Wisconsinites will vote for their next attorney general on Nov. 3. Incumbent Josh Kaul, a Democrat, is facing a rematch of 2022, with Republican Eric Toney running against him.
What does Wisconsin's attorney general do?
The Wisconsin attorney general heads the state Department of Justice. The partisan position is elected for a four-year term and oversees more than 500 employees, including many lawyers who represent the state.
The DOJ enforces state laws against individuals and corporations in Wisconsin. The department has many units that focus on everything from criminal investigations to criminal appellate prosecution to complex civil litigation. The DOJ also houses the state crime lab.
State attorneys general have taken on a more national role in recent years, often depending on whether their politics align with the president, by joining or opposing multistate federal lawsuits — some for or against the federal government.
What’s at stake?
The state's next attorney general could make a big difference in Wisconsin on a number of policy grounds — including data centers, election integrity and police accountability.
While both candidates prioritize combatting crime and protecting free and fair elections, they vary widely on many issues, including how to challenge the federal government and ensuring police accountability. Both accuse the other of playing politics with public safety, but agree that Wisconsin's environment must be protected.
Meet the candidates
Josh Kaul (Democrat, incumbent)
Biography: Josh Kaul became Wisconsin's attorney general in January 2019. Kaul grew up in Oshkosh and Fond du Lac. His mother, Peg Lautenschlager, was attorney general in Wisconsin from 2003 to 2007. Kaul attended Yale and later Stanford Law School. He was president of the Stanford Law Review. Kaul then served as a federal prosecutor in Baltimore before returning to Wisconsin.
WUWM's interview with Kaul has been edited for clarity and length. You can also listen to the full interview below.
What have you accomplished since 2019 when you became Wisconsin's attorney general?
My administration has a track record of taking on tough fights and delivering results for Wisconsinites. We've done important work to help keep kids in Wisconsin safe. That includes fighting for critical resources for our Office of School Safety and launching innovative programs like a 24-7 tip line that anybody affiliated with a school can use to contact and reach out about a school safety concern.
We recently announced a multi-state settlement with Meta following allegations that its platforms were harming kids' mental health, and that settlement requires it to make changes that put kids' health ahead of its profits. We also lead the Wisconsin Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and have helped put child predators behind bars.
On public safety, I fought to reform our sexual assault kit laws and ultimately, legislation was passed. It's gonna help prevent Wisconsin from ever having another backlog.
We've worked to hold companies accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic and helped to secure over $800 million, and dollars are going to communities around the state to help fight that epidemic.
On violent crime, last year, Wisconsin had the lowest number of violent crimes that we've had in any year since 2011. On the opioid epidemic, from 2023 to 2024, there was a reduction of over 40% in opioid overdose deaths. And we've also made progress in protecting people's rights and in holding special interests and others who harm Wisconsinites by polluting or scamming people or unlawfully inflating prices by holding them accountable.
If you are reelected, what will your top three priorities be?
Public safety has been and will continue to be my top priority as attorney general. Secondly, standing up for the rights, the freedoms of Wisconsinites remains important. We've done that by fighting against enforcement of a mid-1800s abortion ban. I got a ruling from the state Supreme Court last year making clear that access to safe and legal abortion is available in Wisconsin for the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, to protecting our elections — including defending the results of the 2020 presidential election successfully in court.
And just recently winning a case involving an attack by the Trump administration on mail-in voting. And then continuing to ensure that that companies and special interests and others who break our consumer protection laws or antitrust laws and our environmental laws are held accountable.
In just this term, you’ve launched over 60 lawsuits pushing back against President Trump’s policies. What is your response to voters who may view that as a partisan approach to the office?
There's nothing partisan about standing up for our constitution and the rule of law. And what we have seen in case after case, is this administration flouting the constitution and flouting the law. You can see that in the results that we're getting. We've been winning in case after case. And a number of these cases involve efforts by the federal government to put illegal conditions on or to cut or to freeze critical federal funding for programs that communities in Wisconsin rely upon. That includes funding for schools, including funding for mental health programs that support schools, funding for transportation, funding for disaster relief and mitigation, and for public health research. That includes funding for the AmeriCorps program.
And so by fighting back, we have helped keep critical resources. And these are taxpayer dollars we're talking about. We've also fought against efforts to make access to healthcare less available. We fought back against an effort to significantly undermine mail-in voting. We fought against the Trump administration's executive order issued on its first day that would have restricted birthright citizenship. And we've fought back efforts to gather lots of information about people's sensitive private data.
These cases are about protecting the best interests of the people of Wisconsin. I'm proud of the success we're having. And it's critical that we have an AG who's gonna be part of these cases.
When you consider safeguarding Wisconsin elections, what do you think is most vital for the state’s Department of Justice to focus on?
We've been committed to protecting free and fair elections over the course of my time as AG, and making sure that our elections remain safe, secure, free, and fair is of vital importance.
One of the really unfortunate parts about the environment we're in is that the greatest threat to the security of our elections and the integrity of our elections right now is the president of the United States, and that involved an attack on mail-in [voting] that we successfully fought back against recently.
But we also wanna make sure we are monitoring what's gonna be happening at and around polling places so that if there's any attempt to threaten or intimidate voters, whether that's by private citizens or by armed federal agents, we're prepared to respond appropriately. And we wanna make sure that the certification process happens according to the lawful process. If there are concerns that people have about any issues relating to voting, we encourage folks to reach out to election officials and to reach to local law enforcement so that a response can happen promptly.
The fatal shooting by a Madison police officer last July reignited a debate about policing. As the state’s top law enforcement official, what changes, if any, would you support when it comes to police accountability?
We are the lead investigative agency working on the case that you mentioned, and it's of vital importance that we participate in that role independently and that it's clear to the public that we are objective and reviewing the matter based on the facts and following the facts where they lead. So with respect to that particular case, because that charging decision has not yet been made, I'm not gonna provide specific comment on the case.
What I will say generally is that I have, for years, advocated for investments in our criminal justice system that can both strengthen relationships between law enforcement and communities and also make our communities safer. I'm a strong advocate for investment in community policing. My view is that when there are strong relationships between law enforcement officers and members of communities, that builds trust, it can reduce the likelihood of confrontations occurring, and it can also play a critical role in helping solve crimes because when members of communities know law enforcement officers, it may help them feel comfortable coming forward and providing information to law enforcement.
I also think it's critical that we invest in crisis response teams so that when somebody is going through a mental health crisis, there are responders available who can help provide mental health care or connect people with services.
Your opponent has pointed to the state crime lab’s slow work in DNA testing. What do you have to say about that criticism?
It's unfortunate that Eric Toney is playing politics with public safety on this issue. My administration has called for additional resources for DNA analysis in both of the budgets that we proposed. In fact, for the upcoming budget, DOJ has again requested additional positions. Unfortunately, Eric Toney's political allies in the Legislature have not provided any of the requested DNA positions. In fact, in two budgets ago, they provided only three of the 16 total positions requested for the crime labs. And in the most recent budget, they provided none of the 19 positions that were requested.
Now, that hasn't stopped us from modernizing the crime lab and the work that it does. One example is with DNA analysis, you know, in the prior administration, a different type of analysis was conducted. My administration has moved to probabilistic genotyping — a process that began, I believe, under the [former AG Brad] Schimel administration. Probabilistic genotyping allows our analysts to identify matches in more cases. And that means we can solve more cases, hold more offenders accountable, and get justice for more victims. It also means, though, that there's more data that has to be analyzed as part of the process. And so making sure that there are the kinds of investments we need in the state crime labs is critical and I'm going to keep fighting for those investments.
If reelected, what would your priorities be when it comes to environmental protections in the state?
My administration has worked to protect the environment in a variety of ways. One is to hold polluters accountable. And recently, we announced one of the largest environmental settlements in the history of the state with Tyco involving alleged PFAS contamination in northeastern Wisconsin. And we also have a case pending that seeks to hold accountable a number of companies that are alleged to have violated the law with respect to certain actions relating to PFAS.
But prioritizing the most significant cases that impact clean air and clean water for Wisconsinites is important. My administration's also played a critical role in defending efforts to undermine state laws that are used to enforce, to protect our environment. And one area where we've been involved in a number of cases is challenging efforts that the federal government has taken to undermine protections for our natural resources.
I'll give you one concrete example. There's a program that was pursuant to a federal law that provided funding for clean energy infrastructure for states around the country, including Wisconsin. The Trump administration tried to deny those funds to Wisconsin, tens of millions of dollars. That's important to our environment because it helps with clean energy transition. It also is important to jobs in Wisconsin because jobs are being created to do that work of installing that infrastructure. But the Trump administration tried to withhold that funding. We were part of a challenge and we were successful, and funding has since been released to fund some of these programs. It's an example of how we're both protecting the environment but also protecting jobs in Wisconsin.
Select endorsements: GIFFORDS PAC, Clean Wisconsin Action Fund, Wisconsin Conservation Voters, Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Eric Toney (Republican)
Biography: Eric Toney has been serving as the Fond du Lac County district attorney since 2013, where he helped establish a drug treatment court. Toney grew up in Fond du Lac in a law enforcement family. He earned his undergraduate degree from St. Norbert College and graduated from law school at Hamline University. As a law student, Toney returned home every summer to Fond du Lac to intern in the district attorney’s office. Toney served as president of the Wisconsin District Attorneys Association (2022-2024) and was named Wisconsin’s District Attorney of the Year in 2024.
WUWM's interview with Toney has been edited for clarity and length. You can listen to the full interview below.
What would you do differently than AG Kaul if you're elected?
I'm gonna put public safety over politics at our Department of Justice, where we've seen our attorney general put his personal politics over public safety, breaking promise after promise. He campaigned on rape kits and the need to get convictions. And we've see in Wisconsin over 4,000 rape kits were tested, over $9 million spent, and in nearly eight years in office, he's gotten less than 15 convictions in those cases.
We've seen the promises he made on forensic testing with our crime labs. In 2019, he said he believed he had enough DNA analysts. The next year in 2020, he said that because he had those additional analysts the Legislature gave him, and that he had better technology to improve the efficiency, and he put policies in place to limit the evidence that could be tested, he'd see a dramatic improvement within two years. Now we're seeing Josh Kaul taking on average over twice as long to test less DNA with more resources compared to his predecessor. We've seen from the nonpartisan audit that he actually hasn't even filled all of the positions they've authorized because of the hiring freeze that he put in place. And so I'm gonna make sure that there's never a hiring freeze that impacts our crime lab and core public safety positions at our Department of Justice.
We're gonna make sure that we adopt some of the performance metric recommendations that are formalized to help support those great crime lab analysts. Earlier this year at the State of the Tribes address at the Capitol building, Nicole Boyd said that the attorney general had eliminated drug investigators in northern Wisconsin and that that was causing unnecessary death in our state. We are thankful that we're seeing drug deaths going down in Wisconsin, but we have seen this before and we have to continue to go after those dangerous drug dealers. And in Fond du Lac County, my office has been a leader in filing those cases, getting justice, taking them to trial when necessary and getting prison sentences to help deter others from doing that and getting justice for these moms and dads that have lost a child. There's accountability for opioid manufacturers, but that's half of the problem. We still have to make sure we're addressing the illegal fentanyl that's coming across the border. And if you were to go to the Department of Justice website, you won't see any mention of that unless they've updated it in the last few weeks that I haven't seen.
If you are elected what will your top three priorities be?
We're going to put public safety over politics, fix the forensic testing at our crime labs, and take a serious approach to fighting the fentanyl and drug epidemic and restoring those positions and making sure that our prosecutors and law enforcement have the resources they need from our Department of Justice to give justice for families that have lost a loved one to fentanyl.
AG Josh Kaul launched over 60 lawsuits pushing back against President Trump's policies. How would you approach federal policies’ impacts on Wisconsin if you’re elected?
This is one of the differences, and another broken promise. Josh Kaul actually campaigned against all of these federal lawsuits when he ran during the first Trump administration and said the office had gotten too political. And now we see that this is essentially the cornerstone of this campaign, is putting politics over public safety. And for me, it doesn't matter who's in the White House or who's the governor's office, that the facts are the facts and the law is the law, and that's how we make those decisions. And so that's what I'll do as attorney general, is make decisions based on the facts in the law, not who's in the White House or who's in the governor's office, because all one needs to do is look at Josh Kaul's tenure during the Biden administration and see the scant amount of any lawsuits that he joined or filed compared to what he's doing now. It just shows how partisan he's become and effectively has become one of the type of politicians people effectively hate. They promise one thing when they're running for office, and then once they get there, they do something different.
When you consider safeguarding Wisconsin's elections, what do you think is most vital for the state's Department of Justice to focus on?
I think number one, we have to make sure that whether it be prosecutors, law enforcement or municipalities [that] are looking for guidance, that the attorney general's office can step up and do that because sometimes it can take quite a while for a case to go through the court system. The attorney general's office has the ability to give [an] opinion on some of those. It can give some clarity in how that law might be applied until a court might take action on that.
And then we also have to be sure that people who are committing election fraud, that they're held accountable, because it acts as a deterrent. It shouldn't matter what party somebody's from, who they voted for. What we'll do is make sure we're working with our local officials and the Election Commission to be able to hold people accountable when election fraud is happening.
And as I've always said, I haven't seen enough election fraud that would overturn a statewide result, but when we look at some of the local races — whether it be a local board race, city council, school board — we've seen ties in these races across Wisconsin. We had a city council race in Fond du Lac decided by four votes. And so any amount of fraud in a local race like that could impact those elections. When we take these issues seriously, that's what gives people confidence in the results and not just when the person they want wins.
The fatal shooting by a Madison police officer last July reignited a debate about policing. If you are elected, what changes, if any, would you support when it comes to police accountability?
One of the things we have to make sure when we have these officer-involved death investigations is that there's transparency and there's integrity to the investigation. But we also have to improve the speed at which we're seeing some of these results, because what we see right now is our Department of Justice usually waits about 30 days and they turn over the entire file to the local district attorney.
When I've had to do some of these officer-involved death investigations, I have worked to get some of that key evidence to me earlier so I can start reviewing it to help get a decision out sooner, while still maintaining the integrity of the investigation, because that helps get the community answers quicker. It gets that family that's lost a loved one answers quicker, and it helps that agency be able to move forward, because some of these are small agencies — one or two or three officers on administrative leave can have a tremendous impact on that agency while we look to get those answers.
What we need to do is make sure that we're getting transparency, protecting the integrity of those investigations and having an honest discussion ultimately about what's happening in these officer-involved shootings. What we saw in the wake of that Corey Ruiz shooting in Madison, we saw high-profile candidates running for office as Democrats in Wisconsin that were effectively condemning and convicting this officer without the facts, when the investigation had just barely gotten off the ground, and our attorney general said nothing.
We then saw these protestors take over an intersection in Madison. And I personally walked through that to see it for myself, the impact of a business owner not being able to open, employees not being to get to their job, residents not being able to get their home. The entire intersection closed off or emergency service vehicles couldn't get through. And we can never allow things like that to happen in Wisconsin. People have the right to protest, but they don't have a right to take over an intersection and that's where the attorney general could have worked with the governor or the Legislature and local officials to take action. And it's been a troubling pattern.
We need real leadership from our attorney general that's willing to have these honest conversations and not try and have the popular — but have the correct opinion — because that's what helps us have transparency. It's what help us improve policing, and it's what helps us keep people safe in Wisconsin.
You have criticized the state crime lab’s slow work in DNA testing. What would you do to speed things up?
Well, what we learned earlier this year is that Attorney General Josh Kaul put a hiring freeze in place at our Department of Justice, and we actually saw the impact of that from a nonpartisan audit that was released in 2024. So as attorney general, I'm going to make sure that we never have a hiring freeze that affects those great crime lab employees and those core public safety positions at our Department of Justice.
We're going to adopt some of those performance metrics that the audit recommended and help support the analysts in doing that important work that they do. But we also have to make sure that we're eliminating any of those work-from-home policies that don't allow those analysts to be in the lab doing that critically important testing and make sure we're maximizing the efficiency with the resources we have, because we've seen, we're in Milwaukee right now, we've seen record homicide in recent years, we have seen record drug deaths in parts of the state in recent years and other crimes. That had gone up in those years and during that time our attorney general had put a hiring freeze in place limiting critical public safety resources across Wisconsin. That's not going to happen on my watch.
If elected, what would your priorities be when it comes to environmental protections in the state?
I want and will make sure that we have clean air and clean water here in Wisconsin. I have a well, I live in a township and about a year, two years ago, we ended up having bacteria in our well, and I went a time without being able to have access to that drinking water. We've seen other parts of our state where people have been impacted by PFAS and other things. As attorney general, when violations exist, I'm going to fight to make sure we're holding individuals or corporations accountable and making sure that people have access to clean air and clean water. I love getting to our parks, either here in Wisconsin or across the country, and we have to make sure we're taking that balanced approach, using the resources we have to protect our environment here in Wisconsin, and I will absolutely do that as attorney general.
Select endorsements: More than 75% of Wisconsin Sheriffs, Associated Builders and Contractors, Wisconsin Builders Association, Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police.
Support for WUWM's Voter Guide is provided by Milwaukee Turners.
