Judge Pedro Colón Is a Candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court: Diversity and Democracy (Part 1 of 2)
Pedro Colón has been elected to the Wisconsin Legislature, Milwaukee County Circuit Court, and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.
by Jonathan Gramling
Judge Pedro Colón, who sits on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, District 1, has grown up and lived appreciating diversity and democracy. Colón was born in Puerto Rico and then moved with his family to Milwaukee when he was a young child. He was exposed to layers of diversity that he would have never experienced in Puerto Rico.
“I didn’t speak English,” Colón said. “I went to Wisconsin Avenue School, which was a bilingual school that was 80 percent Black kids from the neighborhood. And so, I had this weird upbringing, right? I was in different places that weren’t exactly like me. African American culture wasn’t exactly like me. I grew up on the south side. The majority white kids were not like me. And then I was in my own community where everyone said we were all Latinos. But the fact was there were many Mexicans and even Mexicans from different towns were very different. Even Puerto Ricans from different towns were very different. What makes communities really neat are these many textured things that we associate with each other as we move through life so that we can get things done. A lot of community is practical things. And so I grew up in a lot of layers and I think it really helps me value community. I think community is sometimes described as something that you have no choice in joining. Granted, there are some immutable characteristics that we didn’t have a choice in for example my skin is darker than yours and our hair is different. But I also think that community is something that you can build.”
Colón graduated from UW-Madison Law School and came back to Milwaukee to set up his private practice. Unwittingly, he began to plant the seeds to run for public office.
“At that time in Milwaukee, it was not a place where I was inherently welcome at that time in the legal profession,” Colón said. “It may have just been me. And so I had a friend who called me and said, ‘Pedro, there’s this agency that does housing purchasing counseling for people in our neighborhood.’ I had my practice down in the near south side, at that time at 4th Street and Bruce Street. He said, ‘We need representation for these people for their closings. But it has to be bilingual and you can’t get paid more than $150.’ I probably did about 500 closings on the near south side. At that time, I was just representing individuals doing civil matters and certain zoning matters around small business and things that came out of the south side. I would say that 90 percent of my clients were from the south side. I was at Mother of Guadalupe Church the other day for their festival and a guy walked up to me and he said, ‘Pedro, how are you?’ And I hadn’t obviously seen him coming up on 20 some years. He said, ‘Remember you closed my house.’ And I said, ‘Yes. I’m so sorry. I forgot.’ And he said, ‘Let me introduce you to my granddaughter.’ They were like a young couple when I represented them. Sometimes there isn’t a lot of movement on the south side. It moves, but not very fast, especially at the churches.”
Colón hadn’t envisioned himself running for public office.
“At the time, I didn’t have any political ambitions because it had been tried numerous times to elect a Latino to office in Milwaukee at that time and it never worked,” Colón said. “And so I always had an interest in politics, but I never felt that I would be a candidate in any way, shape or form. I always thought that I would help my friends get elected and stay involved that way.”
But Colón ended up having a natural base of voters who supporters because he had helped so many people with relatively cheap legal advice. He ran for the state legislature and won, was elected to the Milwaukee County circuit courts and now to the state court of appeals. Colón had grown up with an idealized vision on who a judge is.
I grew up under this idea that I think all of Wisconsin grew up with, which is the courts are the very place where we go and settle things,” Colón said. “And the courts were above the fray. I came out of the legislature believing that. But at that time, after Citizens United, the dynamic in the elections for the Supreme Court changed to the extent that we know now. We’ve been through many of these and we know what happened. But at that time, I was kind of shocked. In fact, I remember a good friend of mine who is a senator in Eau Claire and hopefully will get reelected, James Smith, called me after I became judge and he said, ‘Pedro, I’m running to be chair of the whole party. Can you come and introduce me?’ I said, ‘I can’t. I’m a judge. I can’t be at these places that are partisan.’ And that is what I grew up with. We were taught that we weren’t to go to parties. We were non-partisan.”
While running for public office, Colón has worked hard to maintain his judicial ideals.
