Judge Pedro Colón's story is A Wisconsin story.

Judge Pedro Colón knows what it feels like to be lost in a new place and finding your footing anyway.

He was 11 years old when his mother, a bilingual school-teacher, packed up their life in Puerto Rico and moved to Milwaukee. She had received three job offers, one from Milwaukee, one from Rochester, and one from Orlando. All her family and friends said “go to Orlando.” But Milwaukee called first, and she'd given them her word, so that's where she went. Her principles of honesty, loyalty, and service are what he was raised with and what has shaped his career.

Pedro arrived in Milwaukee speaking no English. On his first day of school, his mother dropped him at a bus stop on 27th Street and told him to find Wisconsin Avenue School. He rode the route twice, scanning every building, unable to ask the driver for help, before finally recognizing the school from the other side of the street. He has never forgotten the disorienting and unsettling feeling of that morning. Pedro understands that’s what it feels like the first time someone walks into a courtroom too; everyone who appears before him carries a story that explains how they got there.

He went on to graduate from Thomas More High School, Marquette University, and then the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he served as an assistant editor of the Wisconsin Law Review. In search of his first job post-law school, Pedro did what so many in his position have had to do - he went to work for himself and for the people that needed his help most.

He built a general practice from the ground up on Milwaukee's south side, doing bilingual real estate closings for immigrant families, handling public defender appointments, and fighting employment discrimination cases that bigger firms wouldn't touch.

He understood his community not as a place but as a living network of families, businesses, and struggles. When city hall wouldn't return calls or hand over basic forms, he noticed. When working families couldn't access what the law entitled them to, he showed up. He will never forget watching ordinary people get shut out of systems designed to serve them. It is the through line of everything that followed.

Colón was elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 1998, becoming the first Latino ever elected to the Wisconsin Legislature. He served six terms representing Milwaukee's 8th District and spent much of that time fighting for something that should have been simple: the right of undocumented students raised in Wisconsin to pay in-state tuition at Wisconsin's public universities. It took him ten years. He passed it on his last day in the legislature. Scott Walker repealed it shortly after taking office. Colón does not regret the fight.

In 2010, Governor Jim Doyle appointed him to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. He was elected to a full term, then reelected in 2017 and again in 2023. He presided over children's court, small claims, general felony, and civil divisions, ensuring fairness and impartiality as thousands of people navigate the most consequential moments of their lives. In 2023, Governor Tony Evers appointed him to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals District I, where he became the first Latino to serve on an appellate court in Wisconsin history.

Judge Pedro Colón and his wife Betty have two daughters and still live in Milwaukee, not far from the south side neighborhood where he grew up.

Judge Pedro Colón is running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court because he believes Wisconsin deserves a justice who takes its constitution seriously, not selectively. For every regular person who has ever needed the law to actually work for them, Wisconsin has built something worth protecting. Judge Pedro Colón intends to protect it.