There will be no recount in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election.

"Lisa Neubauer concedes to Brian Hagedorn in Wisconsin Supreme Court race," The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

The tally was close enough for Neubauer to have requested a recount, which she had considered up until today, but her campaign would have had to pay for it....

The outcome of last Tuesday's election means the Wisconsin Supreme Court will begin its new session later this year with a 5-2 conservative majority on the court. It ensures that, even if the conservative-backed Justice Dan Kelly runs and loses his race next year, the court will remain dominated by conservatives through at least 2023.

Thanks to Lisa Neubauer for her graceful concession.

ADDED: Meade tells me I should have written "gracious concession," not "graceful concession," and I can see the different meaning, "gracious" suggesting generosity and "graceful" suggesting aesthetically pleasing movement. But which is the standard expression? I googled and got approximately equal results for both phrases (600,000 or so). I will note that "gracious concession" was used by Tony Evers to compliment Scott Walker last fall...

Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court election makes national media look again at a state that last fall's election made them think was part of a "blue wall" again.

It must be so annoying for them. I feel the irksomeness leaking through the lines of "Wisconsin, Ground Zero for 2020 Politics, Looks Like a Tossup Again" (in the NYT).

Tony Evers ousted Scott Walker last fall, so that should have meant the state had accepted its blue place. The liberal SCt candidate was presented as way ahead, the conservative was duly smeared as a religious bigot, and then look what happened! How dare the Wisconsin slip away and demand more attention after the Democrats gave Milwaukee the convention!

The NYT article is illustrated with a photo of DNC chairman Tom Perez inking the convention deal while our new governor Tony Evers looks on smiling. The photo represents the hope that the Democratic Party had secured Wisconsin. But yesterday's election showed that Wisconsin is unruly (once you get past Milwaukee and Madison):

In the Supreme Court race, Judge Hagedorn, the conservative, got a major boost in the Green Bay and Wausau markets, enough to overcome a deep deficit in Dane County, which includes Madison, the state’s bluest stronghold.

In the 18 counties in the Green Bay media market, where TV ads linked Judge Hagedorn to Mr. Trump, voters swung by 18 points toward the conservative compared with a State Supreme Court election last year won by a liberal judge....

The Saturday before Election Day, there was no shortage of avid Trump supporters at Roar Off the Shore, a tasting of craft beers and cheeses east of Green Bay in Kewaunee County, which is on the thumb of the Wisconsin mitten. Though the county’s populace is small, Mr. Trump’s ability to run up the score in such places was repeated all across rural America in 2016. He won Kewaunee County, a dairy region, by 28 points compared with Mitt Romney’s six-point margin as the 2012 Republican nominee.

“I’m tired of politicians; he’s not a politician,” said Randy Boor, 57, who works in a factory that makes commercial cookware. He judged Mr. Trump’s chances of carrying the state in 2020 as even better than in 2016.

“We’ve got a guy there that’s delivering,” he said. “He wants to do the frickin’ job. You know how much could get done if he wasn’t being opposed by all these idiots?”

"For six weeks now Hagedorn has been mired in negative stories and controversy over his extreme views on a host of topics" — that was the story 2 weeks ago.

After Hagedorn's victory in yesterday's Wisconsin Supreme Court election, I'm reading "Vetting fail/Republicans skip background check before pushing Brian Hagedorn for Supreme Court" in the Madison newspaper Isthmus (from March 21st).

We’ve learned that back in 2006, as a married 27-year-old father of two and law student at Northwestern University, Hagedorn wrote a blog as “a fellow soldier in the culture wars,” where he condemned the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down anti-sodomy laws prohibiting sex between unmarried consulting adults, be they heterosexual or homosexual. Hagedorn called the ruling a travesty that “should render laws prohibiting bestiality unconstitutional.”

He blasted Roe v. Wade as “the worst and most unjustifiable decision in history,” called Planned Parenthood a “wicked organization,” and the NAACP “a disgrace to America.”

And Hagedorn, now 40, clearly hasn’t changed his views. The press has since reported he “helped create and serves on the board of a private Christian elementary school,” whose code of conduct bars teachers, board members, students and even their parents from being in gay relationships. In fact, students can be expelled for the “immoral sexual activity” of their parents.

Hagedorn also received $1,000 per speech for three speeches in 2015, 2016 and 2017 to an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a “hate group”....

Oh! The Southern Poverty Law Center. Ha ha ha. That Isthmus piece didn't age well. This low attack on Hagedorn had us thinking he was a loser. Isthmus was claiming victory early, and now we've got a 5-2 conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This was the first state-wide vote since we elected a Democratic governor last fall and ousted Scott Walker.

... Hagedorn’s views are not shared by the majority of voters, much less by younger millennials. And you can bet those views will be roasted repeatedly in attack ads by liberal third-party groups. Meanwhile Hagedorn is seeing more defectors: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce won’t be funneling money into Wisconsin to support the conservative candidate.... The most recent report by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign showed that 96 percent of all third-party spending in the race supported Hagedorn’s opponent, Lisa Neubauer....

This is 2019, and Hagedorn’s views and actions are clearly, if not aggressively, out of the mainstream. Which helps explain why Neubauer is getting more financial support and far more endorsements from the legal community than Hagedorn. Walker and the Republican establishment failed at Politics 101: check out the background of your favored candidate.

There's good schadenfreude this morning for conservatives.

And, yes, we're still in the denial phase. The news report at the Cap Times from 14 minutes ago is: "Conservative Brian Hagedorn declares victory with razor-thin margin in Wisconsin Supreme Court race." But:

Conservative Brian Hagedorn, who was Walker's chief legal counsel for five years, led liberal-backed Lisa Neubauer by 5,911 votes out of 1.2 million cast, based on unofficial results. That is a difference of about 0.49 percentage point, close enough for Neubauer to request a recount but she would have to pay for it.

I thought Neubauer was going to get a decisive win. That's how it looked in the press. I was totally surprised when Hagedorn took the lead.