With Gov. Scott Walker’s signature, the battle over the rights of Wisconsin unions officially moved beyond the legislative process and spilled over into the courts. The first sign was a temporary restraining order issued by Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi, preventing the publishing of the union bargaining law until a ruling on the merits of the law can be made. Naturally, a state appeal on this decision followed, and the implementation of the law will not occur until the legal processes play out.

Yet even as the court system is ruling on the legality of the actions of the Senate, unions and opponents of the governor’s actions are looking to the upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court election as the next battle in this bitter confrontation.

On one side is Justice David Prosser. Prosser was appointed to the court by former Gov. Tommy Thompson in 1999 and currently operates within a four-justice conservative majority. His allegiances in what is supposed to be a non-partisan seat were seemingly made clear by the first announcement of his re-election campaign, the goal: “protecting the conservative judicial majority and acting as a common sense complement to both the new administration and Legislature.” A former speaker of the Assembly, Justice Prosser also mentored Walker when he was newly elected to that body. The campaign for Prosser has backed off the statements about complementing the new administration, maintaining only the goal of preserving a conservative majority.

None of this sits well with Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, the challenger in the upcoming election. Kloppenburg is a University of Wisconsin Law School graduate who is pushing the message that she will replace what some see as a Walker rubber-stamp with a justice who is dedicated to “applying the law fairly rather than scoring points for any political party.” While Kloppenburg has been careful to claim independence over liberal leanings, her campaign was out in force during the rallies last Saturday, claiming her election as the “next step” in stopping the Walker agenda.

Now that is about as general a generalization as you can make on the two candidates for the Supreme Court. Prosser is clearly not Walker, but the reality is that in this charged political atmosphere, those who Walker has attacked are in desperate need of an opponent. Throw in the fact that it recently came out that Prosser called Chief Justice Shirely Abrahamson a “total bitch,” and the picture of another Koch brother crony is just about complete. At the same time, the relative unknown aspect of Kloppenburg allows her to easily fit into the mold of the union’s champion, a role she seems to tacitly accept, and why not; two months ago this election was projected to be a landslide victory for Prosser.

The effect this court could eventually have on the union bargaining bill is hard to determine, but the effect the bill has had on the court is already clear. Every upcoming political moment, starting with this Supreme Court election, will now be couched in terms of the bargaining debate.

On the one hand, this increased emphasis on an important election for the people of Wisconsin is a good thing. Because really, without all the turmoil of the last month, how many of us would have been preparing to vote on April 5? Yet at the same time, the ease of placing both candidates into preconceived ideological boxes is surely not the best way to elect the most capable justice. I for one came into this article preparing to find in Prosser an easy target for my pro-labor leanings. But for every questionable decision I have found, such as his rewriting of judicial ethics rules to say that campaign contributions themselves do not represent a conflict of interests, I also found that he is a solid justice with a history of working toward maintaining the letter of law and not rewarding special interests.

But this is the reality of the fallout from the bargaining debate and protests. April 5 will be less a determination of the better candidate and more a measuring stick of Wisconsin’s current political climate. For good or ill, the next skirmish has been set.

John Waters ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in journalism.