This year’s race for attorney general is a repeat match-up of 2022’s race: incumbent attorney general Democrat Josh Kaul against Republican and Fond du Lac District Attorney Eric Toney.
“It’s often called the state’s top cop, but really, it’s kinda like running a giant law firm," says JR Ross, editor of WisPolitics.com.
WUWM's Maayan Silver asked Ross about the two candidates’ approaches to the job, and about some of the hot button topics they're taking on.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maayan Silver: Can you give a small synopsis on what the attorney general does in Wisconsin?
JR Ross: The Department of Justice has its hands on all kinds of things as a team of attorneys. So that's one of its main functions. It also has a state crime lab, so it's helping state local law enforcement. So yeah, it kind of portrays somebody who's fighting crime in a way, and that is part of the job, but it's also kind of doing environmental cases, settling consumer protection lawsuits, or going after people who have wronged Wisconsinites in various ways. So it's basically managing a massive law firm that has its fingers in a lot of different things.
Kaul has been in office since 2018. What have been the key elements of his tenure?
Well, it's been interesting. He's been at odds with the Republican-controlled Legislature the entire time. Remember back in 2018, after Kaul won the AG's race and Gov. Evers won that contest, beating Scott Walker, Republicans in a lame-duck session passed a series of laws trying to rein in the powers of both offices to give the Legislature more say over things. That includes giving lawmakers final say on signing off on settlements and various lawsuits. And Kaul's been in court basically for the last 8 years fighting that off and on.
That's one thing. What you're going to hear Josh Kaul tout quite a bit is that the latest FBI crime statistics show that we have the lowest level of violent crime in Wisconsin that we've had in the last 15 years. He's going to talk about that. Now, at the same time, the number of murders has not gone down as much as it has elsewhere. You'll hear Eric Toney talk about.
But in a lot of ways, Kaul has been suing Donald Trump. I think he's at something like 70 lawsuits right now in the second term alone of Donald Trump, challenging Trump policies.
It's going to be an interesting race to see where the public is at about whether they think that Kaul’s done a good job in fighting crime, which again, not the main focus of the job, but really kind of a perception that you're, as attorney general, you are fighting crime.
How does Toney say he wants to change Kaul's approach?
A number of things, he's talked about the crime lab. So the state crime lab, I think we have two or three of them, but overall they are taking longer to process samples, even though they're getting fewer samples. Now, Kaul will argue this is because these cases are more complex, that thanks to "CSI" people expect almost every case to have DNA proof of a crime, things like that. Toney has said that Josh Kaul has basically failed, that he's taken his eye off the ball and put it on other places. So you're gonna hear Toney talk about that and that he'd be basically a better steward of public safety than Josh Kaul has been.
Let's talk Flock cameras. They are the automated license plate readers that have been getting some pushback from the public as a sort of "dragnet" general surveillance. What are the candidates saying about this?
Basically Kaul wants some guardrails. It's been interesting. Flock cameras are becoming the new data centers. So a year and a half ago in Wisconsin, like Microsoft coming in with this multi-billion-dollar project for a new data center down in Racine County was like, "Hey, it was this massive achievement." Now data centers are wildly unpopular. Looking at Marquette Law School poll, like 78% of voters say the costs outweigh the benefits.
Now you're seeing politicians look at Flock cameras and going, "Hey, we were caught flat-footed about data centers. We're not gonna say [that] about Flock cameras." It's been an amazing change the last just month where you're seeing communities start to shut them off, raising concerns about privacy because look, we're being tracked all the time. If you have a smartphone in your pocket, you're being tracked. It's how Google Maps works, right? They're tracking where people are at and they can tell how the traffic is going.
But the system is a bit different because you not only are taking pictures of license plates, but you're almost creating a "vehicle fingerprint." And that can then be searched by others to see what's going on. You can use AI to map or predict future movements. It's become wildly unpopular just in a really brief amount of time. And so Kaul and others are saying they don't care for Flock cameras. And actually Toney's saying the same thing. They've got issues with those things.
