MADISON, Wis. — By now, you have probably been caught in the middle of back-and-forth attack ads for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race more times than you can count.

You won’t just hear from commercials; the candidates themselves have now called out the criticism they have received.

What You Need To Know

  • Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel held a press conference Thursday to call out attack ads from his opponent, Susan Crawford, that he said are “lies”

  • Schimel, who served as Attorney General from 2015-2019, oversaw an initiative to address testing of the state’s backlog of rape kits 

  • In 2018, Schimel lost to Democrat Josh Kaul, and it is believed criticism over the speed at which the state’s Dept. of Justice processed the kits was partly to blame

  • The Crawford campaign has criticized the pace of testing of kits and Schimel’s pursuit of grant funding at the time instead of requesting money from the Legislature

If you are wondering why you are hearing so much about rape kits lately, the topic, if you remember, was tied to the 2018 race for Attorney General.

The speed at which the state’s justice department processed the backlog of evidence was widely talked about and is believed to be at least part of why now-Supreme Court Candidate Brad Schimel lost to Democrat Josh Kaul, who challenged him.

Now, as the race for the state’s high court heats up and both candidates run on their records, the issue has resurfaced.

“It was a lie when it was used in 2018, and it’s a lie now,” Schimel told reporters during a press conference Thursday afternoon. He was surrounded by supporters in the justice system as he called out what he feels are outright lies by his opponent’s campaign.

“We worked as quickly as we could,” Schimel said of his previous experience dealing with the state’s rape kit backlog. “No one took this problem on before because this problem was hard. That’s a classic thing in government. If it’s difficult to do, no one is going to touch it.”

Schimel, who served as Wisconsin Attorney General from 2015 to 2019, said he took a victim-centered approach to testing the kits.

He pointed out that, at the time, sexual assault advocates were pleased with the pace.

“Brad Schimel was able to get 4,100 kits tested while he was Attorney General,” Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt added. “This started in 1980. It didn’t start when he was Attorney General. It started in 1980, through many other attorney generals, and he took action to get it done.”

According to a story published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last fall, some 2,300 kits were not tested as of 2023 for various reasons ranging from missing police reports or the case already having charges filed, to the victim not initially consenting to testing.

Meanwhile, Susan Crawford’s campaign claimed there was a lag in testing rape kits under Schimel because of a lack of resources to do so, criticizing the state’s former top cop for pursuing grants instead of asking for funding directly from the Legislature.

“While Brad Schimel dragged his feet, rapists roamed the street. Schimel only tested nine rape kits in two years, out of a backlog of more than 6,000, causing justice to be delayed. Now Schimel is running scared, and like a true politician, he’s trying to rewrite history. Schimel wanted a ‘bargain price’ to test the kits, causing obscene delays, and even as the Republican Waukesha DA, he let dozens of kits sit untested, including for a three-year-old victim,” Crawford Campaign spokesman Derrick Honeyman said to Spectrum News in a statement.

“It’s disgusting and despicable that Brad Schimel is trying to rewrite history. But in his single term as Attorney General, Schimel failed countless victims of sexual assault. Schimel doesn’t deserve a decade-long term on the Supreme Court, and Wisconsinites will reject his record of shadiness and deception once again,” Honeyman added.

“When I came to the Department of Justice, the budget was already submitted,” Schimel responded when reporters asked about the criticism. “There was no ability for me in January of 2015 to move into the budget, some extra money to hire all these analysts. And as I explained, that’s not the right answer anyway because hiring analysts, by the time we had gotten them hired and trained, we would have been over a year into the process as it is.”

With the election slated for April 1, chances are you will see many more ads from both campaigns. Wisconsin’s last Supreme Court race in 2023 broke records as the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history.

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