Challenger Michael Gableman ousted incumbent Justice Louis Butler in yesterday’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court election, but the real winner was the special interests. Interest groups spent more than $4 million in an effort to control the state Supreme Court, out-gunning the candidates by a huge margin and dictating the debate from the beginning of the campaign to the end.

In what CBS News charitably called a “cheesy way” to decide who sits on the state’s highest court, the election produced a new justice who one longtime court watcher labeled “unfit for any office.”

Flash of synchronicity… I’ve just started reading Grisham’s new legal potboiler, “The Appeal.” I hope there’s a happy ending.