ICYMI: Lazar Follows Conservative Candidate Playbook in Claiming Mantle of Impartiality
“Lazar has been endorsed by some of the state’s leading anti-abortion groups, prominent 2020 election deniers and all six of Wisconsin’s Republican members of the House of Representatives.”
MADISON, Wis. — According to new reporting from the Wisconsin Examiner, Maria Lazar’s professional track record of fighting for right-wing causes as an attorney and on the bench shows she is anything but an independent voice. As Scott Walker’s lawyer, Lazar defended Republican lawmakers in lawsuits that gutted workers’ rights and eliminated collective bargaining power across the state, defended the gerrymandered 2011 electoral maps that locked in Republican control of the Legislature for more than a decade, and protected restrictions on abortion access.
As a judge, Lazar sided with 2020 election conspiracy theorists trying to gain access to private voter information and with corporate interests dumping toxic chemicals in Wisconsin waterways. While Maria Lazar plays from the same tired, right-wing playbook in claiming impartiality, her record of pushing extreme MAGA interests from the bench and aligning with extremist anti-abortion groups tells a different story.
Wisconsin Examiner: Lazar follows conservative candidate playbook in claiming mantle of impartiality
By: Henry Redman
- Lazar has frequently said on the campaign trail that she’s “never been a member of a political party” — a claim aided by the fact that Lazar has never served in partisan office and Wisconsin voters don’t register their party affiliation — while at a recent event Taylor, who served in the state Assembly for nine years, affirmed that she’s a Democrat.
- The argument of the Lazar campaign closely mirrors the arguments made by the last two conservative candidates for the Court.
- Lazar has been endorsed by some of the state’s leading anti-abortion groups, prominent 2020 election deniers and all six of Wisconsin’s Republican members of the House of Representatives. She’s received financial support from major GOP donors including Richard and Liz Uihlein. She has also regularly appeared with far right national political figures and has spoken to right-wing groups across the state.
- Her campaign staff includes consultants with deep ties to Wisconsin Republican politics.
- As an attorney for the state Department of Justice, she defended Republican lawmakers in a lawsuit alleging they violated the state’s open meetings laws while passing the controversial anti-union measure that became Act 10. She also defended the gerrymandered 2011 electoral maps that locked in Republican control of the Legislature for more than a decade.
- At an event earlier this month, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky said that as a Department of Justice attorney, Lazar carried “the flag of the right-wing interests.”
- Opponents have also pointed to appeals court decisions in which Lazar has sided with 2020 election conspiracy theorists trying to gain access to private voter information and with corporate interests trying to weaken the state’s toxic spills law. The District 2 Court of Appeals on which Lazar sits is considered the most reliably conservative appeals court in the state.
- After the 2020 presidential election, the state Supreme Court, then controlled by a conservative majority, ruled in a 4-3 decision not to hear a lawsuit from the campaign of President Donald Trump challenging Wisconsin’s election results.
- With the Trump White House signaling a willingness to interfere in the conduct of state election systems, Democrats and left-leaning organizations have argued the Supreme Court race this year will build an important barrier against Republicans copying the 2020 playbook in the 2028 presidential election.
- But in the election disputes that have simmered in Wisconsin during the six years since Trump’s Stop the Steal effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the debate has often centered exactly on the question of what counts as a legal, valid vote — a question that the Supreme Court may be called on to answer.
- The effort to cast doubt on election results was sparked by Trump and led in Wisconsin by Republicans and former conservative Supreme Court justices Currently, Republican members of Congress are debating a bill that could drastically restrict access to the ballot to people unable to produce a certified copy of a birth certificate or other documents proving U.S. citizenship. But Lazar said she sees judges on both sides trying to help their side win.
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