Republican Party picnic draws state politicians

Members of the Taylor County Republican Party braved the rain on July 10 to attend the annual picnic held in the Medford City Park.

Those in attendance got a chance to hear from local state representatives Rob Summerfield who represents the 86th Assembly District and Karen Hurd who represents the 87th Assembly District along with state Sen. Jesse James who represents the region.

Other guests included Fond Du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney. Toney was unsuccessful in his run against Josh Kaul for state attorney general in 2022, and said that while he has not announced if he will be making a run for the position in 2026, he said he has a lot of people who are encouraging him to do so.

“My big focus has been on the budget and helping prosecutors across Wisconsin, we've added over 50 positions that are desperately needed in Wisconsin, and that was a huge priority focusing on my office,” he said.

Tooney explained that when they we put the plan together to add more prosecutor positions, they also had a workload analysis that the state does, and they take the type of cases district attorneys file that give it a number of hours that they estimate the case to take, and then they say this is how many positions you have.

“We're at approximately 80% staffed. So with our DA’s association, what we did, is put a proposal together, asking the legislature to bring as many of our offices up to about that 80% level across the state, so we just took the numerical approach, trying to get help to the offices that seemed like they needed it most, and we received just a tremendous amount of support from our local legislators across Wisconsin, that really got that across the line that joined finance and leadership and the legislature worked with the governor not to see a line item veto on it,” he said.

Getting addition positions authorized is one thing, getting lawyers to fill those positions and retaining the ones in office is its own challenge. Tooney noted that Gov. Evers had appointed more than 30 district attorneys since he became governor.

“One of the things that we accomplished in the last previous budget 2 years ago was increasing the starting pay for assistant DAs, as well as public defenders, because we couldn't find anybody to take those jobs,” he said. In some cases this resulted in significant increase which he said has helped.

“I think it has helped hold on to some of those elected DAs,” he said noting that many are younger attorneys with law school debt and trying to raise a family can find it difficult. He said he knows it is hard to retain people especially in more rural areas.

“I think we see with attorneys, doctors, some of those professions, it becomes harder and harder for smaller communities, to be able to attract them, and that's something that we still need to figure out how we can get that support,” he said. He said technology has helped relieve some of the stress on rural prosecutors with the ability of prosecutors to appear in court by Zoom when conflicts occur.

Looking forward, Tooney said he sees some existing challenges continuing to face the state. He said the biggest challenge he sees is the ongoing delays with the state crime labs.

“For whatever reason, our current attorney general is testing about 25% less cases than Brad Schimel tested, and he's taking longer to test many categories, including DNA, despite having the same or more resources and so one of the by-products of that is, some criminals are still on the street because we're waiting for that testing before in Wisconsin, I mean, that was the only second time in 40 years that a Republican has carried Wisconsin. So in addition to having him win Wisconsin and hosting the Republican National Convention — we had 50,000 people come to Wisconsin — so that was some good energy,” Schimming said. Looking ahead to the coming year, there are no federal races for US Senate or president. This will put focus on congressional races and statewide races.

“In addition to the congressional races, there'll be a lot of focus on the governor's race focus on the attorney general's race and a lot on the legislature. So unlike the last couple of times we'll be really focused on statewide level races,” he said.

Schimming noted that one of the bigger upcoming races will be for the state Supreme Court. He anticipates seeing a continuation of the high-spending campaigns like the one this year. “I hope we avoid that kind of spending, but it seems like the new normal right now, which is too bad. That's not a place we want to be with the Wisconsin Supreme Court, he said. He noted the last couple of cycles decided the majority on the court, so all of a sudden, the whole country's watching the race. “That would be the case next year as well, so the conservatives don't fall back another seat on the Supreme Court, so I prefer not to have all that spending, but I won’t be surprised if we see that again,” he said.

Schimming said the race to run for governor is open at this point.

“Obviously with Congressman Tiffany being talked about quite a bit, but there'll be others in it as well. We've had two others announce,” he said. Schimming said that he has spoken to the candidates and said he is not against primaries however he cautioned them against primaries where everybody spends all their time beating each other up and then by the time to get done with it, there's no money left and everyone's beat up.

“If the candidates keep it at a certain level, I think primaries, you know, help with energy,” he said, adding that he wanted to make sure that post primary everyone is able to come together on election day in support of a candidate.