Dan Kelly travels the state before Supreme Court election while Janet Protasiewicz is grounded by illness
The final full day of campaigning for a crucial seat on the state Supreme Court saw one candidate flying from city to city across Wisconsin while the other was grounded once again because of a respiratory infection.
Former Justice Daniel Kelly, a conservative, spent Monday on a seven-city trip across Wisconsin, stretching from Waukesha to Hudson, in a private jet apparently owned by a family of anti-abortion advocates. It marked the fourth day that Kelly has been barnstorming across the state.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz, by contrast, was nowhere to be found on the campaign trail for the fifth consecutive day because of illness, forcing surrogates to fill in for her. Protasiewicz, a liberal, was last seen campaigning on Wednesday during a virtual forum sponsored by the Milwaukee chapter of the NAACP.
Campaign officials said she has continued to test negative for COVID-19.
"Judge Janet Protasiewicz was diagnosed with a respiratory infection over the weekend and is doing well," said Sam Roecker, a spokesman for the campaign. "She will return to the campaign trail on Tuesday, including voting in person and attending her election night event with supporters."
Voters will decide on Tuesday whether to flip the ideological balance of the state's Supreme Court just as it is considering a raft of legal disputes, including a challenge to the state's pre-Civil War ban on abortion.
Conservatives have controlled the high court for the past 15 years, but liberals could gain a 4-3 majority with a Protasiewicz victory. She finished first and Kelly second in a four-way February primary.
More: What April's Supreme Court election may tell us about the 2024 partisan races in Wisconsin
Given the high stakes, the increasingly testy contest has blown past state and national spending records for a statewide court, due largely to the influx of national money and outside TV ads.
Kelly, who previously served on the court between 2016 and 2020, is finishing the campaign with his 21-city "Save the Court" tour over four days.
The final stop will be at the Tuscan Hall Venue and Catering in Waukesha at 6 p.m. on Monday.
To travel the state, Kelly, an appointee of former GOP Gov. Scott Walker, has been flying on a Cessna Citation V that appears to be owned by Paul and Elizabeth Keppeler of Oconomowoc. The Kelly campaign described the couple as "supporters." Neither returned calls on Monday.
The Rev. Landon Huie, pastor of Oasis Church in Eau Claire, mentioned Kelly's plane during a Sunday church service in which the candidate spoke.
"I know you've here shortly got to jump on a plane and head to another event, but I'd like to just pray over you if that's OK," Huie said.
Paul Keppeler is a retired U.S Air Force officer and airline pilot. Elizabeth Keppeler is the daughter of Bruce Bell, founder of Belmark, a Green Bay-area packaging company. Her sister's husband, Karl Schmidt, is Belmark's CEO chief and has been a longtime board member for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state's business lobby.
WMC officials would not say whether he is currently on the group's 52-member board.
WMC Issues Mobilization Council, the political arm of the business group, has spent $5.2 million, the most of any outside group, in support of Kelly, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
Last week, WMC has removed two pro-Kelly TV ads that featured a rape case Protasiewicz presided over. The rape victim in the case said the ads were traumatizing and misleading.
Paul and Betsy Keppeler, Bruce Bell, Karl Schmidt and other Bell family members are officers of the Easter Foundation Inc. a personal foundation with assets of $41.9 million in 2020.
Between 2018 and 2020, the foundation made grants to the Pregnancy Resource Center of Southwest Florida, a "crisis pregnancy center," for $140,000.
In 2020, the foundation also gave to Wisconsin Right to Life ($1,000), Focus on the Family ($3,000), the Heritage Foundation ($15,000), and a number of other religious, political and charitable organizations. It also gave the Medical College of Wisconsin $50,000.
On a blog that he contributed to, Kelly wrote that everyone knows abortion "takes the life of an unborn child." But he said pro-choice groups still favor making abortion legal "to preserve sexual libertinism."
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kelly travels, Protasiewicz grounded with illness in election windup
