1931 Wisconsin Supreme Court election

At the time, the court had a conservative ideological majority. Incumbent justice Chester A. Fowler had been one of five judges appointed by Governor Walter J. Kohler Sr. (himself a conservative member of the Republican Party) that had created this majority. Fowler had survived a special election the previous year, in which John W. Reynolds Sr. was one of his opponents. However, in order to retain his seat for a further ten-year term, he needed to win election again in 1931.^[1]

The election coincided with a statewide ballot measure, a legislatively referred vote on whether driver's licenses should be issued through county clerks rather than through a state agency. It also coincided with nonpartisan local and sub-unit elections, including various lower court judicial races and mayoral elections.^[1]

• Chester A. Fowler, incumbent justice since 1929
• George L. Mensing
• John W. Reynolds Sr., Wisconsin attorney general, unsuccessful candidate in the 1930 special election

Fowler argued that he was an experienced and capable jurist, it would be unwise for voters to oust him from the court. Reynolds promised that, if elected, he would shift the court's ideological lean in a liberal direction. Mensing centered his campaign on the balance of power in state government, arguing that the court had assumed too much power and had acted against the popular will of the people.^[1]

Due to Reynolds having contested the previous judicial election a year earlier, as well as having won re-election as attorney general in November 1930 election, the 1931 judicial election was the third statewide race that Reynolds had run in a year's span.^[1]