Green Lake, Wis. – State supreme-court justice Michael Gableman stumped for his colleague, justice David Prosser, at a Republican luncheon this afternoon. He knows a thing or two about bruising high-court races. In 2008, Gableman unseated supreme-court justice Louis Butler, flipping the court’s balance to a 4-3 conservative majority. With JoAnne Kloppenburg, an environmental lawyer, mounting a high-profile campaign against Prosser, that majority risks being upended.
“We need you step out of your comfort zone,” Gableman said, his voice rising. “This is it. The truth is, if they succeed in taking David Prosser out, a man who has deserved and earned a reputation as a judicial conservative — not legislating from the bench, but simply applying the law — and they replace him with an unqualified partisan, well, then we get four black-robed masters who will serve as veto power over everything the governor and the legislature does, whether it is this governor and this legislature, or governors and legislators yet to be elected.”
Some background on Gableman’s victory here. More on the Prosser race here.