How to view supreme court race

Bridge Downtown Milwaukee

      Hang on to your hats. Here are documented, undisputed revelations about the candidates for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court: 

    Incumbent Jon Wilcox is a political conservative and always has been. 

      Challenger Walt Kelly is a political liberal and always has been.

Pretty shocking, huh?

      With the April 1 election a little more than two weeks away, both campaigns are working feverishly to ``expose'' the political leanings of the opposition.

      Kelly's campaign has pitched reporters on writing more about the legislative record of Wilcox, who was a Republican member of the Assembly in the 1970s before he became a trial court judge.

Is pro-life Wilcox a political conservative? That's putting it mildly. He hails from Waushara County, one of the most Republican counties in the state. You can find lots of deer and even an occasional bear in Waushara County, but liberals are rare critters in that neck of the woods.

      Some members of the Wilcox campaign -- including one Republican legislator who released false information about Kelly's defense of a drug kingpin -- are doing their best to portray Kelly as a card-carrying liberal.

      Painting Kelly as a liberal is not a hard job.

      Milwaukee lawyer Kelly has been a civil rights and labor advocate for years. He's worked on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union and for abortion rights. Kelly was director of the Wisconsin Council on Criminal Justice in the early 1970s and belonged to a special state committee on ``offender rehabilitation'' that issued plenty of liberal recommendations, even for that liberal era.

      While this is important contextual information in this campaign for a 10-year seat on the court, voters should keep it in perspective.

      Remember: A political conservative can be a judicial activist, freely interpreting laws or even ``legislating from the bench'' by writing opinions that stretch statutory law. A political liberal can be a judicial conservative, construing laws and legislative intent narrowly.

      Knowing judicial candidates' political leanings is important, but not as important as knowing how they might actually perform on the bench. During the Feb. 28 ``We the People/Wisconsin'' forum, citizens asked Kelly and Wilcox how they would have ruled on actual cases decided by the court. Clear differences emerged on the court's line-item veto rulings (Kelly called Wilcox a ``radical'' for wanting to expand the governor's powers) and expanding school choice to religious schools (Wilcox accused Kelly of having prejudged the case; Kelly said Wilcox is a sure vote for expanding choice).

      In the two weeks before the April 1 election, voters should pay more attention to the temperament, experience and intellectual vigor of the two candidates, and less to where they may fit in the political spectrum. This is a non-partisan race for a reason: Good judges don't decide cases based on politics, but on their impartial reading of the law.