Thanks for having me.
So I think let's start with kind of the precursor to this race, is your decision to
stay in this race.
There was a lot of speculation you might run for governor.
How do you feel about your decision to stay in the race for Attorney General now?
I feel great about my decision.
It's something I thought about seriously, but there are a few factors that wait on my
mind.
One is I'm really committed to having an impact through the work that I do, and of course
a governor can have a ton of impact, but we're also having a huge impact through the
work that we do at Wisconsin DOJ, and I don't think that the work that I've been doing is
done yet.
You know, family considerations played a role as well, but ultimately I'm really excited
about seeking an additional term and about the work we could do in an additional term.
So this is unique in that it is a rematch of the last election.
We don't see that too often.
How do you think that will influence things?
One of the things that's interesting about a rematch is you can look back at what the
candidates said in the prior race and see how those things held up, and I think that that's
really instructive here.
In the last campaign, it was shortly after Roe v. Wade had been overturned.
I had filed a lawsuit seeking to block enforcement of a law that dates back to the mid-1800s.
Eric Tony, my opponent, had attacked me for that case.
He called it a partisan stunt.
He said it should be dismissed, and so we now can look and see how our claims held up, and
what we know now is that the Supreme Court sided with the argument we made in that case,
and ultimately we won that case and access to abortion is safe and legal in Wisconsin.
So will voters separate the Attorney General's race do you think from the rest of the ballot?
As we've seen historically, there's usually a few fewer voters for the AG race than for
governor, and you've trailed right belong.
We get to go back to 2006 the last time they were AG and governor from separate parties.
So how does that all work together?
The results tend to be fairly close, but in Wisconsin we have a lot of close elections,
and so sometimes those small differences can make a big difference in the outcome.
I'm running based on my record and my time as AG, and the focus can be different.
My top priority as Attorney General has been public safety, and we've made significant
progress on really important public safety issues.
One of them is fighting the opioid epidemic.
My administration has helped to secure over 800 million dollars from companies that we've
alleged contributed to the opioid epidemic and from others.
Many of those dollars will be going to communities across the states, some already have, and
we are seeing a real impact.
Opioid overdose deaths in Wisconsin from 23 to 24 dropped by over 40 percent.
That's a more than 600 percent difference.
We need to keep making progress, our work isn't done, but I want to build on the progress
we're making.
One of the other high profile things your office has done is filed lawsuits against the Trump
administration along with other attorneys general from around the country.
Can you give me maybe a short list of some of the most important cases that maybe the
public isn't aware of the significance of some of those?
Well, I think you can look at them by category.
So a lot of these cases involve the Trump administration either putting illegal conditions
on or cutting or freezing funding that would otherwise be coming to Wisconsin.
There's a huge amount of money that has been impacted by this, and it's vital programs,
things like funding for education and or for mental health programs in our schools, funding
for disaster relief and mitigation, funding for the AmeriCorps program, which the Trump
administration tried to cut, transportation funding and public health funding.
We have consistently fought back and we have one case after case, and what that has meant
is that those funds either are not illegally conditioned or they're not frozen or ultimately
cut, and instead they can come to our communities and support critical programs in Wisconsin.
Now, I know we've spoken there are some of those cases where if only if you're a plaintiff,
do you actually get the benefit?
And in some cases, some of the other states have gotten the benefits just because you've
won overall.
What would have the impact have been if Eric Tony had been the attorney general and had
discretion on whether to file these cases?
Yeah.
Well, of the 60 plus cases that we've been involved in, I don't think any single Republican
AG has joined us in challenging the Trump administration in any of those cases, and
I'm not aware of a single case where Eric Tony has said he would have challenged the
Trump administration.
What that would mean in some cases is Wisconsin wouldn't get the relief that happens in court
because in a number of these cases, it's only the states that have brought the challenge
that get the relief.
And so it could be that we no longer have protection for critical programs if an AG
is not part of one of those challenges.
Do you think the public understands the stakes there?
I think the stakes are huge, and so I think the more we talk about it, the better.
One thing that is unfortunate, I think, in the Trump administration is we often see the
president's actions get lots of coverage that's understandable.
But what I think there's been less coverage of is the fact that in case after case, actions
have been blocked and he's been stopped from moving forward, in part because of these suits
that we're talking about.
But for a lot of people that don't follow your office very closely, one of the ways
that they hear about the Department of Justice in the AG every four years is crime lab statistics.
Obviously, that's one of the major things you campaigned on when you first got elected.
It was one of the issues in the last election.
Your opponent's talking about the crime lab and unfilled positions and slow turned around.
So defend your record and where the crime lab is.
Yeah, well, first thing that's important to separate two things out.
One of the issues I talked about back in 2018 was untested sexual assault kits, and we
worked to get legislation passed, which ultimately passed through the Republican-led
legislature that's going to help ensure that Wisconsin never has another backlog of untested
sexual assault kits.
Now, in terms of the labs themselves on a day-to-day basis, one of the things I've
been clear about is where we need resources from the state legislature.
And in the last state budget, my office requested 19 additional positions for the labs.
Eric Tony's allies in the state legislature provided zero positions.
Look, that's not an accident.
This is politics being played here.
But the overall picture, I think, is important not to lose sight of.
Wisconsin last year in 2025 had the lowest number of violent crimes that we have had
any year since 2011.
Fondelac County, where Eric Tony is DA last year, had the second highest number of violent
crimes that the county has had in decades.
And so if you compare our track records overall, there's a clear difference.
We need to keep doing what we're doing to keep our communities safe.
How do you think that the DOJ gets credit for lower crime statistics statewide?
Well, there are lots of folks who play a role in what we do statewide, and the Department
of Justice is involved in investigating crimes of statewide importance.
We oversee the crime labs.
We work on every felony criminal appeal in the state.
We also work in partnerships with lots of other law enforcement agencies.
What I think is important is that we recognize that lots of folks contribute to overall safety
in the state, and that certainly includes local law enforcement and others.
What's notable, I think, though, is Fondelac County has gone the opposite direction from
the rest of the state under the leadership of Eric Tony.
That, I think, is not the kind of failure I want to see taken statewide.
You brought up abortion earlier, but I want to bring that back as a topic.
How relevant is that still to voters?
Because it's not a constitutional right in either the nation or in Wisconsin, despite
lawsuits that have attempted to make it so.
So how important is it who the next attorney general is?
It remains to be seen.
One thing we saw, I think, over the last four years is it certainly can have an impact because
my administration was fighting to protect access to safe and legal abortion, and Eric
Tony called the case that we brought up a farce among other things.
Now, fortunately, we've got a ruling in place that currently protects access to safe and
legal abortion in Wisconsin, but we, as you said, there's no state constitutional protection
in place right now.
There's no federal constitutional protection specifically for abortion access, and what
that means is that if there were a Tom Tiffany and a Republican legislature, you could have
further restrictions put in place, and you could see an attorney general, Eric Tony, if
he were in office, aggressively working with them to restrict access to abortion.
The other thing that's going on right now is the federal government is potentially going
to restrict access.
The new attorney general had a meeting with an anti-abortion group where he signaled that
he wanted to restrict access, and I think making sure that the states are prepared to
fight back where there's a legal basis for doing so is going to be important to protecting
people's rights going forward.
Josh, call.
Thanks for your time.
Thanks for having me.