When Brad Schimel was Attorney General, the backlog of rape kits numbered thousands.

• "Cops, foundation clash on importance of untested rape kits"
  Thousands of rape kits remain untested and in police storage facilities in Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin, a national organization that works on issues of sexual assault and family violence said Monday. The Joyful Heart Foundation, based in New York, said Milwaukee reported 2,655 untested rape kits in police storage facilities. In addition, data compiled by the state Attorney General's office found an additional 3,351 untested rape kits from with 81% of jurisdictions reporting. That's a total of 6,006 untested rape kits in Wisconsin.
  [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10/6/2014]
• "State has tested only 9 backlogged rape kits"
  Two days after the state's top prosecutor said "a few hundred" of Wisconsin's 6,000 backlogged rape kits had been tested, his office acknowledged that the number is a fraction of that. The state has completed testing of nine kits, said Rebecca Ballweg, a spokeswoman in the office of Attorney General Brad Schimel.
  [USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, 2/2/2017]
• "Delays, blunders and police neglect in Wisconsin’s reponse to rape kits"
  A USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin investigation ... based on nearly three years of reporting and hundreds of government documents, reveals a pattern of delays and blunders across Wisconsin's criminal justice system: ... Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, the state's top law enforcement official in charge of getting the kits tested, prioritized taxpayer savings. Testing was a goal in Wisconsin — but it could wait for a bargain price. Rather than ask lawmakers for additional full-time staff, Schimel applied for out-of-state grants, which had strings attached, and he limited resources for the project to grant-funded work. He also contracted with private firms for the testing, rather than beef up Wisconsin's own crime labs for the task, as other states had done. As a result, some of those states were catching habitual sex offenders for years before Wisconsin started testing kits ... Even Schimel's agents lacked a sense of urgency at times, records show ... In 2014, Wisconsin's backlog appeared so large and spread across so many police stations that state officials weren’t sure how to respond. To clear out backlogs, some states increased funding for crime lab overtime or hired lab workers to help manage the mountain of work. Although costly, this approach meant testing could begin immediately or within months of new employee training. That didn’t happen in Wisconsin. … The response chosen by Wisconsin officials saved state taxpayers an estimated $4 million in lab work, because rape kits can cost about $1,000 each to test. But the response came at the cost of time...
  [USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, 6/13/2018]

And Schimel was caught
lying about it.

• "Brad Schimel falsely claims there is no 'backlog' of untested rape kits in Wisconsin"
  Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel … has repeatedly contested the description in news reports that the untested kits comprise a "backlog." … "I do disagree with the term backlog because the Wisconsin crime lab is up to date with all current, pending investigations," Schimel said April 9, 2017 on Up Front with Mike Gousha. "It’s not a backlog. These are things no one ever asked the state crime lab to test." Is Schimel — a Republican who is up for reelection in 2018 — right to claim the untested kits are not a "backlog"? … Schimel’s claim that the word "backlog" is inaccurate runs into trouble when compared with, well, his own past statements. … The fact that Schimel himself previously used the term makes his claim not only wrong but ridiculous. We rate Schimel’s claim Pants on Fire.
  [Politifact, 5/19/2017]

His office was criticized by dozens of assistant attorneys general and widely called incompetent.

• "Dozens of former Assistant Attorneys General oppose Brad Schimel’s bid for reelection as Attorney General"
  To whom it may concern: The Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office is a mess. The current Attorney General, Brad Schimel, has blatantly politicized the office, dropped the ball on his role as the lead crime fighter in Wisconsin, and abdicated the AG’s traditional role as “the people’s lawyer” representing Wisconsin citizens’ interests in criminal and civil matters alike. We do not make these claims lightly: We are 45 former Assistant Attorneys General with over 900 years of service working under both Republican and Democratic AGs. We served in the Wisconsin Department of Justice, where our primary goal — indeed our only goal — was to serve the people of Wisconsin efficiently, effectively, and in a non-partisan manner in all types of cases, including criminal prosecutions and appeals, environmental enforcement, consumer and antitrust enforcement, among others...
  [Josh Kaul for Attorney General, Medium post, 8/27/2018]
• "Former Wisconsin assistant AGs blast Schimel"
  Schimel’s opponent, Democrat Josh Kaul, released a letter Monday signed by 45 assistant attorneys general. … Kaul spokeswoman Gillian Drummond says the signers drafted the letter and gave it to Kaul. She says the signers include at least 10 who worked for Schimel and 20 who served under his predecessor, Republican J.B Van Hollen.
  [AP, 8/26/2018]
• "Former Assistant AGs: Schimel is too political"
  Forty-five former assistant Wisconsin attorneys general have signed on to a letter criticizing current Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel as he makes a bid for another term in office. The letter, released by Schimel’s Democratic opponent Josh Kaul, contends the GOP incumbent has “blatantly politicized the office, dropped the ball on his role as the lead crime fighter in Wisconsin, and abdicated the AG’s traditional role as ‘the people’s lawyer’ representing Wisconsin citizens’ interests in criminal and civil matters alike.” … “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” said Dan Stier, who served as an assistant attorney general from 1979-89. “We’ve all been around a long, long time. We’ve seen lots of attorney generals come and go, and no one has ever been motivated to do anything like this until now.”
  [WPR, 8/27/2018]
• "Partisan scrap"
  On Aug. 26, Kaul released a letter — signed by 45 former assistant Wisconsin attorneys general who worked under both Democratic and Republican AGs — opposing Schimel’s bid for re-election. They complained about Schimel’s “ideology first” approach to his work. “The Wisconsin Attorney General’s Office is a mess,” the letter reads. “The current attorney general, Brad Schimel, has blatantly politicized the office, dropped the ball on his role as the lead crime fighter in Wisconsin, and abdicated the AG’s traditional role as ‘the people’s lawyer’ representing Wisconsin citizens’ interests in criminal and civil matters alike.”
  [Isthmus.com, 9/6/2018]
• "Murphy’s Law: The incompetence of Brad Schimel"
  At its most basic, Brad Schimel’s job as the state’s top prosecutor is simple: make your decisions strictly based on the evidence. And at a time when the state is so politically polarized, we’ve never been more in need of such straight-laced integrity. But the Attorney General instead seems to veer back and forth depending on which way the political winds blow, and that was never more clear than in his handling of ideological hit man James O’Keefe and his claim to have proven voter fraud occurred in Wisconsin. All Schimel had to do was review the evidence and decide: Either a crime was committed or it wasn’t. Instead Schimel has repeatedly flip-flopped and contradicted himself, drawing flak from all sides, and leaving his Department of Justice looking craven and incompetent.
  [Urban Milwaukee, 5/2/2017]
• "Spencer Black: The troubling record of Brad Schimel"
  Schimel’s tenure as AG has been a disaster because he has consistently put partisanship and self-promotion before the public interest. Chief among the AG’s duties is criminal law enforcement, but Schimel’s mismanagement of evidence has left the public in danger. … Brad Schimel has also failed consumers. … His failure to protect consumers is matched by his failure to protect the environment. … Schimel’s poor ethical record mirrors his poor performance otherwise.
  [Urban Milwaukee, 6/15/2018]