Wisconsin Attorney General race: Josh Kaul and Eric Toney rematch

MILWAUKEE - Wisconsin voters will decide who should be Wisconsin Attorney General.

This year’s matchup is a rematch of 2022: Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul faces Republican Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney.

Get to know the candidates

What To Know:

Most of the state polled by Marquette Law School in August said they didn’t know enough about the two to have an opinion of them. On Kaul, 61% said that; while 80% said the same of Toney.

Kaul graduated from Yale and then Stanford Law. He once was a federal prosecutor. He has been attorney general since 2019. He joined lawsuits against the Trump administration more than 60 times.

Toney said 75% of the state's sheriffs have endorsed him. He graduated from St. Norbert College and Hamline Law. He has been district attorney since 2013.

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Debating crime lab speed and testing

What they're saying:

The candidates debate how quickly the state crime lab tests samples.

"We’re seeing them take an average of twice as long to test less DNA, despite having more analysts and better technology and testing less," Toney told reporters after speaking at the Wisconsin Counties Association conference in the Wisconsin Dells. "And back in 2020, the attorney general said those increasing analysts that the legislature gave him were actually going to make the testing faster."

"In the last two budgets, we’ve asked for significant investment in DNA analysts. So,in the 2023-2025 budget, we asked for 16 positions total, only three were provided and none were for DNA," Kaul told reporters after speaking at the same event. "In the last budget, we asked for 19 positions total and no positions were provided including any positions for DNA."

The two disagreed about staffing at the state crime lab.

"He’s taking longer to test less despite having more resources. He got more analyst positions in the 2019 budget, he got more analysts in the 2023 budget and what he does is go around and pass the buck blaming others when he doesn’t even fill the positions he has," said Toney. "A nonpartisan audit that was released in 2024 when I helped Josh Kaul get more crime lab positions in 2023. Over a year later, he hadn’t even filled them."

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"Sometimes our budget situation is better, other times it is worse. When it’s better, we’re able to hire more, when it’s not as strong, we slow down on hiring. And that has gone in different phases, over the years. But, ultimately, the vacancy rate we have in our state crime lab is very low," said Kaul.

Portions of this article were formatted using A.I. FOX6’s Jason Calvi and an editor reviewed it for accuracy and tone prior to publishing.

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