan, who was convicted of obstruction when she was alleged to have tried to protect an undocumented immigrant from ICE in her courtroom.

While Taylor said she was satisfied that Dugan got due process and that she always has faith in the decision of juries, she was worried by the politicization of the courts by the federal government.

“I think there's been a real attack on the independence of judges,” she said. “Judges have been threatened with impeachment when the executive doesn't like the decisions that they make. I will resist any overreach when the federal government tries to interfere in the independence of our state.

“So I think the manner in which Judge Dugan was arrested created a spectacle, and that was concerning.”

Lazar said she too has concerns about judge safety.

“I also do not like when we have politicians on any side making insulting comments to the independence or decisions made by judges,” she said. “We all try so hard to get everything right. A judge's life is difficult, and it does not help when you have politicians or anyone else insulting judges.”

Act 10 on the line

Perhaps the most significant impact from the outcome of the election will be in regard to Act 10, the controversial law passed during Scott Walker’s first term that took away collective bargaining rights for most public employees. It is currently being litigated in Judge Lazar’s own appellate court, with an almost certain appeal to the State Supreme Court, no matter what happens.

Lazar fought back against Taylor’s charge that she had defended Act 10 as Assistant Attorney General.

“All I did was defend the case where the question was, was the law properly enacted when it got to the merits,” she insisted.

Taylor, who has spoken against Act 10, says she would not recuse if the case came before her, noting she was not in the legislature when it passed. She said she has never spoken to the constitutionality or the legal merits of the case.

“I will say that I very much value the rights of working people to be fairly compensated,” Taylor said. “My grandmother was a single mom to my mother, and struggled to make ends meet until she got a union job, and she was able to earn a decent wage, and she was able to support three kids on her own and help my mom go to college, and that inspired me to go to law school. So I value very much working people being able to get a slice of the pie they help make, and not just the crumbs. It seems the only people doing well these days are millionaires and billionaires.”

Lazar pounced on that statement, calling it values-driven.

“That's a legislative answer, not a judicial one,” she said. “And values do not belong with the judge on the Court. Values are not what's supposed to be there. A judge is supposed to respect the law. An activist judge respects her causes.” 

The latest polling in late March showed Taylor with a 6-point lead and an 8-point lead among likely voters. But nearly half were undecided. Democratic voters were significantly more enthused about the race than Republicans. 

ense but substantive: State Supreme Court candidates do battle in lone election debate © 2026 by Kelly Fenton is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0