State Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer on Wednesday conceded a race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to her colleague Brian Hagedorn.
The concession comes more than a week after an election during which Neubauer trailed Hagedorn by about 6,000 votes and concludes a bitter competition for the 10-year term.
“I love being a judge. I treasure our state, our judiciary and its role in our democracy but this race was never about me. It was really about the integrity and the independence of our courts,” Neubauer said in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We knew it was going to be close. We laid it all out there. We put everything we had into this race.”
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But outside spending throughout the race favored Neubauer.
It is worth noting that Neubauer is up for reelection to the Appeals Court next April and she lost every county in that court’s jurisdiction. Some good conservative lawyer or judge should go for it.
Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer, the liberal candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, says she supports an independent and impartial judiciary, but she sat in judgement on cases concerning clients of her husband’s cleaning business.
WISN-AM radio personality Dan O’Donnell reported Monday that an analysis of Neubauer’s statements of economic interest shows the judge hearing 101 cases involving her husband’s former business clients. O’Donnell reported:
In 73 cases, Judge Neubauer sat on a case involving a public sector client (such as a municipality like the City of Kenosha or an executive department of state government such as the Department of Veterans Affairs). In 28 cases, she sat on cases involving private sector clients including Associated Bank, Froedtert Hospital, Abbot Labs, Walgreen Co., and Best Buy.
In 79 of those 101 total cases, Neubauer joined the majority in ruling in favor of a Kranz client. In 31 of those rulings, Neubauer herself wrote the majority opinion.
O’Donnell wrote that it was unclear whether Neubauer’s husband Jeffrey Neubauer had an “economic interest” in the cases because the judge stopped disclosing her husband’s clients from 2010 until the business was sold in 2017. The clients in question were on the judge’s 2009 financial disclosure statement.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A group founded by former Democratic U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that it is spending $350,000 to help liberal-backed candidate Lisa Neubauer get elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The National Democratic Redistricting Committee and its affiliates have been active in Wisconsin, spending more than $2 million last year to help liberal candidates, including Supreme Court candidate Rebecca Dallet and Democrat Tony Evers, who defeated Republican Scott Walker for governor.
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Thompson noted that Neubauer has been critical of outside spending on court races in the past.
“Now she’s happy to accept it,” Thompson said. “The key question is, ‘What’s changed?'”
Wisconsin’s very successful and popular school voucher programs are currently under assault by Democratic Governor Tony Evers who last week called for a freeze in the voucher program. For now, the legislature – led by Republican leadership – will stand firm against Evers.
But, depending on the outcome of the upcoming elections, school choice could face a much bigger threat – the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Wisconsin has an incredibly successful school voucher program; around 40,000 low-income, predominantly minority students use a school voucher to attend a private school of their choosing. In Milwaukee, 84 percent of private schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program are identified as religious. Many of those schools are incredibly successful, and according to a study, Catholic and Lutheran choice schools outperform traditional Milwaukee Public Schools on the state mandated math and reading tests. Religious education works in Milwaukee for many low-income students.
But, liberal judges and attorneys, for decades, have argued that school vouchers are unconstitutional and a violation of the Establishment Clause, which, in short, prohibits government from “respecting an establishment of religion.” This includes Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson who previously dissented in cases about the constitutionality of vouchers on those grounds.
So, given how Judge Lisa Neubauer has embraced the legacy and ideology of Abrahamson, voters deserve to know whether Neubauer believes the school voucher program is unconstitutional and should be ended for religious private schools.
