New campaign commercials are now running in the race to determine which way the state Supreme Court will lean.
Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel and Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford are the only two candidates in the race on the April 1 ballot.
But an old issue around Schimel's handling of sexual assault kits has resurfaced.
Chief Political Reporter Charles Benson talked with both candidates and looks at why voters are hearing about it again.
The issue dates to when Brad Schimel was attorney general and the backlog of thousands of untested sexual assault or rape kits long before he arrived in Madison as AG.
The first round of campaign commercials from Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate, made this claim: "He let 6,000 rape kits sit untested for two years while survivors waited for justice."
Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate, claimed this: "Leading the sexual assault kit initiative, clearing 4,000 backlogged tests so survivors could finally get justice."
Schimel says the task for the DOJ included efforts to get the funding, consent from survivors to test the kits, take inventory, and contract with a lab to do the work.
Watch: Previewing the Wisconsin Supreme Court race: What's old is new again
"Nobody let anything sit. We got to DOJ, and we didn't have any resources to test these kits."
Crawford claims Schimel took his eye off the ball.
"Time is of the essence. Delay is a delay of justice in those cases for those victims."
Here's the timeline:
Schimel became attorney general in January 2015.
In September 2015, he secured $4 million in funding to process and test the backlog of sexual assault kits.
In February 2017, 16 months after getting funding, his office says fewer than 10 cases were tested.
Why so few?
"That is a time-consuming process," said Schimel. "There's no way around it, but it's the right way to do it. It's victim-centered."
By September 2018, Schimel's office had completed evidence testing on virtually all 4,100 sexual assault cases in which victims had given DOJ permission to test.
It resulted in about a half dozen new charges, according to the state's website.
The issue played out in the 2018 attorney general's race when Democrat Josh Kaul criticized the testing delays in his campaign to defeat Schimel.
Now voters are seeing it again.
"I think he put his foot on the gas when it became an issue in his reelection campaign," said Judge Crawford, "and only then did he prioritize the testing of that rape kit backlog."
"We got it done right," said Schimel. "And more importantly, this will not happen again because of the process we put in place."
Expect the campaign commercials to heat up and the spending to pick up, as this race is likely to cost as much or potentially even more than the record-shattering $50-plus million just two years ago.
