Here we go again, Wisconsin Democrats

Looks like there will be a major fight over who will be the Chairperson of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) come June of 2017:

In Wisconsin, Democrats are quietly predicting that the party chair will face a challenger who will hold incumbent chairwoman Martha Laning to account for why Clinton lost the state. Laning cast her vote as a superdelegate for Clinton — in a state where Sanders won the primary by a wide margin.

Unlike Maine, where allies of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I/D-VT) already have their candidate for state Democratic Party chair in Maine State Sen. Diane Russell, the Wisconsin left does not have a challenger to Laning…yet. However, that is expected to change, and it’s not clear if Laning will run for a second two-year term as head of the DPW political apparatus. The left’s main point of criticism against Laning is, aside from Donald Trump winning Wisconsin, that she had originally pledged to cast her superdelegate vote at the Democratic National Convention for the winner of the Wisconsin Democratic primary (which was Bernie Sanders), yet flip-flopped after Bernie won the primary and announced that she would vote for the presumptive presidential nominee instead (which was Hillary Clinton).

Assuming that Laning runs for a second term (which is no certainty at this point), one potential challenger to Laning is Sarah Lloyd, who lost to Republican incumbent Glenn Grothman in the 6th Congressional District of Wisconsin race this year. Lloyd was one of the more prominent Bernie supporters in Wisconsin, however, she has her own issues with the left. Specifically, she, in a response to a Reddit AMA question that I asked her, was not supportive of the idea to replace the electoral college with a national popular vote system for presidential elections. There’s not much of a bench of Bernie supporters who have any real experience with politics or political activism in Wisconsin: nearly all of the Democratic elected officials in Wisconsin were Hillary supporters in the Democratic primary, and many, but not all, of the 2011 and 2012 Wisconsin recall organizers were Hillary supporters as well. Some other potential candidates include DPW first-vice chair David Bowen and State Representative Jonathan Brostoff, both of which were Bernie backers either during (in Brostoff’s case) or after (in Bowen’s case) the presidential primary.

If Laning decides not to run for re-election, political consultant Katie Belanger may run for DPW chair. Belanger was a Laning backer during the 2015 DPW chair race, which Laning won, and Belanger was also the campaign treasurer for Jimmy Anderson’s successful Wisconsin State Assembly campaign this year. Some potential candidates from the Mike Tate/Jason Rae faction of the party (which was ousted as a result the 2015 DPW chair race) include Emerge Wisconsin executive director Erin Forrest and former Madison Alderwoman Bridget Maniaci.

Let me emphasize that I’m completely unaware of what level of interest in the DPW chair’s race any of the individuals that I named have, and me mentioning names of potential candidates for DPW chair is purely speculation on my part.

For those of you who read my blog during the 2015 DPW chair’s race, you are familiar with how competitive campaigns for the right to run Wisconsin’s state-level Democratic Party apparatus can be, and they can be very competitive. I’m probably not going to endorse a candidate for DPW chair this time around, although I may write blog posts about the chair’s race.

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JoAnn Kloppenburg is running for Wisconsin Supreme Court once again

You may remember Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge JoAnn Kloppenburg, then a Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General, from the contentious 2011 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where she narrowly lost to conservative incumbent David “The Choker” Prosser by a few thousand votes in a race that featured an infamous vote-counting snafu in Waukesha County, the most populous right-wing stronghold in Wisconsin.

Well, she’s back! Kloppenburg is making another run for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This time, she’s running for the seat currently held by incumbent justice Patrick Crooks, who is the lone moderate on Wisconsin’s highest bench. Here’s her campaign announcement video.

There are going to be three main differences between Kloppenburg’s 2011 campaign and her 2016 campaign:

• In 2011, Kloppenburg ran against David Prosser, an ultra-conservative state supreme court justice who is a controversial figure in Wisconsin politics. This time, she’s running for the seat currently held by Patrick Crooks, who, while technically a Republican, has generally sided against the conservative majority on the constitutional crisis involving the Wisconsin Constitution amendment that gives the justices on Wisconsin’s highest bench to power to vote for one of their own to be chief justice. The amendment is currently subject to an ongoing lawsuit involving a dispute over when the amendment is supposed to go into effect. It’s not clear as to whether or not Crooks will run for re-election at this time, and Crooks’s campaign has not commented on Kloppenburg entering the race that I’m aware of.
• In 2011, due to the union-busting Act 10 having been enacted not too long before the supreme court race that year, there was far higher turnout than what would normally be seen for a state supreme court race in Wisconsin. This year, turnout is probably going to be either at the level of what would be expected for a supreme court race in Wisconsin (typically about one-third of that of a midterm election in Wisconsin) or somewhat higher, depending on whether or not one or both major parties has a serious nomination contest for president ongoing by April of next year. I’m guessing that the 2016 presidential primaries in Wisconsin will be held in April, although the Republicans who control Wisconsin’s state government may move the primaries up to February to try to give Scott Walker a better chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination, but there’s nothing confirmed about that at this time.
• Kloppenburg’s potential opponents include incumbent justice Patrick Crooks, Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge Joe Donald, Wisconsin Court of Appeals judge Rebecca Bradley, and Former Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. I know very little about Donald, other than the fact that he was originally appointed to the Milwaukee County bench by Former Republican Governor Tommy Thompson, and the fact he’s been praised by Ed Fallone, the Marquette University professor who ran for state supreme court in 2013 on a progressive message and platform (losing to conservative incumbent Pat Roggensack, who is now the acting chief justice of the court pending the lawsuit regarding the chief justice amendment that I explained above). Van Hollen and Bradley are right-wing judicial activists, especially Bradley, who has known ties to far-right judicial activist groups like the Federalist Society and has donated money to Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaigns. Donald is all but certain to run; I’m not sure if Van Hollen and/or Bradley are interested in running or not.

I am not endorsing a candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court at this time, but I may do so at some point before the spring 2016 elections in Wisconsin.