Once a fiercely-contested state supreme court that embroiled the whole state of Wisconsin, Republicans appear to have given up on the possibility of reclaiming the court majority and influencing Wisconsin policy.
Now with Democrats holding the court majority and striking down Republican gerrymandered state maps, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports conservative Chief Justice Annette Ziegler will not seek a third term in 2027, she announced Monday.
“After three decades on the bench, now is the right time for me to step away to spend more time with my husband, kids and grandkids," Ziegler said in a statement.
In 2007, Ziegler beat attorney Linda Clifford for her seat on the Supreme Court in a race that cost about $6 million. The Sentinel reports that, at the time, that was the funding record for a court race.
But last year, billionaire Elon Musk flooded the Wisconsin supreme court election with money, even going so far as to hand out two million-dollar checks to petition signers just days before voters went to the polls. During a Fox News interview, Musk predicted that if the liberal candidate won against his conservative champion, it would be a precursor to Democrats taking back the U.S. House of Representatives and having "nonstop impeachment hearings and subpoenas."
But Musk came up empty after Dane County Judge Susan Crawford defeated conservative Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel in April 2025 — in perhaps one of the first backlash votes against President Donald Trump last year.
The Sentinel reports that three days after securing their fledgling majority, the court's four liberal justices voted to limit Ziegler's power as chief justice – a move she called at the time "an attempt to gut" her constitutional authority by "rogue justices."
Last year, Ziegler — now in the court’s minority — argued that the use of a more balanced election map would violate the U.S. Constitution. She cited a 2022 Supreme Court decision, Moore v. Harper, for the proposition that state courts’ role in congressional redistricting is “exceedingly limited.”
But Slate writer Mark Stern walloped that argument, reporting that “Moore said no such thing. That quotation appears nowhere in the ruling. To the contrary, Moore held the opposite, concluding that state courts can play a legitimate, meaningful role in congressional redistricting.”
Stern added that the Badger state’s electorate is split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Yet in 2024, it elected sixRepublicans and just two Democrats to the House of Representatives thanks to the heavily Republican-favored gerrymandered map it was using at the time.
The increasingly anti-Trump environment in Wisconsin may be coupling with the exorbitant costs of court elections and deterring conservative candidates, even incumbents like Ziegler.