Josh Kaul and his erstwhile stepbrother Jason Rippl are almost too easy to caricature. They’re obviously the layabout stepbrothers, Brennan and Dale, played by Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, living in their parents’ basements and refusing to grow up. The movie is “a 2008 comedy film about two lazy, middle-aged men who are forced to become roommates when their single parents marry.” Perfect.
I guess destroying the state is a family business.
In case you don’t already know, Kaul is the lazy buffoonish state attorney general who resurfaces from his hobbit hole now and then to destroy the crime lab, mess up crime victim services, direct federal money to anti-police groups that want to abolish law enforcement, get scolded by the Halloween killer victim’s mom for ignoring her concerns, and delay open records requests for more than five years. He’s been a terrible AG but he keeps getting elected because no one knows who he is.
Rippl is his goofy sidekick stepbrother who is running for Winnebago County sheriff in a quest to stop the agency from figuring out which inmates in its jail are here illegally, which is a goal that Kaul shares. I’d add Rippl’s position on Flock to the list except I couldn’t figure out what the hell he was trying to say when he got asked about it. He unleashed a stream of gobbledygook despite the reporter’s valiant effort to ask follow up questions. His endorsements are basically a couple fire chiefs. In fairness, he’s a deputy.
Both men are loony Democrats who are running against solid Republicans. Isn’t being a Democrat sheriff sort of an oxymoron?
In contrast, if you held a casting call for a perfect attorney general candidate, you’d get Kaul’s opponent Eric Toney, a former DA of the year and political energizer bunny, who is locked and loaded on public safety as an issue like a submarine torpedo.
An independent I know conceded, “Toney is a lot more charismatic than Kaul.” In fairness, my bathroom floor mat is more charismatic than Kaul. I’d take that back because that’s mean except the guy botched an audit into crime victim services so badly he imperiled drug, gang and s*xual assault grants all over the state. He also walked coldly away when I asked him about the Halloween Killer’s mom’s concerns. It’s on video. Her child was brutally murdered while trick or treating, and Kaul walked away. So he gets what he deserves.
Every time I call Eric Toney to ask him a question – about the crime lab melting down or that creepy guy he charged who allegedly had an Ed Gein shrine (he couldn’t comment) or about Kaul’s stepbrother – Eric’s either prosecuting a killer or driving to or from some Republican event like a Tavern Talk with Tom. The Ed Gein shrine guy is symbolic. Dane County let the guy out. Toney got him locked back up.
Rippl is running against a Republican sheriff’s captain named Darin Rice whom everyone I know likes, who has supervisory experience and who doesn’t want illegal immigrants who commit crimes to remain in Winnebago County. So that’s good. The Winnebago DA and outgoing sheriff are among his long list of endorsements.
Isn’t one brother enough?
It’s almost a nightmare. Josh Kaul has been cloned like Dolly the sheep! What if we discover that Tony Evers has a clone who is running to be a local mayor? What if Sarah Godlewski has an equally annoying twin who jumps around in strange videos? Oh, wait. That’s Robyn Vining. We don’t need two Josh Kauls running around, my God!
Kaul and Ripple were united in the family tree when Kaul’s mom, Peg Lautenschlager, and Rippl’s dad, Bill Rippl, married, creating a political Brady Bunch. Peg tragically passed away of cancer, which is sad.
Many people don’t realize that Kaul is a nepo baby who holds the office his mom once held and vacated after she drove a state car into a ditch while drunk. Sorry to bring that up, but it’s relevant because it’s how she left the office her son inherited. She also was criticized over crime lab delays which her son promised to fix but hasn’t. I’ll leave it at that where she is concerned; God rest her soul. She was a fixture in liberal politics for years and a former DA and US Attorney. Kaul’s dad is Raj Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit immigrant from India. Bill Rippl, his stepdad, was a cop.
In the movie, the Stepbrothers start a karaoke business. It would be nice if Kaul and Jason Rippl would take heed. Can’t they make a karaoke business of their own instead of trying to mess up law enforcement.
Most people haven’t connected the dots between Kaul and Rippl. I only know this tie because a Republican volunteer from that neck of the woods texted me, “The Democratic candidate for sheriff is a relative of Josh Kaul and won’t cooperate with ICE.” I responded, Wait a minute, what? I’m guessing Ripple isn’t shouting the association from the rooftops because most voters in the Fox Valley don’t want a loony liberal as sheriff. Or the state’s “top cop.”
This piqued my interest, which will make Wisconsin Right Now co-founder Jim Piwowarczyk laugh. Years ago, Jim was driving his kids up north to go Muskie fishing and was sick with the flu besides, and I called to blather for 40 minutes about some major finding regarding Kaul and the crime lab. And he snapped that Eric Toney and I were the only people in the state who care about Josh Kaul.
It’s now a running joke and even Eric Toney thinks it’s funny because Jim thinks he’s great and would stipulate that Kaul is a total disaster and, yes, that matters. But he had a point. I’m pretty sure I could walk into any bar, farmer’s market or grocery store and ask 100 people who Josh Kaul is and maybe 1 or 2 would know. He’s been the AG since 2019.
Kaul Has Been a Disaster
To camouflage the fact that he’s mismanaged his office and all of its core functions are currently disasters, Kaul has been running around trying to take credit for crime going down in Wisconsin. Which is ridiculous – Kaul’s crime lab has taken in far fewer cases with longer delays, which means criminals have remained on the streets longer.
But I’ll play this game. Homicide in Wisconsin is up under Kaul. It was 189 in 2019 when he took office; 238 in 2025. It soared to 329 in 2021. So by his own measurement, he’s a failure.
I actually know someone who filed an open records request with Kaul’s office in May 2020. They fulfilled it in January 2026. “I finished law school in between,” she said. And she wasn’t joking.
He’s supposed to be the state’s top enforcer of open records laws. Part of the request was for Kaul’s CALENDAR. Now and then Kaul pops his head out of his prairie dog hole and does something really crazy like join a lawsuit seeking to make taxpayers fund irreversible transgender surgeries for MINORS. He filed that this week.
Kaul filmed some ludicrous video with a podcaster who proclaimed that he’s Trump’s biggest nightmare. Actually, most of the lawsuits he joins would have happened anyway because other states are leading them. And most are trying to stop common sense reforms.
Unfortunately, Dolly the sheep only made it six years, coming down with a progressive lung disease. Kaul has been in office over 7.
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