Wisconsin Needs a Progressive Supreme Court to Stop Trump

Here's our plan to enlist rural attorneys to help elect Susan Crawford

Folks,

While it’s not entirely clear that American Democracy hasn’t already combusted internally and we're all just waiting to feel the aftershocks, I’m incapable of capitulating to a dictator without fighting back—unlike ABC News, The Morning Joe, Bezos/WAPO, and the LA Times.

Yes, Democrats are on our backs from the presidential election and we’re getting absolutely no help from the 4^th estate, but if we are to hold onto hope and believe that we can stop the oncoming authoritarian freight train from running us over, we must look to an essential race coming up this April—the Wisconsin Supreme Court Election.

Here is what COULD HAPPEN if we lose Wisconsin’s progressive majority in the Supreme Court.

1. Say a Democrat wins the Wisconsin’s governor’s race in 2026. A corrupt court could overturn that election and hand the Governor’s office to a Trump stooge who would do his bidding and probably hand him the Presidency two years later.

2. Say a Democrat wins the Presidency in 2028. A corrupt court could simply overturn the election and allow Trump or a Trump acolyte to remain a dictator.

3. A corrupted court might allow fraudulent electors to be substituted for real ones in 2028, thus illegally handing the Presidency to Trump or his MAGA designee.

4. Democrats on are track to take the State Senate Majority in 2026. Republicans will do their best to suppress the votes that get them there. There’s NO DOUBT a conservative Supreme Court majority will help Republicans and bring us back to gerrymandered, undemocratic rule.

These hypothetical scenarios that portend the death of Democracy in Wisconsin and by extension, America, don’t even include the likelihood that a conservative Supreme Court would ban abortion once again and allow the continued death spiral of funding for public education.

Pretty scary, right?

I have no doubt that our official party apparatus, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, is currently exhausted and demoralized. Who wouldn’t be?

I also know that our legendary State Party Chairman, Ben Wikler, is running to become the national chairman of the DNC. Electing him nationally would be great for our country, but it doesn’t exactly help the party focus on this upcoming Supreme Court race.

I’m sure we’ll all get back on our feet and fight as hard as possible this coming April, but it makes a lot of sense for progressive groups to step up and start figuring out how we can best plug into this Supreme Court race NOW to get things rolling while the Democratic Party gets back on its feet.

While I’ve been critical of our Progressive Supreme Court majority on many issues, especially their refusal to take up our anti-school voucher lawsuit and rectify our absurd defamation defeat, there is no denying that maintaining our progressive majority in Wisconsin is one of the last hopes we have to ensure that America resists whatever Democracy-killing blows the Trump administration tries to land over the next 4 years.

As you can see from this first chart, while the progressive candidate in Wisconsin’s last two Supreme Court races won by ~10%, the progressive votes were concentrated much more heavily in Dane County and Milwaukee in 2023 than in 2020. Much of the rest of the state trended more Republican.

Source: New York Times

Now, as you can see from this second chart, the only places that trended blue in Wisconsin for this last presidential race were the suburbs of Milwaukee and Door County. It appears that while Dane County keeps growing (because that’s where the jobs are), the awesome progressive turnout there may be reaching a plateau.

Here is what I know.

1. A big reason that turnout in Dane County is so high is that the Democratic Party in Wisconsin has worked really hard since Wikler’s tenure to get it that high, meaning they will probably do a good job once again turning out voters there this April.

2. I know very little about Milwaukee politics and the politics of their surrounding counties, other than that we sell a lot of beer there.

3. I KNOW a lot about rural Wisconsin and what makes it tick, and it looks like rural Wisconsin needs A LOT OF HELP turning out progressive voters.

So, I’ve determined that the Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC is going to help turn out progressives in rural Wisconsin, and here is my idea on how to do it.

I’ve been around long enough to know that the only people who really start thinking about elections months before they happen is the political donor class.

Since Dark Money has permeated every facet of politics, candidates are forced to spend 99% of their time raising money for months leading up to an election INSTEAD OF ACTUALLY TALKING TO VOTERS.

It’s a terrible process, but it’s not going to change over the next 3 months.

We know that the likely progressive Supreme Court candidate, Susan Crawford, will surely make her way around the state over the next several months, but most of you won’t see her unless invited to a fancy house and asked to donate several hundred dollars to her campaign.

This isn’t a slight against Crawford, it’s just reality.

So my idea is to enlist progressive lawyers in every city, town, and village in Wisconsin to hold open houses that are FREE TO THE PUBLIC, and become surrogate speakers for Susan Crawford. Lawyers will know more than most about what could happen if we elect a corrupt Supreme Court, so they’re already positioned well to raise awareness about the importance of this race.

Now, instead of merely engaging the progressive donor class months before the election, we can raise awareness among too-often neglected progressive voters in small towns who don't have extra cash to to donate to campaigns.

Because we’re asking lawyers to hold open houses at their offices, or FIRMS, we’re calling this effort “Operation FIRM Beliefs.”

For "Operation Firm Beliefs," we're going to be asking lawyers to open up their "firms" an tell us their "firm beliefs" about this race.

See what we did there?

Now of course we’re not coordinating efforts with the Crawford campaign because as a Super PAC, we’re not allowed to--but we will be hiring a few organizers to do the following things:

1. Liaise with as many lawyers as possible, in hopefully every Wisconsin small town, to set dates and expectations for their events.

2. Spend Super PAC dollars to help advertise for these events, both on our social media channels, our large email list, on radio, etc.

3. Help craft talking points so that every speaker can provide a semblance of the same message statewide.

We’ve already got some experience coordinating events in rural Wisconsin because we did the same thing last fall when we went around the state and enlisted volunteers to help "get out the vote" for Harris/Walz. I’ll lean heavily on the same organizers we used for that tour on this project.

So what’s next?

1. If you’re a lawyer and are willing to open up your firm’s office for an event, please email us here and we’ll get back to you and help plan an event in February or March.

2. I think that hiring a few organizers might cost up to $20K for the next three months, and advertising to get people to show up to these events statewide could cost another $20K. If you can chip in to help us raise $40K to get this project started, here’s a link to our Super PAC donation page.

Picture of "Fighting Bob La Follette" speaking to average Wisconsin voters, not just the "donor class."

It has become clear that to neglect rural Wisconsin is to neglect our swing state's Democracy, and by extension, America's.

Yes, Susan Crawford has a lot of fundraising to do in this post-Citizens United election climate fueled by Dark Money, but that doesn't mean the rest of us can't roll up our sleeves and campaign the old-fashioned way--by getting together with our neighbors and convincing each other that it's not red vs. blue, but working class vs ruling class.

At the age of 25, Robert La Follette Sr. was elected to become Dane County's District Attorney--well before he became Wisconsin's famous Senator and a progressive hero to the rest of America. I believe that "Fighting Bob" would have been one of the first young lawyers to respond to our call to warn his community about the creeping dangers of authoritarianism and kleptocracy had we asked him back then.

Lawyers of Wisconsin, please consider not only writing a check to the only honest Supreme Court candidate running in this election, but also taking the next step to help the rest of us understand what's at stake if we don't hold onto our Supreme Court's progressive majority.

If you answer our call, then we'll raise the money to get people there...and we may even bring a little free beer!

Thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.

We hope to see many of you in Wisconsin's Hinterland real soon.

Kirk Bangstad
Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company
Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC