Supreme Court candidate Jill Karofsky files suit asking court to pull two TV ads for making false statements
Daniel Bice
State Supreme Court candidate Jill Karofsky's campaign filed a lawsuit on Friday asking a court to issue a restraining order to stop two TV ads critical of the candidate from airing statewide.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, accuses the Republican State Leadership Committee and the Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce's political arm of airing false statements about Karofsky.
The Brennan Center for Justice estimates the two groups have spent $1.3 million on ads attacking Karofsky.
Karofsky, a Dane County circuit judge, faces state Supreme Justice Daniel Kelly in Tuesday's election.
"We've given Dan Kelly's allies enough time to pull these slanderous ads off of the air, but it’s clear they just don’t care about the facts,” said Tyler Hendricks, Karofsky's campaign manager.
“No organization should get away with spending millions of dollars on ads they know are false," he continued. "Wisconsin voters deserve better than this and we urge the court to take immediate action to stop this disgusting attack.”
But Stami Williams, a spokeswoman for the Republican State Leadership Committee, rejected the criticism. Williams said her groups stands by its ads.
"Candidate Karofsky is trying to use the legal system to silence legitimate criticism of her record as a judge," Williams said Friday.
A hearing on the Karofsky lawsuit is scheduled for 9 a.m. Monday before Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Timothy Witkowiak.
At issue are two TV spots that accuse Karofsky, who has the financial backing of liberal groups and the state Democratic Party, of being soft on crime. Kelly, an appointee of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, has the support of the Republican Party and conservatives.
The first commercial says as a Dane County assistant district attorney, Karofsky "went easy" on a Madison man in a sexual assault case.
In that case, Donald A. Worley, then 26, was charged in February 1999 with child enticement and first-degree sexual assault of a child — serious felonies that carried decades of potential prison time. A plea agreement reduced both offenses to misdemeanors, and Worley was sentenced to three years probation with no jail time, online court records show.
PolitiFact Wisconsin gave the ad a "pants on fire" rating, saying records show Karofsky wasn’t involved in that case until more than a year after Worley was convicted and sentenced.
In the second ad, Karofsky comes under fire for her handling as Dane County judge of a 2016 case of a registered sex offender who pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child. The commercial accuses Karofsky of "allowing a (plea) deal that puts him back on the street."
State records show the felon cited in the ad, Arnold Thompson, is currently an inmate at Redgranite Correctional Institution. Karofsky sentenced Thompson, 39, to eight years in state prison and 10 years of supervised release in July 2018. He is also serving time for other offenses.
"This isn’t the first time Dan Kelly’s allies have been caught lying to voters," Karofsky spokesman Sam Roecker said. "They don’t care about the facts, they just care about saving Dan Kelly so he can protect their partisan agenda."
Officials with the Republican State Leadership Committee defended the TV commercial. They noted that Thompson is a repeat offender who could have received a maximum sentence of 60 years for the attempted homicide charge that was dropped in the plea deal.
“Jill Karofsky has again added extra language into our ads in an attempt to hide her dangerous record of being soft on crime," Williams said.
"The ad correctly shows that when she had the discretion to provide a repeat offender and sexual predator with a harsher punishment, she instead chose the path that puts him back on the street after a few short years.”
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 224-2135 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.