Why Would Susan Crawford Ever Recuse Herself?
Accountability and transparency have been a joke to Crawford throughout her career, so we shouldn’t expect differently with her on the Supreme Court.
Judicial recusal is a hot topic in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Susan Crawford—staunch defender of Planned Parenthood and teachers unions—may see cases related to abortion and Act 10 if elected to the court. Justices ultimately decide on their own recusal and cannot be coerced, but can Crawford be trusted to ignore her own biases in the name of judicial neutrality? She says she can but her history suggests an overt comfort in hiding truths than acknowledging them.
Endorsed by Extremists
In February, Crawford was scheduled to attend an event with endorser Citizen Action of Wisconsin. The same day as this event, Restoration News revealed the organization was successor to Citizen Action, which went defunct in 1997 after illegally laundering money for a union election. It also had ties to the domestic terror group Weather Underground and the communist Students for a Democratic Society.
Our report also notes Citizen Action of Wisconsin embraced the extremes of transgender ideology as evidenced by their sign-up page for the Crawford event featuring 17 sets of pronouns from which attendees may identify. Hours following our exposé, Crawford was "unfortunately unable" to attend the event whose hosts have more in common with deep-blue California than swing state Wisconsin.
Left: Posted at 6:00 am on 2/13/25 from Citizen Action of Wisconsin’s InstagramRight: Posted at 6:50 pm on 2/13/25 from Citizen Action of Wisconsin’s Instagram
There was no apparent explanation for Crawford’s change of plans or why she even agreed to this event in the first place. Rather than acknowledge her attendance at this event was a mistake or admit she aligns with its hosts, Crawford chose to hide and hope it all blows over. This was not the first time Crawford chose to obscure rather than be transparent.
Letting a Rapist Go Free?
While leading the Attorney General’s Criminal Appeals Unit in 2001, Crawford’s office missed the filing deadline to appeal an overturned rape conviction. As a result, the rapist agreed to a plea deal that amounted to no more than time served instead of the 7-year sentence handed down to him after a jury trial. Crawford acknowledged the grave error but did little to hold the responsible staff accountable and in fact said none would be disciplined. She described one employee partially responsible for miscalculating the deadline as "a very conscientious attorney who did her level best." Furthermore, Crawford suggested the cause of the mistake may never be known due to the "faulty memory" of the responsible staff.
Crawford failed to manage her office properly or hold herself and her staff accountable, and instead boiled the failure down to a procedural issue. The extent of any discipline was no more than a written reprimand for one staffer. As she did in February of this year, more than twenty years ago Crawford was trying to hide her failures rather than acknowledge the truth.
Shrouding Pardon Applications
Crawford’s pattern of opaqueness in government continued through her tenure as chair of Democratic Gov. Doyle’s Pardon Advisory Board.
At an August 2010 board meeting, Crawford declined to cast a vote on the matter of recommending commutation for two men serving time in prison for unrelated robberies. She availed herself of the option to cast the vote the next day, outside of the meeting. Gov. Doyle’s spokesman explained Crawford voted outside the board meeting due to illness—but failed to explain why she voted on pardon recommendations later in that same meeting.
Her votes were legal but "certainly violates the spirit and intent of the public meetings law," said one critic. The unorthodox vote raised questions about Crawford’s intentions, with the sentencing judge for one the prisoners wondering if she needed to confer with Governor Doyle first. The judge also remarked, "Regarding Ms. Crawford's voting in these matters, I would say that it seems highly unusual and doesn't speak much for her adherence to Wisconsin's tradition of openness in government." Even former chairs of the Pardon Advisory Board could not recall instances of board members voting outside regular meetings.
Several months after the August votes, Crawford attempted to close a November 2010 meeting of the board to the public without taking the legally required vote to do so. Crawford only held the vote after protests from reporters. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted at the time, "the board routinely meets in closed sessions to deliberate on cases, but its meeting notices do not state that the board will meet in closed session, as required by law." Not content with simply closing board meetings to the public, Crawford also admitted the Pardon Advisory Board did not keep meeting minutes, contrary to most boards in Wisconsin.
Finally—as the Doyle Administration came to its end—Crawford took action to hasten the pardon application process. At a November 17, 2010, board meeting, Crawford eliminated interviews with pardon applicants and is alleged to have "told" them to waive their appearances before the board, possibly in defiance of the law. She did this over the objections of at least one board member who considered the interviews a requirement of all applicants, but also crucial to deciding on recommendations. Crawford planned to repeat these actions at two December 2010 board meetings but restored the interviews following the publication of an article about their cancellations.
Interviews were standard in the pardon application process until Democrats lost the governorship in the 2010 elections. A member of the board suggested Crawford waived applicant appearances to speed up the process and process as many applicants as possible before Governor Doyle left office. When asked for Crawford’s rationale to skip interviews, a Doyle spokesman declined to answer why.
Aversion to Honesty and Transparency
For the last 20-plus years, Crawford has consistently treated accountability as a joke. Her office let a rapist walk after failing to appeal an overturned conviction in a timely manner and Crawford did virtually nothing to hold herself or the responsible staff responsible. When Restoration News exposed her attendance at a campaign event hosted by extreme gender ideologues with historic ties to communists and terrorism, Crawford canceled the event without explanation or apology. As Pardon Advisory Board Chair, Crawford truncated the pardon application process to process as many applicants she could before her Democrat Governor boss’ term ended, bizarrely cast votes outside regular meetings, closed meetings to the public in violation of transparency laws, and failed to keep minutes for meetings of the board.
Susan Crawford says she can be impartial as a justice or be trusted to recuse herself from cases when necessary, but they are meaningless platitudes. Touting the endorsement of Justice Janet Protasiewicz who refuses to recuse herself from a forthcoming Act 10-related case despite protesting and campaigning against it is concerning enough on it’s own, but coupled with Crawford’s historic allergy to honesty, accountability, and transparency, she is unfit for the position she seeks. To restore sanity to the state’s Supreme Court, Wisconsin voters must reject Crawford and elect Brad Schimel.
(READ MORE: Drag Queens Rallying for Susan Crawford in WI Supreme Court Race—Explicit)
