Lazar Defeats Kornblum

A former state Department of Justice was voted in to the state Court of Appeals Tuesday night.

Voters in southeastern Wisconsin turned out to support conservative-backed Waukesha County judge Maria Lazar in a non-partisan race that was split heavily along party lines.

Lazar defeated incumbent Court of Appeals Judge Lori Kornblum, who had been appointed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in November. Lazar will serve a six-year term on Wisconsin’s second-highest court.

Kornblum was backed by the state Democratic Party as well as a number of labor unions. Republicans lined up behind Lazar, including three conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justices, four former Republican congressmen and several county Republican parties.

Lazar had spent 20 years in private practice in Milwaukee County before serving in the state Department of Justice in 2010. Kornblum was a Milwaukee County prosecutor of over before going into private practice in 2014.

Lazar’s campaign focused on attacking Kornblum as “a liberal, appointed by Gov. Tony Evers to legislate from the bench” and also pointed out that Kornblum worked in the district attorney’s office under John Chisholm, a Democrat.

An outside group supporting Lazar also support from an outside groupw that produced an ad linking Kornblum to Chisholm and blaming him in part for the Waukesha Christmas parade attack where Darrell Brooks Jr. is charged with killing six people and injuring more than 60.