After Taking Nearly $70,000 in Campaign Donations from State Republican Party and Local Chapters, Rebecca Bradley Decries Partisanship in State High Court Race

MADISON, Wis. — Rebecca Bradley, appointed an unprecedented three times to three judicial seats by Republican Gov. Scott Walker and whose single largest campaign contributor is the state Republican Party, has taken to decrying political partisanship in the closing days of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race. One Wisconsin Now Research Director Jenni Dye summed up noted partisan Bradley’s hysterics over partisanship as, “unbelievable.”

“With nearly $70,000 in contributions, the Republican Party is the biggest single funder of Rebecca Bradley’s campaign for the state high court,” noted Dye. “It is unbelievable that the candidate who owes her judicial career to the most divisively partisan governor in Wisconsin history and whose largest single contributor is the state Republican Party is raising concerns about partisan politics in the race.”

According to campaign finance reports Bradley has filed with the Government Accountability Board, the Republican Party of Wisconsin has made 11 contributions totalling $67,291.88 in her high court race, ranking them as her single largest campaign contributor. Local GOP parties in Kenosha and Clark counties added another $600 to Bradley’s coffers in 2016. After snagging her first Walker appointment to the bench in Milwaukee County in 2012, the local GOP ponied up $500 for her 2013 election campaign and the state GOP chipped in another $360.

According to campaign finance records Bradley doesn’t just take donations from Republicans either, having previously donated $1,600 to her political patron Scott Walker’s campaigns.

Dye added that Bradley is more than just a Scott Walker crony, contributor to his campaign and a rubberstamp for his agenda rather than an independent, non-political justice. One Wisconsin Now has exposed despicable and dangerous views Bradley has expressed in her writings – including virulent homophobia, suggesting women are to blame for date rape, comparing abortion to the Holocaust and slavery, a radical right wing view that birth control is akin to murder and that judges ought to be able to lie in their campaigns.

She concluded, “Rebecca Bradley is far and away the most partisan candidate the Wisconsin Supreme Court has seen. She has shown with her words, with her actions and with her campaign contributions she cannot be trusted to uphold the most basic principle of our judicial system, that all are equal before the law.”