was too close to call late Tuesday, after a hard-fought campaign dominated by political forces and outside interest groups.
contest for a 10-year term, Kloppenburg is trying to accomplish the rare feat of unseating a sitting justice. Michael Gableman defeated then-Justice Louis Butler in 2008, but before that it had been 41 years since an incumbent lost a race for a high court seat. Unlike Butler, who was appointed to the post, Prosser was elected to his current term.
Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School estimates interest groups spent more than $3.5 million on TV ads, breaking the $3.38 million record set in the 2008 Gableman-Butler contest, with four conservative groups backing Prosser spending a total of 37% more than one liberal group backing Kloppenburg.
Gableman's defeat of Butler that swung the court majority from 4-3 liberal to 4-3 conservative, with Prosser frequently - but not always - in the conservative bloc.
Gableman's victory also was controversial because of a misleading television ad he ran against Butler. The court deadlocked, 3-3, over whether he violated the judicial ethics code, with Gableman abstaining and Prosser siding with conservatives against disciplining him. Prosser's support of Gableman became a campaign issue.
business groups spent heavily on ads backing the more conservative candidate, in this case Prosser, seeking to ensure rulings favorable to their interests. Kloppenburg was portrayed as soft on crime and overzealous in enforcing environmental laws.
liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee ran ads that played up Prosser's 2010 outburst against Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, leader of the liberal bloc - in which he called her "a total bitch" and threatened to "destroy" her - and his 1978 decision, as a district attorney, not to prosecute a priest later convicted of sexually abusing children.
Just five Wisconsin Supreme Court justices have been unseated by challengers since the court was created in 1852 - Samuel Crawford in 1855; Robert M. Bashford in 1908; James Ward Rector in 1947; George R. Currie in 1967; and Butler in 2008.
State Supreme Court race with wide implications nearly deadlocked - JSOnline
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