"It's the third rail of Republican politics in Wisconsin right now. Do not praise anything that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has done, especially his response to the coronavirus pandemic. But there was Ryan Owens, a Republican candidate for attorney general, doing just that last year in a podcast produced by the University of Wisconsin-Madison political science department. 'We have to keep our eye on this,' Owens told the '1050 Bascom' podcast on April 6, 2020. 'The governor, to his credit, was ahead of the game when it came to the 'safer at home' order,' Owens said of the Evers administration's March 2020 measure closing schools and nonessential businesses due to COVID-19. 'We can quibble around the edges about the treatment of religion and things like that with it, but he was well ahead of a lot of states when he issued that order, to his credit.' But Owens, a political science professor at UW-Madison, didn't stop there."

"'I'm glad I'm not the one who's having to make these decisions right now because no one is happy about them,' Owens said. The statements are particularly surprising because Owens has sharply criticized his Republican opponent, Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, for filing 10 criminal complaints last year for violations of Evers' safer-at-home order. All the complaints were later dropped. In response, Toney accused his GOP foe of being a hypocrite. Toney and Owens are running for the right to face off against Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul in November 2022. 'Ryan Owens applauded Tony Evers for the safer-at-home order, which shut down our economy and schools. And he slammed Republicans in the process,' Toney said. 'Clearly, he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth, which is what Madison politicians do" – Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.