MADISON, Wisconsin — A new TV ad in Wisconsin’s busy Supreme Court race shows a fake image of the liberal candidate. Her team says this could break a new state law.
The picture shows Susan Crawford, who is a judge at the Dane County Circuit Court. A new TV ad funded by her opponent, Brad Schimel, who is a circuit court judge in Waukesha County, has been released.
The winner of the important race on April 1 will decide if the Wisconsin Supreme Court stays mostly liberal or changes to conservative.
The Schimel campaign ad starts and ends with a black-and-white picture of Crawford with her lips shut. A similar color picture from her 2018 campaign for Dane County Circuit Court shows Crawford smiling widely.
Crawford’s team claimed that Schimel changed the image in a way that might break a state law made last year. A new law, supported by both parties and signed by Democratic Governor Tony Evers, says that election ads must reveal if they use audio or video made by artificial intelligence. Not telling about the use of AI when needed can lead to a $1,000 fine.
Crawford spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said in a statement, “Schimel will misleadingly use images and facts because he’s desperate to cover up his own failures.”
Jacob Fischer, Schimel’s campaign spokesperson, said the picture was “edited” but wasn’t made using AI.
Peter Loge, who leads the Project on Ethics in Political Communication at George Washington University, stated that pictures should not be altered to create a misleading impression.
Loge said that the Schimel spot isn’t too bad compared to others.
He mentioned many other cases where pictures were altered for political ads, including one in 2015 by a group backing Wisconsin Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. The picture showed former President Barack Obama smiling and shaking hands with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. In 2020, U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, shared the fake picture on social media again.
Obama and Rouhani never had a meeting. The picture wasn’t real.
A fake picture was used in a TV ad for the Indiana governor’s race last year.
“A good rule of thumb is to be cautious about believing everything,” Loge said. “Just because you see something on TV or online doesn’t mean it’s true.”
The Schimel ad criticizes Crawford for the release of a convicted rapist in 2001 because the state’s criminal appeals office did not meet the date to appeal to the state Supreme Court. Crawford was in charge of the division, but a report from the attorney general says that the mistake in calculating the appeal date was made by another lawyer in the office and two secretaries.
The Schimel ad says, “Crawford missed the deadline to file the appeal, allowing the rapist to go free.”
After finding the mistake, Crawford ordered a check of all upcoming appeal deadlines and calculated the deadlines for petitions to the state Supreme Court himself. Republican officials, including state Rep. Scott Walker, who looked into the situation at the time said the mistake was a one-time occurrence.
Schimel was attorney general for one term from 2015 to 2019 while Walker was the governor. Walker named Schimel as a judge the day after Schimel lost his reelection in 2018.
Leave a Comment