PATRICK MCILHERAN ON PARTISANSHIP IN THE WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT ELECTION:

JoAnne Kloppenburg says she ought to be on the state Supreme Court to end “personality and partisanship,” which is nice. Though if she wins, it will be largely because of voters who expect her to do some very partisan work, overturning the consequences of last fall’s election. . . . fter they lost in the Legislature, union rally organizers in Madison immediately switched to chanting Kloppenburg’s name. Kloppenburg backers worked the crowd, the Associated Press reported, adding that her Facebook page was “alive with comments from people trying to mobilize get-out-the-vote efforts for her.”

Kloppenburg does little to damp expectations. She impugns Prosser as partisan, offering no proof other than a boast made by his then-new campaign chief to a newspaper, one Prosser hadn’t approved and swiftly disavowed. She is careful to say her mind is made up on nothing, but she told a Madison newspaper that she’ll be a check “on overreaching by the executive and legislative branches. . . . What’s happened in the last three weeks has brought that home.”

If that wink-and-nudge doesn’t win you over, you surely want all the shouting to stop, and Kloppenburg promises that, too. The court, she told a TV interview, is “distracted by personalities and personal views. . . . New blood is needed.”

New public-employee-union-aligned blood, I guess.