GOP attorney general candidate Eric Toney said strong fundraising and party unity offer a pathway for him to defeat Dem AG Josh Kaul in their rematch in November’s elections.

“Last time we had a very challenging primary. We didn’t have a primary this time,” Toney said Thursday outside the Tommy G. Thompson Center in Madison, where he submitted nomination signatures to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

“I received the endorsement from our grassroots, the people that knock on doors, that make the phone calls. Your friends, your family members, those wonderful people that are the heartbeat of the party.”

The Fond du Lac district attorney narrowly won a three-way GOP primary in 2022 only to fall short in the general election against the incumbent Kaul. 

In that election, Kaul spent more than $5 million compared to the just over $1 million spent by Toney. Toney noted Thursday that this time around he’d outraised Kaul in the last half of 2025. 

In addition to Toney’s own fundraising, the Republican Attorneys General Association has reserved some $500,000 in fall TV advertising backing Toney, split between Milwaukee and Green Bay’s media markets.

Toney attacked Kaul for “putting politics above public safety,” blaming Kaul for a decrease in state narcotics investigation agents in northern Wisconsin and for increased wait times for results from the state’s crime lab – even as he touted his own calls to increase resources for the lab in years past. 

In a statement to WisPolitics, a spokesperson for Kaul’s campaign said that with Kaul, the state has “an attorney general with a strong record of leading on public safety, fighting for Wisconsin families, and standing up for our freedoms.” 

“He delivers results. Eric Toney’s record includes anti-abortion extremism and failures on public safety. Wisconsin doesn’t need the kind of attorney general that Eric Toney would be: too weak to stand up to the powerful and well-connected,” the statement said. 

Toney declined to say whether he would continue the prosecutions of three lawyers involved in a scheme to nullify Wisconsin’s electoral votes for Joe Biden or replace them with votes for Donald Trump in 2020, saying his “ethical obligations” as Fond du Lac’s district attorney prevented him from weighing in on an ongoing case. 

“Like any of us, we have opinions about different things we see in the media and the news, but as a district attorney I’m more limited in how I can talk about some of these things to make sure people have their day in court,” Toney said.

He also declined to weigh in on opposition research released by Democratic rapid response group American Bridge, saying he had not seen the research.

That group has argued Democrats and progressives should target Toney for his “aggressive” prosecutions in 2022 of two Trump voters who registered to vote using a P.O. box instead of their residential address as required under Wisconsin law. 

American Bridge has also proposed targeting Toney for statements he made supporting prosecutions under Wisconsin’s overturned 1849 abortion law and opposing “red flag” gun laws, as well as his refusal in 2022 to commit to pursuing a state lawsuit against companies accused of PFAS contamination.