Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz announced her bid for the state Supreme Court in 2023.
Prior to joining the bench, Protasiewicz spent 26 years as an assistant DA for Milwaukee County.
“I’ve got simple Wisconsin values,” she said Wednesday. “If you break the law, you should be held accountable. If you work hard and play by the rules, the government should leave you alone. And if your rights are violated, you should get a fair shot to demand justice.”
Protasiewicz is the third candidate to express an interest in running for the court in 2023, when conservative Justice Pat Roggensack isn’t seeking reelection. Former conservative Justice Dan Kelly told WisPolitics.com over the weekend that he expected to make a formal decision on a run this summer, while Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell has been weighing a bid.
Protasiewicz first ran for the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in 2013, losing to then-Judge Rebecca Bradley, who had been appointed to the bench by former Gov. Scott Walker. After losing with 46.8 percent of the vote that spring, she again ran in 2014 and won a seat unopposed. She won reelection in 2020 without opposition.
A check of the state’s database shows she gave her 2013 campaign $182,100 in that loss to Bradley.
Since becoming a judge in late summer 2014, her donations have solely been to judicial candidates, including several progressives such as Lisa Neubauer’s bid for the state Supreme Court in 2019.
She made donations in the spring of 2014 to Milwaukee County Dem Party and Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm. She made less than a half-dozen donations to Dem candidates other than that going back to 2009.
In today’s announcement, Protasiewicz charged “we can see on an almost-daily basis, our most closely-held constitutional rights are under attack by radical right-wing extremists.”
See the release here.
See more on WisPolitics.com’s interview with Kelly at the GOP state convention here.
