The 2025 race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is shaping up to again set national records for campaign spending and will determine the ideological control of the court for at least a year.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley is retiring from the court at the end of her term, leaving an open seat that will be filled in the spring election on April 1.

Brad Schimel and Susan Crawford are the only two candidates in the race, which is technically non-partisan. Voters won’t see a D or an R by their names on the ballot, but otherwise Schimel is aligned with the Republican Party and Crawford with the Democratic Party.

Both candidates have similar legal backgrounds, the key difference being their political alignments and track records.

Schimel is a circuit court judge for Waukesha County. He started his career in the Waukesha County District Attorney’s office, eventually winning election as the district attorney in 2006. In 2014, he was elected as state attorney general as a Republican. Schimel lost his bid for reelection in 2018 and then-Gov. Scott Walker appointed him as a judge in Waukesha County during the lame duck session. Schimel has since been reelected to that position.

Crawford is a circuit court judge for Dane County. She served as an assistant attorney general when Jim Doyle, a Democrat, was state attorney general in the late 1990s and early 2000s. After Doyle was elected governor in 2002, Crawford followed him into the executive branch, eventually becoming his chief legal counsel. After Doyle left office at the end of 2010, Crawford went into private practice, where she represented various clients, including politically prominent organizations like Planned Parenthood. She was elected to the Dane County Circuit Court in 2018 and has since won reelection.

The last time a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was open was 2023, when then-Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Daniel Kelly in the most expensive state supreme court election in United States history. That race featured a four-way primary and a lot of spending by third-party interest groups. By the end, it was estimated total spending on campaign advertising exceeded $50 million.

Protasiewicz’s victory gave liberals a 4-3 majority on the court. The retirement of Walsh Bradley puts the majority up for grabs again.

In 2023, Protasiewicz had major advantages in fundraising and was able to define the race among voters who were largely unaware of the candidates, promoting abortion and legislative redistricting as two key issues. Since her election, the court has overturned the old legislative district maps and are weighing whether Wisconsin’s 1849 law that has banned abortions should still be enforced.

From Schimel’s campaign website, it is clear he is running on a “tough on crime” message not too dissimilar from the campaign run by Donald Trump in 2024. “From opening the border to releasing criminals on our streets, rogue judges across the nation are putting their radical agenda above the law. Brad Schimel will take back the Wisconsin Supreme Court and end the madness,” reads a statement on the website.

At a campaign event in December, Schimel stressed the importance of keeping the third party groups that knocked doors for Republicans in the fall of 2024 to knock doors for Schimel in the first three months of 2025. “We welcome their help in this,” he said.

The day after Donald Trump was elected in November, the chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin said one of his top priorities was to elect Schimel to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Crawford will be counting on similar help from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Her campaign website is filled with endorsements from liberal groups and state supreme court justices. “She has a deep understanding of our justice system,” reads the website, “and knows how important it is to have Supreme Court justices who understand how to keep communities safe, who are fair and impartial, and who will reject efforts to politicize the constitution to undermine our most basic rights.”