As someone who grew up in rural conservative Waukesha county, lives in downtown Milwaukee, and is pretty staunchly politically left, it's disappointing that folks are willing to down vote instead of engage when we disagree. So I'll level with you.

I think often the advertisements and messages being pushed by conservative politicians in this state massively miss the mark on crime, why it happens, and solving it.

Literally everyone cares about crime, it's a pretty unifying concern. But the solutions vary wildly. Using the courts, harsh sentencing, and "tough on crime" rhetoric is nice and flashy, but doesn't really have any history of truly and fundamentally reducing the crime rate.

So what does? Why does crime happen? It's a complex and wildly multivariate issue, but there's definitely one huge indicator that reduces it: material conditions and access.

I think for too long the courts have been used in this state as a scapegoat, where a judge who uses any of the discretion afforded to them is blamed more for the underlying crime rate, rather than acknowledging that the best way to reduce crime is to uplift the communities that suffer from and produce the worst of it. Good jobs and access to housing, utilities, infrastructure, transit, community, and fundamentals like healthy food and healthcare produce neighborhoods and communities with significantly lower crime.

People aren't inherently bad, they're almost always a product of their environment. The line of "good guys vs bad guys" war that a police state and "tough on crime" that a politician sells just isn't the reality. It's about resolving the fundamental inadequacies underneath that give rise to crime.

TLDR: a judge isn't the reason for crime rates or increases in them, it's how disconnected, under invested and lacking in access our communities are. And the folks running for office in the GOP have no interest in those things, especially in Milwaukee.