MADISON, Wis. — Mere days after the fifth anniversary of MAGA Republicans’ deadly January 6 attack, right-wing judge and Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar is doubling down on her alliance with election deniers and her extreme right-wing agenda, as she’s set to appear tonight at an event hosted by the radical group Northeast Wisconsin (N.E.W.) Patriots.
Among their many out-of-touch and extreme right-wing beliefs, the N.E.W. Patriots group continues to deny the results of the 2020 Presidential election in Wisconsin. At past events, the group has featured the disgraced Michael Gableman, who endorsed Lazar in 2022 and recently agreed to surrender his law license after wasting more than $1 million taxpayer dollars leading Robin Vos’ fruitless “investigation” into the 2020 election. The group has also led efforts attacking the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ Wisconsinites.
The N.E.W. Patriots group advertises itself as part of a larger coalition of right-wing groups in Wisconsin dedicated to increasing their political influence and imposing their views on state residents.
“Maria Lazar is actively and repeatedly courting the most extreme right-wing interests in Wisconsin,” said Lucy Ripp, communications director at A Better Wisconsin Together. “Her actions show she’d be a proud pawn advancing MAGA and the extreme right-wing’s unpopular agenda on the court, at the expense of our rights and freedoms.”
Ripp noted that Lazar’s most recent attempt to court the extreme right is part of a pattern of behavior, like late last year when Lazar was caught cozying up to infamous election denier Michael Flynn.
Ripp noted that there is much more. For example, on the campaign trail in 2022, Lazar featured the support not just of disgraced former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman but also former Trump campaign attorney Jim Troupis, who is facing felony charges related to his involvement in the fraudulent elector scheme and who attempted to throw out the presidential election votes of 220,000 voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties, and Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Bob Spindell, who was one of Wisconsin Republicans’ fraudulent electors and who praised ads by the Republican Party meant to suppress BIPOC voters in Milwaukee.
Her 2022 electoral effort also got financial support from right-wing Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, who funneled millions of dollars to groups directly connected to January 6, 2021 events in support of Donald Trump. Uihlein bankrolls the extremist right-wing group Fair Courts America (FCA), which dumped $250,000 into Lazar’s court of appeals race.
Subsequently on the bench, Lazar authored a decision that would have given election conspiracists access to personal voter information. After reviewing Lazar’s decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that Lazar had failed to follow proper court procedure in her decision, calling out Lazar’s “patent violation” of precedent.
Ripp concluded by noting that Lazar hasn’t confined her extremism to courting January 6 conspirators and election deniers. She has been endorsed by a radical right-wing anti-abortion group that called for banning abortion in nearly all cases and another group said they supported Lazar for her no exceptions anti-abortion position. She also publicly expressed her support for leaders of an extremist group that has worked to ban books and prevent schools from teaching about the civil rights movement and slavery.
