Democrat Josh Kaul announced on October 7 that he is running for state Attorney General again. It is widely believed that Kaul received a tepid response from the Democratic Party’s donors and base for a gubernatorial run.
That leaves the Democrat field for governor a frenzy of C and D-list candidates, with former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who ran one of the worst campaigns in state history against Sen. Ron Johnson, openly considering a bid. That would be good news for the two Republican candidates still in the race, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann.
Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, a Republican, is widely expected to run against Kaul.
In his announcement, Kaul touted his public safety record. In truth, the Attorney General’s tenure has been marred by public safety failures. He has shifted his office to a more partisan focus, ranting about climate change. He also pledged to stop the National Guard from being deployed to Wisconsin to fight crime and sued the Trump administration more than 30 times during his first term and more during the second, including relating to immigration enforcement and state grants.
There were 16 such lawsuits pending in 2025.
Josh Kaul’s Public Safety Failures
Kaul’s tenure has been marked by management failures, including significant delays in processing open records compared to his predecessor and a refusal to help a local DA’s office struggling with staffing issues.
In fact, 15 retired DCI agents and administrators slammed Kaul, calling him a “disaster for law enforcement” who has “mismanaged the Office of the Attorney General.”
He once touted a sexual assault charge against a man named Terence Blackmon because it stemmed from a backlogged rape kit. But his office did not ask for increased bond for YEARS even as Blackmon reoffended SIXTY TIMES. And his office made questionable decisions when handling a case involving eventual Waukesha parade attacker Darrel Brooks.
Here are 6 key things to remember about Kaul’s records as AG:
1. He still hasn’t cleared up the crime lab. In fact, it’s gotten worse
Kaul has badly mismanaged the state crime lab, a 2024 report from his office showed, especially in the key area of DNA, where delays jumped significantly over his predecessor, Brad Schimel.
This has been the case ever since Kaul took office in 2019. Although he defeated former AG Brad Schimel largely by hammering the Republican on crime lab delays, Kaul, five years into office now, has failed to get his hands around the lab backlogs. And his old excuse of COVID has long ago run out.
Kaul said in the November 2024 report that he couldn’t “meaningfully” reduce crime lab backlogs without getting more spending/staff, and he’s tried to say he’s doing better than some other crime labs. However, the fact is evident from his own reports: the Democrat Kaul is presiding over a crime lab that is far less productive than it was under Schimel, while still not turning evidence around as fast in multiple key areas.
2. He upset the mother of the child victim in one of the state’s most notorious homicide cases
Maryann Gehring, the mother of 9-year-old murder victim Lisa Ann French, says it “was like a slap in the face” when Kaul walked away without response on video after being asked about Gehring’s comments that he failed her.
French was raped and murdered by notorious “Halloween Killer” Gerald Turner while trick-or-treating in one of the state’s most horrific crimes ever. She slammed Attorney General Josh Kaul, saying Kaul “failed me, and he’s failed Wisconsin.”
“He doesn’t want to tell the truth. He hurt my feelings,” she said, adding that she didn’t appreciate his comments basically accusing her of playing politics.
She wanted people to vote instead for Eric Toney, the Republican District Attorney of Fond du Lac County, because she believes he’s more attentive to victims. “He’s caring,” she said of Toney. “He cares about the victims. He’s there for justice. He’s not really a politician.” We spoke to Gehring in an exclusive interview.
Of Kaul, she said, “I think he doesn’t care about the victims. All he cares about is power, that he wants to run for Attorney General again.”
Kaul coldly walked away on video when asked Thursday about Maryann Gehring,
3. His office botched the response to a federal audit of its crime victims’ services, imperiling grants for domestic violence and sexual assault victims
Kaul’s office so badly mismanaged an audit response involving his Office of Crime Victim Services that the Wisconsin Department of Justice was labeled a “high risk” state for federal grants, imperiling funding for domestic violence, sexual assault, and other victims throughout Wisconsin for months, Wisconsin Right Now has uncovered through a long-delayed open records request.
On May 20, 2021, the feds formally designated Wisconsin’s DOJ a high-risk grantee after Kaul’s office failed repeatedly to comply with federal requests to document questionable costs charged by local organizations, the records obtained by WRN show.
4. A Wisconsin judge slammed Kaul, saying he “abused” the justice system & made “false representations”
A Wisconsin judge slammed Attorney General Josh Kaul in a blistering order on Friday, accusing Kaul of abusing Wisconsin’s justice system and of making “blatantly false representations about the underlying record” to “one or more appellate courts.”
Judge W. Andrew Voigt, of Columbia County, tossed Kaul’s lawsuit trying to prevent Elon Musk from giving money to petition signers. Musk’s legal team had accused Kaul, a partisan liberal, of trying to violate Musk’s free speech rights.
Voigt wrote that, substantively, Kaul’s legal filing was “even more gravely deficient.” Read more here.
5. He funded a radical group that trashed Fitchburg police as violent rapists
A group of radicals associated with Freedom Inc., an activist group funded by Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, trashed police during a Fitchburg meeting this week as violent, racist rapists who are neo-fascist colonials.
They offered no specifics, citing only various cases that did not occur in Fitchburg. One Freedom Inc. speaker, Bianca Gomez, fixated on Police Chief Alfonso Morales’ Latino heritage, saying, “We are sick and tired of you throwing self-hating people of color in our face and expecting us to be content with violence.”
Mai Yang, of Freedom Inc., said that police “kill” and “rape us” and “have no regards to human life.”
“Fighting to survive a system of oppression is not a crime,” she said. “The police harassing and assaulting people should be a crime. No cop city.”
6. His office made decisions that contributed to Darrell Brooks being on the street to commit the Waukesha parade attack
Kaul’s office gave a judge incomplete information about Brooks’ criminal history during two bail hearings, did not file bail jumping charges when Brooks was arrested TWICE on new charges, and did not ask for Brooks’ $500 bail to be raised after those new offenses occurred, before Brooks murdered people at the parade, records reviewed by Wisconsin Right Now show.
The assistant prosecutor, Jacob Corr, did not tell the judge that Brooks had TWO open warrants during either bail hearing – one in Nevada for being a non-compliant sex offender and one in Waukesha County in an old child support case. In fact, he did not tell the judge that Brooks was a sex offender at all.
If he had, Brooks may have been given higher bail and not left on the streets to commit the parade attack.
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