The conservative group Building America’s Future is running a third damning ad on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race and Democrat-aligned candidate Susan Crawford, blasting her for letting child sex offenders off easy.
The ad, first obtained by Breitbart News — titled ” Criminals Over Kids” — is slated to run statewide on TV and digital platforms ahead of the April 1 race and highlights Dane County Judge Crawford’s record of letting a man who sexually assaulted a child off easy.
It begins with Crawford saying that “voters deserve to know what our records are.”
“Susan Crawford’s record? Disturbing and dangerous,” the narrator states. “A 7-year-old girl, sexually assaulted. The attacker faced 100 years. Crawford let him off with only four.”
“I don’t regret that sentence,” Crawford states before the narrator takes back over.
“A 5-year-old, violated. The predator should’ve rotted in prison. He got out in just two years. She protected them, not us,” the narrator continued, as the ad goes back to Crawford’s own words: “I don’t regret that sentence. … I’m proud of the work that I’ve done.”
That line comes from a moment during this week’s debate.
“Susan Crawford, putting criminals over your kids,” the ad ends.
WATCH:
The ad comes two days after Crawford’s debate with conservative candidate and Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel, where her decision to give a greatly reduced sentence to a pedophile who repeatedly sexually assaulted a five-year-old girl came up.
The moderator asked Crawford about a 2020 sexual assault case, inquiring, “In 2020, you did sentence a child sex offender to four years in prison after prosecutors requested 10. Do you regret that sentence?”
Crawford made it clear that she had no regrets.
She replied:
I don’t regret that sentence, because I followed the law in that case, as I always do. I applied the law, which says that judges have to consider every relevant factor in sentencing; you have to consider both the aggravating and mitigating factors, and the Supreme Court has said you have to order the minimum amount of prison time you believe is necessary to protect the public.
“That’s what I did in that case and every other case,” she continued, claiming that she has the goal of keeping the community “safe.”
It remains unclear how reducing the sentence of a child sex offender accomplishes that goal.
“And my goal is always to keep the community safe. And those have been sentences that have been successful, they have kept the community safe,” she continued.
“My opponent just revealed the problem in her judgment, that, in weighing all the factors, giving the minimum amount of time to a dangerous offender weighs higher than protecting the community,” Schimel said of Crawford. “That’s what she just revealed.”
“That is not what I said. The court requires you to order the sentence necessary to protect the community, and that’s what I’ve done, and that’s what those sentences did,” Crawford maintained.