Justice Rebecca Bradley says she’ll run for another term next year

by Henry Redman, Wisconsin Examiner
April 7, 2025

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley said this week she’ll seek another 10-year term on the Court next year. 

Bradley’s announcement came just days after Dane County Judge Susan Crawford defeated Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel by 10 points in the most expensive judicial campaign in U.S. history. Crawford’s victory gave the Court’s liberals control of the majority until at least 2028. Bradley told WisPolitics that she will run again to “ensure that there is a voice for the constitution and for the rule of law to preserve that in the state of Wisconsin.”

“I’m concerned for what an extremely radical court is going to do over the next three years, and I will be spending the next several weeks assessing what happened on Tuesday and figuring out a path to achieving a court that is not led by and dominated by the radical left, that gets back to deciding cases under the law and respecting the constitution,” Bradley said. 

Liberals have now won four of the last five state Supreme Court elections, all by double digits. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that appeals court judge and former Democratic lawmaker Chris Taylor is considering challenging Bradley in next year’s race. 

Schimel and former Justice Dan Kelly have lost the last three Supreme Court elections after arguing that their liberal opponents are partisan ideologues seeking to legislate from the bench.

Bradley was first appointed to the Court by Gov. Scott Walker in 2015 and elected to a full term in 2016. In recent years she’s been one of the Court’s most right-wing justices. 

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, she compared restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of the disease to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and she sided with President Donald Trump in his unsuccessful effort to have the Court throw out the results of the 2020 election. 

She has often written in her dissents against Court decisions about her belief that the liberal majority is acting politically and said the Court’s liberals are “pursuing a political agenda.”

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Henry Redman is a staff reporter for the Wisconsin Examiner who focuses on covering Wisconsin’s towns and rural areas. He previously covered crime and courts at the Daily Jefferson County Union. A lifelong Midwesterner, he was born in Cleveland, Ohio and graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a degree in journalism in May 2019.