The Kenosha Professional Police Association is calling on Attorney General Josh Kaul to answer a question he has so far refused to answer: Is he comfortable running on a ticket with candidates who want to abolish the police?
In an interview published last week, Kaul “was asked directly and repeatedly whether he is comfortable running alongside all seven Democrats on the August 11 gubernatorial ballot. Each time, he declined to say,” the KPPA wrote in a news release. “His only answer was that he is ‘confident’ the party will produce ‘a strong nominee.'”
“The positions some of these candidates hold are not abstract policy disagreements. They are dangerous, and they put the men and women we represent at risk,” said Rusten Sheskey, President of the Kenosha Professional Police Association. “When the state’s top law enforcement officer is asked whether he stands with those candidates and he refuses to answer, that tells you everything you need to know.”
One of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary, State Rep. Francesca Hong, wrote that she supports “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police,” KPPA noted. She has also told voters that her ideal is “a world without prisons.”
“Hong finished a strong second in her own party’s convention straw poll. These are not the views of a fringe candidate with no path. They are the views of a frontrunner,” KPPA added.
“If Josh Kaul will not stand up to the members of his own party who want to abolish the police while they are candidates, asking for votes, what makes anyone believe he would stand up to them once one of them is sitting in the governor’s office?” Sheskey said. “The job of Attorney General is to back law enforcement and protect public safety without regard to party. Refusing to draw a line against police abolition is not neutrality. It is a failure of the job.”
Editor’s note: Hong is also a card carrying member of the DSA, which has called for the following:
