Getty/DOC Brendan Dassey and Brad Schimel, who lost a close election.
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel had a comfortable lead in the polls until a couple weeks after the October 19, 2018 release of Making a Murderer 2. By November 6, less than a month later, he was defeated at the polls (although he still has not formally conceded the race because of the close margin.)
Did Making a Murderer – and especially the case of Brendan Dassey – affect the Wisconsin election results? It’s impossible to know for sure, and many factors went into Schimel’s defeat, but the timing of the series’ release is certainly interesting. Furthermore, defense attorneys involved in the case took note that Brad Schimel, a Republican who is the former Waukesha County District Attorney, lost.
Wisconsin: your Reform Era begins now.
1. Dismiss lawsuit challenging ObamaCare,
2. Fix roads decaying under Walker;
3. Reduce prison population;
4. Investigate culture of corruption in Manitowoc County;
5. Open files from TH investigation.
6. Reverse SA & BD convictions.
Schimel’s defeat could theoretically shuffle the decks in a way that might give Brendan Dassey at least a new glimmer of hope; that’s true also of the race at the top of the ticket. Republican Governor Scott Walker, who was also defeated in Wisconsin on November 6, 2018, had a strict “no pardon” policy. The new Governor-Elect Tony Evers, a Democrat, has made no such promise, and he and his running mate have raised concerns about the state’s incarceration rate. Evers, for example, has spoken about cutting the prison population, although he focused those plans on non-violent offenders. Could Governor Evers pardon Dassey? That remains to be seen, but, under Walker, it wasn’t even a remote possibility because he did not grant pardons as a matter of policy.
Brad Schimel is out, huh?
t.co/Xl5zFySEms
MAM 2 turned Schimel into its latest “villain,” for his efforts to appeal (successfully as it turned out) judicial decisions that had ordered the release of Dassey, who was 17 when he was accused, along with his much older uncle, Steven Avery, of murdering and raping photographer Teresa Halbach. The case created a phenomenon when the first part of the series was released; Schimel was not featured in that season. However, he gets a lot of screen time in season 2.
Lawyers working on the case made their election preferences known:
I voted yesterday. Get out and vote! But election workers have no sense of humor. When I asked if I could write in “Tony Evers” for Governor (in Illinois) and then have that vote transferred to Wisconsin, noone even cracked a smile. I even volunteered to drive it to Wisconsin.😉
HUGE Trifecta win! 🇺🇸
1. Wisconsin Gov Walker is losing by 30,000 votes with 99% votes in. Stick a fork in him;
2. AG Schimel is losing by 24,000 votes with 99% in;
3. Dems win control big in US House.
#MakingAMurderer #MakingAMurderer2
#FreeBrendan #FreeSteveAvery
Here’s what you need to know:
Polls Showed Brad Schimel Leading Until Making a Murderer 2’s Release
Wisconsin Department of CorrectionsBrendan Dassey’s mugshot.
What did the polls show before and after Making a Murderer 2 was available to stream?
The Marquette University Law School poll, which is considered the most credible Wisconsin poll, documented a 2 percent drop in Schimel’s support in the waning days of the election.
“In the race for Wisconsin attorney general, Republican incumbent Brad Schimel is the choice of 47 percent and Democrat Josh Kaul is the choice of 45 percent of likely voters,” Marquette wrote in its October 31, 2018 polling results. “Seven percent lack a preference in this race and 2 percent did not respond. In the early October poll, Schimel held 47 percent and Kaul 43 percent of likely voters.”
Thus, before MAM 2, Schimel was 2 percent higher in the Marquette poll than he was after it.
The election was even closer than that. Kaul, the Democrat in the race, declared victory when the returns showed him with a 22,673-vote lead with 100 percent of precincts reporting. The election was extremely close all night, but Kaul was pushed over the top by The City of Milwaukee’s late tallying of some 47,000 ballots.
In Manitowoc County, where the Avery Salvage Yard is located, Schimel defeated Kaul 20,342 votes to 13,937. This is perhaps not surprising as the public’s opinions there were very inflamed against Avery and Dassey at the time of the trial. Schimel also defeated Kaul in Teresa Halbach’s hometown of Hilbert in Calumet County.
Why Did Schimel Lose?
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel speaks at a rally held by Governor Scott Walker (WI-R) for a last minute get out the vote event the night before the midterm elections at the Weldall Mfg., Inc. on November 5, 2018 in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
To be sure, there are a plethora of reasons that Brad Schimel lost. Here are just some of them:
Wisconsin Democrats had a major enthusiasm and turnout gap, showing up to the polls in populous counties like Dane and Milwaukee in presidential election numbers that Republicans did not match. Governor Walker, extremely polarizing and as motivating to Democrats as President Donald Trump, did not give Schimel long coat tails, and the election results between Walker and Schimel were almost in sync for most of the night, although Schimel was consistently slightly ahead of Walker’s numbers. It was a good night for Wisconsin Democrats overall at the ballot box, although Republicans did post some victories, such as in Congressional races.
“I will be a watchdog for Wisconsinites,” Josh Kaul said in declaring victory, according to WTMJ-TV.
Marijuana legalization referendums in some counties may have contributed to the turnout boost along with visits from Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders. The Schimel/Kaul race flew almost entirely beneath the radar in a race where public attention focused on Walker and Trump. Schimel, despite being the incumbent, was still unknown to a lot of voters, at least before MAM 2, making it easier for a Netflix show to define him in some voters’ minds perhaps because opinions of him were not fixed.
It’s still possible that Schimel could request a recount due to the slim margin. He released a statement after Kaul’s declaration of victory that read, “I just got off the phone with Josh Kaul. While the results are not final, it appears he has won this race. I told him I am waiting until the municipal and county canvasses are complete, all military ballots are accounted for and that every vote is counted. We also want to know more about what happened with the absentee ballots in Milwaukee County. However, if the margin does not substantially change, I have vowed that my team will assist him in making the transition as smooth as possible.”
Josh Kaul’s Mother Had a Link to the Steven Avery Case
Democrat Josh Kaul leads state attorney general race t.co/kCi3rsXN2v
It remains to be seen which position likely new AG Josh Kaul would take on the Brendan Dassey and Steven Avery cases. It should be noted that he is the son of the late and former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager. Lautenschlager was the Attorney General of Wisconsin when the Department of Justice sent its investigator, Tom Fassbender, to help assist in the case. Many people have noted the Kaul/Lautenschlager link on Twitter and have indicated the tie gives them less hope that Kaul would be an advocate for either Avery or Dassey.
Fassbender, of course, is one of the two law enforcement officers involved in the controversial interrogations of Dassey, who was convicted despite a lack of blood, hair or fingerprint evidence tying him to the crime scene.
Lautenschlager was the state Attorney General from January 3, 2003 to January 3, 2007. Teresa Halbach was murdered in October 2005. Avery was sentenced in the case in 2007.
Thanks so much to everyone who has offered kind words and shared memories of my mom, Peg Lautenschlager. It’s been a comfort to my family and me during this difficult time.
Lautenschlager was also involved in efforts to scrutinize what went wrong after Avery’s exoneration for a different sexual assault, for which he wrongfully spent years in prison. According to The Appleton Post-Crescent, in September 2003, Lautenschlager assigned “the Wisconsin Department of Justice to investigate the Avery case.” By December of that year, a state DOJ report found “no basic for bringing criminal charges or ethics violations against those Manitowoc County Sheriff’s officials and prosecutors involved in securing Avery’s wrongful conviction,” The Post-Crescent reported.
According to WISN-TV, Lautenschlager defended the report from criticism. “The real perpetrator looked very much like Avery. DNA was not available at that time; computerized police records were not available at that time; research on the problems with witness identification was not available at that time,” she said, according to WISN-TV, when the first series came out. She also told the television station that she received threats after the first MAM came out.