By Joe Handrick
Originally Published March 20, 2025
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate and current Dane County Judge Susan Crawford participated in a briefing for big donors that, per the AP, was “billed as a chance to put two more House seats in play.”
Could the Court perform such a naked partisan gerrymander in the middle of the decade? By ignoring traditional and legal criteria, yes they could.
I’ll show you the one simple trick they could use to make this happen.
Trust me, this is not providing them with a blueprint — I assure you their potential new map is already drawn. They would follow the same playbook Evers used to carve up LaCrosse in order to create a new DEM seat there.
Here is what the city looked like under the old map. The city was kept whole. This created one DEM seat (95), one GOP seat (96) and one 50/50 seat (94).
Then Evers did this…
The City of La Crosse is now cut up into 3 pieces. Traditional redistricting criteria of compactness and respect for municipal boundaries were discarded. Seats 95 and 96 were now both Democratic with 94 remaining as 50/50.
Disregarding traditional redistricting principles and legal requirements in order to help one political party is the classic definition of gerrymandering.
They could carve up Madison between congressional districts similar to what they did in LaCrosse.
Thus, the chance to pick up two more House seats for the Democrats as promised to the donors would suddenly be very real.
This map, below, also draws Tiffany and Fitzgerald out of their districts (although the seats would remain GOP).
To justify such a naked partisan gerrymander, they would rely on the silly argument that the current 6-2 GOP delegation is not “fair.”
Let’s dispel with that notion right now.
Going into the 2010 elections the delegation was 4 to 4. Redistricting in 2011 and 2021 had NOTHING to do with the evolution into a 6-2 delegation.
GOP picked up Obey’s seat (CD7) in 2010 (before redistricting) – it has become solid GOP without any redistricting help. In 2011 the map was redrawn by THE CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION with sign off from both Republicans and Democrats – including congresswoman Tammy Baldwin.
What did Ron Kind and the Democrats want in that new map? According to depositions filed with the federal courts, they wanted to shore-up Kind’s district by giving it Portage County (Stevens Point). The map drawn by Evers in 2021 largely followed the 2011 template.
Thus, if you believe that the 2011/2021 map is a gerrymander, you must concede it was a gerrymander to help democrat Ron Kind. Even with Portage added, the GOP won the seat when Kind retired (like CD7, the 3rd has evolved into a GOP seat).
That’s how the delegation came to be 6-2.
So, their logic will be the Court must fix this “unfairness” by eliminating the gerrymander that aimed to help a Democrat by passing a new map that gerrymanders Madison in order to help Democrats.
It will be a raw partisan power grab. Hence, the subject line of the fundraiser featuring Susan Crawford.
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