'We're basically giving up': Republicans swoon after election lockout in this Trump state

Wisconsin Republicans appear distraught after their recent trouncing in state supreme court elections, which handed liberal justices a 5-to-2 majority.

"We're basically giving up on the court. Which is a horrible decision to make, because it's going to have huge ramifications, and it may not matter who's governor, or who controls the Legislature, if the court is controlled by liberals for the next 10 to 15 years," said Mark Graul, a longtime GOP operative who previously handled campaigns for Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler.

Graul said donors were unwilling to come off the cash for conservative judicial candidate Maria Lazar, appearing to think donations were a lost cause as the state’s voting public swings Democrat in the shadow of President Donald Trump.

This, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is a colossal turn from 2017, when Democrats did not bother to field a candidate for that year's Wisconsin Supreme Court race after a string of harsh losses, “including one that cemented a robust conservative majority on the state's highest court.”

But a decade later, the tables have clearly turned.

“It is the Republicans who have lost control of the court and do not yet have a conservative candidate waiting in the wings to try to keep the liberals' 5-2 majority from expanding in 2027,” said the Journal.

Graul’s former employer, Ziegler, delivered a striking blow to Democrats in 2017, having run unopposed after a brutal Democrat beatdown in the state supreme Court, the U.S. Senate and the White House. Now, Ziegler is leaving an open race in 2027 with her decision not to seek re-election.

"You really did have, in addition to the gross imbalance of financial resources for the court race, you also had an especially negative national environment for Republicans," said Marquette University Law School’s Charles Franklin. "And I think that both held down Republican energy and turnout, but it also surely boosted Democratic turnout yesterday."

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is on the ballot in the state’s open governor's race, and he assures reporters that he is running a campaign "that can stand on its own" and won't need to depend on the weakened state GOP.

“Well, we got our butts kicked last night, right? There’s no doubt about it, and we should acknowledge that," Tiffany told reporters at a recent press conference. "But the election that’s coming up this fall, in November, is a new election, and … every election is unique, and I have built a campaign − money, manpower, messaging − we’re going to compete on all fronts.”

Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki told the Sentinel that Republicans have plenty of financial resources, saying “MAGA world is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars." However, Republicans will have to get past “the disgust that independents and a growing number of Republicans have with an administration and a Congress that is incapable of delivering what they said they were going to.”