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dan kelly
Another Loser Republican Goes Out Whining
If they win an election, everything is on the up and up. If they lose, something was amiss and certainly unfair.
Apr 08, 2023
What is it about many modern day Republican candidates?
If they win an election, everything is on the up and up. If they lose, something was amiss and certainly unfair.
Defeated Supreme Court candidate Dan Kelly is the most recent example. After it became clear Tuesday night that Janet Protasiewicz would defeat him by a wide margin, he had nothing but bad things to say about his opponent.
She's a serial liar, he proclaimed in a speech at the swank Heidel House Hotel in Green Lake.
"I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent," he told his assembled supporters. "But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede."
Kelly called Protasiewicz's campaign "deeply deceitful, dishonorable and despicable."
"My opponent is a serial liar," he continued. "She's disregarded judicial ethics; she's demeaned the judiciary with her behavior. This is the future that we have to look forward to in Wisconsin."
This from the candidate whose campaign backers, including Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, sponsored an ad that used a Milwaukee rape victim's case to declare that Protasiewicz had a soft spot in her heart for sexual predators.
The ad, which claimed the Milwaukee judge had unleashed the perpetrator to again prey on the innocent, so upset the victim that she spoke out in Protasiewicz's defense.
"It immediately took my breath away," she said of the ad. "To see it in action, I wondered if there was any thought put into the human beings behind the cases."
Both sides in the campaign used inflammatory, low-ball TV spots, but for Kelly to suggest he was above it all is nothing short of laughable. In fact, the former justice was up on TV early and often suggesting his opponent was soft on criminals, cherry picking a handful of sentences out of the hundreds she had administered while on the circuit court bench.
What was so ludicrous about all those multimillion dollar attack ads is that Supreme Court justices don't rule on such cases in the first place.
Kelly closed his concession talk with, "I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it."
No, it's the other way around. Kelly, absurdly claiming that he would only rule on the principles of law and not his political beliefs, was all set to rubber stamp the right-wing Republican legislative agenda, as had the justice he was hoping to replace, Patience Roggensack. The gerrymanderers, the opponents of a woman's right to choose, the vote suppressors were all lined up.
Lucky for us, the voters sent them away.
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Defeated Right-Wing Judge Refuses to Concede to Victor He Deems Not 'Worthy'
"This is just what Republicans do now," said one critic.
Apr 05, 2023
Daniel Kelly, the right-wing former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who lost his bid to re-join the high court on Tuesday as liberal circuit court judge Janet Protasiewicz won by a decisive margin, refused to concede to his opponent in a speech that one critic said personified the Republican Party's approach to electoral politics in recent years.
"It brings me no joy to say this," Kelly told supporters. "I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent. But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede."
Kelly acknowledged that he lost the election and said he "respected" the decision made by more than 55% of Wisconsin voters who chose Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County Circuit judge who was outspoken about her support for abortion rights and labor unions, to join the court, giving Democratic-aligned justices a 4-3 majority.
But he denounced Protasiewicz as a "serial liar" and accused her of disregarding judicial ethics and demeaning the judiciary "with her behavior."
\u201cDuring his concession speech, Dan Kelly who was running for WI Supreme Court said, \u201cThis was the most deeply deceitful, dishonorable, despicable campaign I have ever seen run for the courts.\u201d He also said he didn't have a \u201cworthy opponent\u201d in Janet Protasiewicz to concede to.\u201d— James Groh (@James Groh) 1680663003
"This is just what Republicans do now," said New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.
Progressive Chicago-based news outlet Heartland Signalaccused Kelly of going "full sour grapes."
In the two-and-a-half years since former Republican President Donald Trump urged his supporters to attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and refused to acknowledge his loss, a number of losing GOP candidates have demanded recounts, claimed their elections were "rigged," and spread baseless conspiracy theories about voting irregularities.
"Among the Trumpian core of the Republican Party, this has become mainstream," Rick Hasen, the director of UCLA Law's Safeguarding Democracy Project, toldAxios last year. "It's exceedingly dangerous, because a democracy depends on losers' consent."
As Common Dreams reported earlier this week, Kelly claimed to be nonpartisan during the campaign, but has received funding from vehemently anti-union billionaires and has ruled in the past in the favor of allowing people to carry concealed weapons on public transit. He has also written blog posts in the past saying that people who support abortion rights want "to preserve sexual libertinism" and denouncing marriage equality and people who rely on Medicare and Social Security benefits.
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'Disaster for Working People' Looms If MAGA Republicans Take Wisconsin Supreme Court
"The stakes could not be higher. And the contrast between the candidates could not be clearer."
Apr 03, 2023
Progressives in Wisconsin and across the United States are warning that Tuesday's upcoming state Supreme Court election will have implications for working families nationwide, as a liberal judge who has been outspoken about her support for abortion rights and labor unions faces a right-wing former justice funded by dark money.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz is running against former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly. The contest, which will decide whether the high court leans left or right, has become the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with the candidates, political parties, and outside groups pouring $30 million into the election.
Wisconsin Watch at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reported last week that Protasiewicz has raised nearly $12 million more than her opponent as the judge issues warnings that a victory for Kelly would mean the court would almost certainly uphold an 1849 law that went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, making abortion illegal in almost all cases including pregnancies that result from rape or incest.
"I can tell you that if my opponent is elected," Protasiewicz told supporters recently, "that 1849 abortion ban will stay on the books."
\u201cThe Wisconsin Supreme Court could play a pivotal role shaping reproductive freedom in the state. Judge Protasiewicz is running against Daniel Kelly, who is endorsed by anti-choice extremists.\u201d— NARAL (@NARAL) 1680547613
While Kelly has claimed during the campaign that he is nonpartisan, political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen explained in a video produced with pro-worker media outlet More Perfect Union that the former state Supreme Court justice has made his political leanings perfectly clear in previous public statements and rulings.
"For candidates who have a lot to hide, never talking about your politics is actually extremely convenient," Cohen said of Kelly, who before launching his supposedly nonpartisan campaign ruled that people in Madison, Wisconsin should be permitted to carry concealed weapons on public transit and that a fossil fuel company should not be required to protect the public from water it polluted.
Kelly's funders include Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, "a pair of billionaires who are laser focused on transforming their home state of Wisconsin," Cohen said. The Uihleins have previously donated to anti-democracy causes like "the dismantling of unions" through the passage of Act 10, which eliminated collective bargaining for most public employees and contributed to a dramatic decline in union membership in the state.
Kelly's backers had spent about $2 million more than Protasiewicz's supporters on ads as of March 27, according to Wisconsin Watch.
"If they succeed," saidMore Perfect Union on Monday, "MAGA Republicans will control the state's highest court—a disaster for working people."
The Wisconsin AFL-CIO and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are working "to reach every union member in the state and as many other voters as possible" ahead of the election, according to IBEW Local 494 political director Ryan Neibauer, by canvassing door-to-door, visiting job sites, and phonebanking.
"We're letting people know that labor is supporting Judge Janet, and we think that can pull her across the finish line with a win," Neibauer said in a statement late last month. "There are so many things on the table and so many things we can do with a pro-worker majority."
Anti-union justices have had a 4-3 majority prior to the election, but with right-wing Justice Patience Roggensack retiring, "a Protasiewicz win levels the playing field and gives working families and their allies a fighting chance," said IBEW.
As progressive Wisconsin columnist John Nichols wrote in The Capital Times on Sunday, electing Protasiewicz to secure a liberal majority on the high court would give the state its first chance to address a "radically gerrymandered" district map drawn by Republican lawmakers in 2011, which allowed the party to hold both legislative chambers for more than a decade even as Democrats have won 14 of the last 17 statewide elections.
"This pattern will not change unless a majority of justices agree to revisit the issue," wrote Nichols. "That certainly won't happen if conservatives retain their current 4-3 majority following the April 4 election... If the seat flips and liberals take charge of the court, however, Wisconsin's legislative and congressional maps could be challenged on a variety of grounds, and perhaps redrawn."
"The stakes could not be higher," Nichols added. "And the contrast between the candidates could not be clearer."
Cohen noted that Tuesday's election could also decide whether former President Donald Trump will be able to successfully challenge the 2024 election results, as he attempted to in 2020, if he continues his campaign for president.
"Just look how close he came to doing it in Wisconsin in 2020," Cohen said. "The state Supreme Court narrowly sided with empirical reality in a 4-3 ruling, and it's not a huge mystery how Kelly might rule if he were presented with a similar case. That's bad news for all of us."
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