As Wisconsin Heads to the polls today here is all the information any voter really needs to decide who our next Supreme Court Justice should be.
JoAnne (Fishman) Kloppenburg enrolled at Yale University in 1969 after attending high school in Connecticut. She earned her B.A. in 1974, and in 1976 she earned an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
In 1976 she married Jack R. Kloppenburg, Jr. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and entered public service by joining the Peace Corps. The Kloppenburgs travelled to Southern Africa where JoAnne became a rural development planner for the government of Botswana until 1979.
Upon returning home Mrs. Kloppenburg worked as a college administrator for Wells College in upstate New York while helping to establish a supplemental nutrition program for women and children.
JoAnne Kloppenburg interned for (later Chief) Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme and taught legal writing while attending the University of Wisconsin Law School. Upon graduating in 1988 she clerked for a year for (now Senior) Judge Barbara Crabb of the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.
Kloppenburg began working for the Wisconsin Department of Justice in 1989 and over the course of her 23 year career she worked as an Assistant Attorney General for both Republican and Democratic administrations.
The following is a summary of her community involvement from her campaign website:
Active in the legal profession as well as the broader community, Judge Kloppenburg is a board member of the Wisconsin Trust Account Foundation (2013-present); serves as a mentor for the Dane County Bar Association and UW Law School (2011-present); and has previously served as a volunteer mediator, Dane County Bar Association (2010-2012); a volunteer at the Dane County Bar Foreclosure Clinic (2010-2012); a Neighborhood Association Volunteer and Board Member (2000-2012); an English as a Second Language (ESL) Tutor (2004-2010); and a board member of Legal Action of Wisconsin (LAW) (1991-1993). Judge Kloppenburg has taught at the UW Law School since 1990, and received the Adjunct Instructor of the Year Award in 2011. She has served as a judge for the Wisconsin High School Mock Trial Tournament and for the UW Law School and Marquette Law School Mock Court competitions. She has also spoken to bar associations around the state on issues related to appellate and civil litigation, as well as on women judges in Wisconsin.
In the Winter of 2011 during the Wisconsin Uprising, JoAnne Kloppenburg was engaged in an epic battle for the Wisconsin Supreme Court against conservative incumbent Justice David Prosser. Seeing an opportunity to hand a defeat to our recently elected “Desperado” Governor Scott Walker, Wisconsin Progressives and Democrats rallied around Kloppenburg delivering her an election night victory. The race made national headlines just a few days later though, when Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus miraculously discovered a sackful of ballots from her conservative district which were just enough to tip the election in the incumbent’s favor.
Not one to give up, in 2012 Kloppenburg ran and won an election to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, District IV where she currently serves as presiding Judge.
Here’s a brief summary of the current 2016 race from Wikipedia:
Wisconsin Supreme Court justice N. Patrick Crooks announced on September 16, 2015 that he would not seek re-election to the court in 2016, and Crooks then passed away five days later. Governor Walker appointed judge Rebecca Bradley to fill the reminder of his term. Kloppenburg, Bradley and Joe Donald each announced their candidacy for the seat in the 2016 election, with Bradley as the sole Republican and Kloppenburg and Donald as Democrats.
In the February 16 primary, Bradley edged Kloppenburg 44.7%-43.2%, moving the two of them on to the general election. In a repeat of 2011, the race became extremely partisan after the primary, with major focus given to articles Bradley had written in the Marquette University student newspaper in 1992, when she was 21, attacking AIDS patients, drug users, and supporters of abortion on demand. Kloppenburg attacked Bradley's student writings, stating: "There is no statute of limitations on hate. Rebecca Bradley’s comments are as abhorrent and disturbing today as they were in 1992 as people were dying in huge numbers from AIDS.”
(Bolding mine)
I’ve written about Kloppenburg’s current opponent twice already. Bradley really is just as heinous as Kloppenburg’s foe from 2011.
For five years now we’ve been striving for some actual justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Last year we successfully retained veteran Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley (no relation), but a State Referendum was passed which stripped Justice Shirley Abrahamson of her position as Chief Justice. With the reigns of justice in conservative hands, the Scott Walker John Doe Probe was stopped dead by the newly reconfigured Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Luckily, Wisconsin has a battle-hardened, honorable, and experienced candidate in JoAnne Kloppenburg to stand in opposition to Scott Walker, David Prosser, Rebecca Bradley and the other conservatives on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and fight FOR US:
Whomever you are voting for in the Presidential Primary, be it Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, we can all agree that there is really only one qualified candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race and that is JoAnne Kloppenburg.
The polls are open from 7:00am to 8:00pm today. Let’s GOTV, Wisconsin! Everybody’s watching and I’m counting on you.