Lisa Neubauer concedes Supreme Court race, prepares Appeals Court re-election bid
State Appeals Court Judge Lisa Neubauer on Wednesday conceded the 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 Tuesday 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."
Hagedorn declared victory in the race on April 3, but Neubauer held off conceding the race as she considered seeking a recount.
Hagedorn leads Neubauer 50.2% to 49.8% with all of Tuesday's votes unofficially counted — a difference that allows a recount paid for by Neubauer's campaign.
But while the vote margin is thin, it's unlikely to change.
"I am deeply humbled and grateful that the people of Wisconsin have placed their trust in me," Hagedorn told supporters in an email after Neubauer called to concede the race. "I said that partisan politics has no place at the Wisconsin Supreme Court, that I would protect the public, and that our job is to uphold the Constitution as written. I meant every word, and I will endeavor to fulfill these promises with all my ability."
Now, Neubauer prepares a bid for re-election as the chief judge of the state appeals court and has ruled out a future run for the state's highest court.
A win by Hagedorn defies the predictions of prominent groups that typically back conservative judicial candidates but counted him out and wouldn't spend on his behalf during the race.
It also widens the conservative majority on the high court and ensures liberals couldn't win a majority in 2020.
Neubauer said she hopes Hagedorn "lives up to his promise" of working against politicization of the court as a Supreme Court justice.
She credits her loss to more than $1 million spent in advertising on behalf of Hagedorn in the last days of the campaign.
"That wasn't about our qualifications or frankly even the job of a Supreme Court justice," Neubauer said about the advertising. "It's not hard to imagine that (the spending) made a difference."
The ads were paid for by an arm of the Republican State Leadership Committee and invoked President Donald Trump to praise Hagedorn.
The ad compared criticism of Hagedorn's views on homosexuality to sexual assault allegations against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The Republican group helped fill a gap left when other conservative groups abandoned the race after law school era blog posts written by Hagedorn surfaced characterizing the overturning of an anti-sodomy law as a basis to legalize bestiality. Hagedorn also helped found a school that has a staff policy against gay relationships, which drew scrutiny.
To supporters, Hagedorn said overcoming the criticism "made history."
"When we were attacked and counted out, you stood up," he wrote. "You made phone calls, knocked on doors, and passed out literature. You donated your hard-earned money, you texted and emailed and called your friends and family, and you prayed."
Neubauer credits outside spending for her defeat, but spending throughout the race favored her.
She said the outside spending "is not good for our democracy" but it's not the spending's influence that has Neubauer ruling out a future run for Supreme Court.
"I put it all out there," she said of this year's race.