Wisconsin and Florida Elections Are a Trump Test, Democrats Say
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Voters go to the polls in elections for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and two Florida House seats as Democrats hope these races prove to be bellwethers of a backlash against Donald Trump. Meantime, the U.S. Supreme Court sounds skeptical of a ruling by that liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court majority, which denied a tax exemption to Catholic charities.

Welcome. I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal. We're joined today by my colleagues, Editorial Board Member Colin Levy and columnist Alicia Finley. State Supreme Court elections can sometimes be sleepy affairs, but not this year and not in Wisconsin. There's tons of energy being deployed there by both sides, including Elon Musk for the GOP.

Part of the story is an effort by Republicans in Wisconsin to take back control of that state's highest court, currently with a 4-3 liberal majority. The other part seems to be hope by Democrats that today's results will signal political trouble for the GOP and maybe be a harbinger of the 2026 midterms, particularly true in Florida, where there are two special elections in red house seats today.

Let's listen to the Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin talking about this on Action News Jacksonville. There is a lot of buyer's remorse right now in this country. We're seeing Republicans swing quite a bit our way. We're seeing independent voters swing heavily our way.

We're seeing Democrats energized, Republicans demoralized. And what that means to me, for me, as we head into this special election here in a couple days, is that's a perfect recipe for a surprise. Colin, let's start in Wisconsin. What are the stakes of this state Supreme Court race? And what is the state of play as you see it now that we're here on Election Day?

Right, Kyle. I mean, I think for sure right now this race is too close to call. I mean, all the polling we're seeing has the liberal candidate Susan Crawford and the conservative candidate Brad Schimel really just neck and neck. But as you said, I mean, everyone loves to talk about Elon Musk. He's everywhere. He was in Wisconsin yesterday. And he's certainly there to increase the turnout and really get the buzz going. But on the more substantive things, I think there are a lot of things at stake in this race. It's obviously going to determine the balance of the court.

If Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate, wins, that's going to allow the progressive majority on the court to make major changes in Wisconsin law. And it could also potentially redraw the congressional maps in a way that Democrats could potentially gain two new seats in Congress.

As you know, Republicans currently have a 218 to 213 majority in Congress. So that's a pretty big deal. But inside Wisconsin, I think maybe the stakes are even bigger than that because you have a situation where a progressive majority could overturn big pieces of just classic Wisconsin reform legislation like Act 10, which was obviously implemented when Scott Walker was governor and made major reforms for public unions.

And also Act II, which was a major tort reform legislation, which put some caps on punitive damages and really made it so that Wisconsin wasn't a horrible place to do business. It brought businesses in and sort of bolstered the state's economy.

So those are really big. You know, also, I think we should not forget about Wisconsin school choice programs, which are very important. And the Wisconsin school voucher program is something that teachers unions would love to make disappear if they could get the right thing in front of a progressive majority that would go with them that way. Colin, talk just briefly about the two candidates in this judicial race, how they're campaigning, how that has played out.

on the ground. Remarkable, I mean, trying to nationalize local elections is an old tactic, sometimes a successful tactic, but remarkable in a state Supreme Court race to see all of this focus on Elon Musk as if the new justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court is going to have anything to do with the Doge effort that's happening in Washington, D.C. No, for sure, that's been true. And, you know, there's been a lot of focus among the Democrats in Wisconsin on Elon Musk's

in hopes that just painting his name over the name of Brad Schimel, in fact, during their one debate, Susan Crawford referred to her opponent as Elon Schimel. So they're really trying to paint those two together in hopes that Democrats in Wisconsin are so irritated by the Trump administration and by Elon Musk that they'll just come out in droves

against him and against the Trump administration. But as you say, I mean, the danger with trying to nationalize these state elections is that a lot of times the real issues for Wisconsin voters aren't the same as the national issues. A lot of Wisconsin voters are very concerned about some of those state issues that I just mentioned, as well as things like crime and public safety.

I mean, usually when you're electing state Supreme Court justices, you're really talking about how they're going to be ruling on cases that are a very important local impact. So I think it's a risky strategy in a lot of ways. As it happens, on Monday, the Supreme Court heard a case seeking to overturn the

a ruling of this 4-3 liberal majority and written, by the way, by the justice on the Supreme Court who is retiring and opening up this election to the voters now. This is a case called Catholic Charities Bureau versus Wisconsin. And Alicia, the dispute is that Wisconsin has a state law that says their unemployment program and the taxes that fund the unemployment program have an exemption for groups that are controlled by a church or

and that operate for religious purposes. So the Catholic Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin is exempt

from this unemployment fund, and the Catholic Charities arm of that diocese wants to be similarly exempt. And the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision written by this retiring justice, said no, said that the activities of this Catholic Charities Bureau, which include job training and services for disabled, that those services are secular in nature and

According to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, they don't imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials. So denying that opt out on Monday, the Supreme Court seemed pretty skeptical of that under the First Amendment, the religion clauses.

Let's listen first to Justice Neil Gorsuch. Isn't it a fundamental premise of our First Amendment that the state shouldn't be picking and choosing between religions, between certain evangelical sects and Judaism and Catholicism on the other, for example? And doesn't it entangle the state tremendously?

When it has to go into a soup kitchen, send an inspector in to see how much prayer is going on. Let's listen to also on the other side of the aisle, Justice Elena Kagan. Some religions proselytize. Other religions don't. Why are we treating some religions better than others based on that element of religious doctrine? Alicia, notable there, because if you are losing Justice Neil Gorsuch and maybe losing Justice Elena Kagan...

It seems that you are losing the case. Right. And so those are the two justices who seem to be the most skeptical in the oral arguments of essentially the Wisconsin Supreme Court's interpretation of how broad this exemption should be. And the breadth is basically been argued by the state Democratic AG, who says that all

Well, as you pointed out, the charities really aren't involved in going out there and proselytizing or evangelizing for the Catholic faith. What they're doing is essentially what other secular organizations and charities do. And therefore, it should not qualify for this unemployment tax exemption that actually only asked for in 2016. Hence why it is now before the Supreme Court.

But the Supreme Court has long understood that the government and the court shouldn't be going in there and second guessing what is a religious function. This goes back to the Hosanna Tabor 2012 Supreme Court ruling in which Lutheran, the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,

basically went in and challenged a Lutheran school's right to remove a teacher. And the Lutheran school said, well, we shouldn't be bound by these civil discrimination laws that would apply to other kinds of schools. And we should be able to essentially fire teachers who don't abide by our religious teachings.

And the Supreme Court ruled in the school's favor. And the chief justice essentially said, well, we don't believe that the court should be getting in there and basically determining what is a primarily religious function or just some religious function. That's really not our role in the editorial, which, Cal, you wrote, you brought up a funny anecdote that was from the oral arguments, which the chief actually said.

interrupted and said, you know, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but as the Pope is ahead of his stake carrying out secular functions, those are important. So he is not a minister. And so trying to decipher between just somebody or in that does some secular functions, but also does religious functions. How do you draw that line? And is it really the courts or the government's job to do it? Hang tight. We'll be right back. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort.

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Welcome back. A couple points on the practicalities here. Again, in Wisconsin law, this is an exemption from the unemployment tax and unemployment participation for groups that are controlled by a church. So, Colin, it is not as if the titans of industry in Wisconsin are just raring to figure out ways to get their private businesses out.

also exempt from unemployment tax. And then two, the Catholic Charities Group says that they are not trying to get out of this because they want to deny some kind of safety net to their employees. There is a separate church-run unemployment fund that the diocese is a part of, and the Catholic Charities of that diocese wants to go into that fund. And they say that the benefits are pretty comparable in their briefs.

But my read of the law here, I think, is similar to Alicia's. I think the Supreme Court has been very wary of letting lower judges get in and do searching inquiries and try to figure out, you religious group, you say that this is religious conduct. But we've looked at it, and we don't think that's really religious. The schools is a great example. There is another case.

that involved whether a Catholic school is free from government meddling in its employment decisions based on discrimination laws. That one involved a teacher, a grade school teacher, I believe, who was instructing kids in doctrine, but she said she personally was no longer a practicing Catholic. And the Supreme Court said that still is a ministerial function that

And so we are not going to let courts meddle in those employment decisions of a school like that. Right. And, you know, Kyle, I think that the pretty broad consensus on the U.S. Supreme Court during the oral argument should also send up a flare here about just how wrongheaded a lot of the reasoning coming out of the current very progressive Wisconsin Supreme Court is. You know, the idea that

the Catholic charity should have their tax exemption denied because they're providing services to the poor or disabled without actually proselytizing to them is a pretty cramped view of the way that government should respect religious activities, you know, not to mention the free exercise of religion or the role of religious organizations in the community. It obviously shouldn't be up to a state government or the Wisconsin Supreme Court to determine which of the church's activities count as religion and which don't. I mean,

By the way, this case happens to be about a church, but I think it could have particular repercussions for religious minorities. And that came through in some of the amicus briefs at the court. There was one that was written by the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty that noted if the Catholic Charities were rejected here because they weren't proselytizing in the course of their service to the poor or disabled, the same could easily apply to other religions like Judaism, which don't proselytize at all as a rule.

So I think the bottom line here is that you just don't want the state getting to decide what's religious and what's not. Alicia, if the Roberts Court rules in favor of Catholic Charities in this case, to my eye, it would add to a pretty long run, a string of victories

for religious liberty in recent years. Some of those school cases would be in there, the cases involving school choice vouchers. There was one in Montana. There was one in Maine about parents' right. If the state gives out money for parents to take to private schools, their ability to take those to religious schools without any sort of exclusion. And often I think this is missed on

in debates among conservatives about the Chief Justice, about the current court. People have their complaints about some of the decisions, particularly by the Chief Justice, who is perceived as sometimes triangulating between what might be a popular outcome with the public, not wanting to strike down Obamacare, for example.

But religious liberty is one place, it seems to me, where the current court, the Roberts Court, has been pretty stalwart. And that includes, by the way, the chief justice. Right. And you've got liberals on the court who have gone along with a number of these decisions. I wouldn't say controversial ones, but there have been, you know, the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Obamacare contraception mandate. And that was more popular.

politically controversial, but the Supreme Court said that you can't basically enforce religious orders or nonprofits to provide coverage or even jump through all these hoops and loops to opt out of the contraception mandate that is an administrative burden on them. There was another case a year or two ago by a football coach who, after games, knelt at the halfway line and said a prayer.

And he was later fired. And he challenged that as a violation of one, his free speech, but also First Amendment freedom of conscience. And he won on that prevailed at the Supreme Court. And I think that that was kind of a slam dunk.

But you've actually seen, again, across the political or ideological spectrum, support for maintaining freedom of conscience. Now, there have been some, again, as I said, some more controversial cases in whether to overturn the court's infamous Lemon precedent, which liberals have been, even while they've chipped away at it, they've been critical of conservatives who have wanted to overturn it.

But I think there is an appreciation that, to Colin's point, you don't want government coming in and basically dictating how religions run either their affiliates or orders. That goes back to the founding. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. ADP imagines a world of work where smart machines become too smart. Copier, I need 15 copies of this. Printing. Ah! Ah!

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Welcome back. Meantime, the thing to watch tonight in Florida seems to be the margins. There are two House seats that are up for special elections. One was vacated by Matt Gaetz, the former congressman who resigned to be appointed attorney general by President Trump and then withdrew under controversy as some senators, including Republican senators, suggested they could not vote for confirmation.

The second seat was vacated by Mike Waltz, now President Trump's national security advisor. Colin, both of these are pretty red districts. Mike Waltz's, I think, went for President Trump by something like 30 points. But the Republican nominee here, Randy Fine, a state senator, has apparently been outraised in some of these fundraising statements by his Democratic opponents.

And so one of the questions is going to be the margin, whether it looks like this district that is very heavily for President Trump is swinging to the left now that President Trump is in office, which is something that is not unusual. There is often a political move.

against the party in power, the administration that controls the White House. But whether that happens and how big that swing seems to be, my guess is that those are going to be the questions. I think that's right. I mean, there's a lot of sort of hooting and hollering right now about the fact that this race wasn't supposed to be as close. Waltz won his seat by, I think it was 30 points last time. And this is a reliably red district. But as we were just talking about

in Wisconsin, when you nationalize these local elections and you invest them with all the baggage of the Trump administration and say that they're a referendum on the political fortunes in Washington, you also tend to make the local electorate more closely reflect the 50-50 national partisan divide. You take away all of those particulars that, you know, we were talking about also in Wisconsin as well. So we shouldn't forget that still often these local races aren't meant to be about the more local issues. You know, Wisconsin voters are

Choosing the Supreme Court Justice care more about crime and public safety. As I said before, you know, Florida voters have their issues, too. Not everything is always about Trump, I think. Similar story, though, in Pennsylvania last week, there was a state Senate election. Lancaster County, a county that voted for President Trump by 16 points. Democrats had not held the state Senate seat in decades.

and narrowly won it by something like 400 to 500 votes. So, Alicia, that's part of what has, I think, raised expectations for these results tonight is Democrats, even after that result, which is one low-profile state Senate election, often these off-year elections, these special elections,

have much lower turnout than November. So trying to read them as predictions of the future can be hazardous. But that result, I think, has raised Democratic expectations because last week, Democrats, including the DNC chair, who we heard from earlier, were saying that this is a backlash against President Trump, against Elon Musk.

And so, Alicia, I guess tonight we will find out whether that result in Pennsylvania carries through to Wisconsin, Florida. And so I think that's why people are so interested in what is going on here is what it might portend for the midterms and potential opposition to the Trump agenda going forward. Right. And you have to remember that Republicans have a very narrow majority in the House. Now, they're unlikely to lose the Florida seats, as Colin said. Trump won them by about 30 points.

But if they're closer, especially the Mike Waltz, which is expecting maybe to be in single digits, that's going to put a lot of fear in Republicans. And my concern is that that could make them more leery of doing any kind of reforms, particularly Medicaid reforms. Now, Democrats are actually going hard at that issue in Florida, more on the entitlements, trying to say that Republicans are going to try to take away your Social Security and Medicare and

make these huge cuts and this is perennial, but they've been successful in the past. They were successful and it's kind of scaremongering on the Affordable Care Act issue in the 2018 midterms. So if you see that strategy working, and I think that that's actually one of their bigger or more potent attacks in Florida, more so than the Doge, I think that that's going to make Republicans a little more skittish about doing any kind of reforms to Medicaid and potentially the food stamps, which would be regrettable.

I take that point. On the other hand, Colin, there may be voters even who like President Trump's agenda, who voted for him and are thinking to themselves,

25% tariffs on Canada. That is not exactly what I thought I was going to be getting when I pulled the lever last November. And similar for some of the chaos that I think we are seeing in Washington right now, top national security officials discussing U.S. strikes on Signal. And so if there are results here that might be closer than Republicans ought to have expected, given the fundamentals in

In those districts, I mean, what do you think Republicans ought to be thinking about and doing in response, given that there are still some months to go before the 2026 midterms, the campaigning there begins? There's still time to adjust, calibrate the message to the things that I guess, in my view, got President Trump elected, which are immigration and lowering prices, fixing up prices.

the Biden economy that many voters found dissatisfying. No, I think that's right. I mean, look, I think Republicans will continue to need to focus on those big issues that really motivated the electorate in November. And, you know, the thing as well, I think that we're seeing in both of these races we're discussing is how much focus there is going to be on turnout.

And we're talking about these spring elections as these low propensity elections and all of the gimmicks that Elon Musk is bringing, you know, giving out, you know, million dollar checks at his rallies on Sunday and, you know, all of these other things to try to get voters motivated and involved. I think

We're really going to see that become increasingly important in the midterm elections as well, just how tuned in voters are on the big issues as well as the local issues of their districts. Thank you, Colin and Alicia. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of Potomac Watch.

ADP imagines a world of work where smart machines become too smart. Copier, I need 15 copies of this. Printing. By the way, irregardless, not a word, Janet. Yeah, I know. Page six should be regardless of or irrespective of. Just print them, please. If it were a word, Janet, it would mean without irregard, which is... Copier! Switch to silent mode. Let's put a pin in it. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything.