Circuit Court Judge Michael Gableman narrowly edged out incumbent Justice Louis Butler for a spot on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court in a 51 to 49 percent split, according to an Associated Press count early Wednesday morning.

Gableman is the first to oust an incumbent justice in Wisconsin since 1967 and will serve a 10-year term on the state’s highest court.

“I am proud of the campaign we ran,” Gableman told the Associated Press. “We worked very hard to talk about the differences, the very stark and very real differences in our professional backgrounds and also our judicial philosophies.”

The Butler camp made no official concession Tuesday night.

“The campaign is privately conceding that the margin is too large to make up,” the Butler campaign said in a statement late Tuesday, with 93 percent of results counted.

The hotly contested race went down as one of Wisconsin’s ugliest — garnering national attention with a barrage of attack ads from outside groups drowning out messages from the campaigns themselves.

More than 90 percent of advertising spending in the race came from these third-party groups, with total spending topping $2 million, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

“All the negative ads that are out there, either by the third-party groups or by my opponent, have been designed to suppress voter turnout, and we know that,” Butler said to the AP Tuesday night before Gableman won.

The process, yielding nasty attack ads even after the candidates requested they stop, caused some to call for new justices to be appointed rather than elected in the future.

In a recent debate, Butler called the system “broken” but said he would not support changing to an appointment system, and Gableman said he had enjoyed bringing his message to the public throughout the campaign.

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Voters slay “Frankenstein veto”

A wide majority of Wisconsin voters also knocked out one piece of the governor’s veto power in a referendum that will amend the state constitution.

They have ended the governor’s ability to rearrange pieces of legislation to form new sentences, dubbed by critics the “Frankenstein veto” because it can empower the state’s executive to reshape tax and spending laws without the Legislature’s input.

Gov. Jim Doyle and his predecessors have taken heat from lawmakers and other critics for using the power in the past, as in 2005 when he rearranged text to reallocate millions to school aid.

Wisconsin governors will retain some of the most expansive veto powers in the nation, keeping the “line-item” veto, which in Wisconsin allows the deletion of individual sentences, words and even digits of new laws.

“The governor still has a strong veto, and he’ll continue using it to protect Wisconsin taxpayers and priorities when the Legislature goes to extremes,” Doyle spokesperson Jessica Doyle said in an e-mail Tuesday night.

The amendment will take effect after it is certified no later than May 15 by the state elections board.