Words Cannot Describe My Contempt for Maria Lazar
In a last ditch effort to save her flagging bid for State Supreme Court, Judge Maria Lazar pulled out the big guns. In her new ad, she talks about her opponent’s record on transgender rights with a Trumpian cruelty that will not win her the election, but will cause damage nonetheless.
It opens on a mother with the bitchiest Karen haircut you can imagine. “I love sports,” she proclaims, as sport-lovers always do, “but activists like Judge Chris Taylor threaten my child’s safety in sports.” That’s right: This is an ad about trans children in youth sports. The most pressing issue of our times, clearly.
I will not engage with this as on its merits – there are none. Nor can I give her points for novel thought or creativity – she’s never had a unique thought. This is a part of the grander Wisconsin Republican strategy during this election cycle to use Taylor’s record as an activist against her. What Maria Lazar has done here is drop thousands of her billionaire donors’ dollars to bully six-ish children in our state, and she will never face real consequences.
Now I don’t think she will win, but that’s not a consequence. She has a lifetime of financial comfort and her job in lower courts thanks to conservative benefactors. These ads do not make for a winning strategy, and Wisconsinites repeatedly show up in numbers to say that they embrace trans people as a part of society at large. However, this ad does cram harmful rhetoric into everyday space. I was in a public place while Boy Meets World played on a local channel, and I nearly couldn’t believe my ears that suddenly the TV was spreading this hate so casually.
As an aside, the entire trans discussion has created a strange danger zone where it is okay to use faked concern for children, or “women’s spaces,” to just say hurtful and untrue things. Senator Rob Hutton’s recent press release run in Urban Milwaukee is titled Governor Denies Protections for Women, Girls, and Children By Bad Medicine. Media savvy people already know that this is an article about transgender people at a glance, but it implicitly frames trans people and medicine as harmful. To our colleagues at Urban Milwaukee: you don’t have to run these pieces, you already ran the Evers press release and you don’t need to play at fairness like this.
Sticks and Stones Are Inspired By Words
The children used as props in Maria Lazar’s advertisement do not feel unsafe. This mom is lying. To the extent that these children feel anything about trans children in sports or their community at large, it is because of the moral panic about trans children and advertisements like this. The ACLU of Wisconsin repeats a similar sentiment when speaking on the anti-trans legislation that Tony Evers vetoed on March 31st of this year.
“LGBTQ+ Wisconsinites already face mental health disparities, and constant political attacks are further detrimental to our wellbeing. In 2026, we have been inundated with the frightening news of trans Kansans’ drivers licenses invalidated, LGBTQ+ asylum seekers detained, detransition forced in federal prisons, and 500 anti-trans bills introduced nationwide.”
We talked recently about Tammy Baldwin and her pivot to the right on immigration. This strategy doesn't work, but it has more damaging consequences than “not working;” it moves the discussion on immigrants further right. When Democrats pivot right they are not leading, they are chasing imaginary votes. This stands in contrast to the way that Republicans push their agendas through their campaigning which attempts to normalize heinous shit, and creates a leadership crisis.
Most Liberals Are Not Leaders
I can’t be the only person disappointed in how the “liberal majority” on the Wisconsin Supreme Court has used its position. On the same day that Tony Evers vetoed the gross anti-trans legislation, a three judge panel rejected a lawsuit that would challenge our state's Congressional maps. These maps have been contentious for a long time because of how imbalanced they are. I am sure the wonk-y Democrat establishment fans can justify this move (though I would like to hear the reasoning), but to the rest of us it makes the Supreme Court look scared.
Activists have been pushing for fair maps for well over a decade, and decisive action on these issues are what many of us have been voting for. There is no reason to fear accusations of partisan bias, that partisan bias is what got people excited for liberals like Janet Protasiewicz in the first place! Chris Taylor has been running her campaign explicitly as an advocate and I think that this is genuinely praiseworthy.
It is true that her advocacy has created an opportunity for Republicans to attack her for her stances however, which is why Lazar’s campaign is able to weaponize support for trans people in this race. Isn’t this ultimately revealing though? This sort of attack is freak behavior, it’s not helpful political discourse, and it definitely doesn’t speak to the needs of 99% of the state!
Remember those few weeks of summer in 2024 when we got to spend a lot of time calling JD Vance and Donald Trump weird? That was great (and an example of leadership from Tim Walz!) But it was only a start. People like Maria Lazar are weird, and she's also a disgusting slob who uses vulnerable populations for votes. She is a human worm leaving her slimy, bad faith residue on our kitchen table. She is the rotting potatoes lost in our kitchens attracting fruit flies to the discourse. Hearing from Maria Lazar is like being trapped in an elevator with 200 pounds of week-old garbage.
Maria Lazar fucking sucks and I can’t wait for her to lose on Tuesday.
