Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) speaks to reporters on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building following a vote on July 25, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images)

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden  declared victory early Wednesday in the race for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District seat, saying he defeated Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke in his quest for a second term. 

With 99% of the ballots in the district counted, Van Orden led with 51.4% of the vote to 48.6% for Cooke. The Associated Press called the race at 11:10 a.m. Wednesday.

“I’m truly thankful and humbled the people of Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District decided to send me back to Congress so I can continue my bipartisan work for western Wisconsin,” Van Orden said in a statement released early Wednesday.

Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, campaigned on the two main Republican focuses of the election, immigration and inflation, while also touting his service on the House agriculture committee in the largely rural district that covers much of western Wisconsin. At a campaign stop in October, he asked if voters of the district are better off than they were four years ago when President Joe Biden was elected while saying he was focused on making policy “where the rubber meets the road” for the district’s farmers and residents.

In his victory statement, Van Orden said he would “continue our work to ensure we are putting an end to the southern border crisis so the scourge of the fentanyl crisis no longer affects our communities or criminals aren’t allowed to wreak havoc on our families.”

While Cooke carried the district’s three urban counties, La Crosse, Eau Claire and Portage, Van Orden racked up sufficient majorities in the remaining counties to gain an advantage of about 10,000 votes over Cooke.

The purple district has now re-elected its incumbent representative in every election since Democrat Ron Kind took office in 1996. Van Orden’s win comes despite heavy Democratic spending in the race after local Democrats blamed a lack of national support on Van Orden’s defeat of state Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) in 2022. Democrats have now lost to Van Orden in back-to-back elections despite frequently highlighting perceived character flaws of Van Orden due to a number of public and headline-making outbursts. 

Both candidates ran campaigns that sought to claim the title of “political outsider.” While Cooke ran a campaign that attempted to paint herself as a moderate, Van Orden won re-election despite his attendance at the rally that led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

This report has been updated with AP’s final call of the race.

Former gas station owner Tony Wied, who is running for Congress, with former President Donald Trump. (Screenshot via Tony Wied for Congress Facebook)

Republican businessman Tony Wied has defeated Democrat OB-GYN Kristin Lyerly in the race for Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District. 

The seat was open this year after U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher, who was first elected in 2016, resigned from Congress in April. Wied also won the special election, which happened concurrently with the general election to fill out the rest of the two-year term left open by Gallagher’s departure.

Wied had 60% of the vote to 39% for Lyerly, with 63% of the ballots counted, according to the Associated Press, which called the race at 10:54 p.m.

Less than an hour before AP called the race, Wied claimed victory in a triumphant speech at the Legacy Hotel in Green Bay, Wisconsin, not far from Lambeau Field.

“Tonight, the voters of District 8 sent a very clear message,” he told a crowd of supporters. “They’re ready to bring common sense back to Washington.”

He thanked his voters “for trusting me with this office” and promised to work for each one of them.

“And I spent my life raising my family and running our businesses right here in the district,” Wied said. “My wife and I are private people. But I could no longer stand by and watch the continuing dysfunction.”

Wied’s race against Lyerly tested the power of reproductive rights against an endorsement from former President Donald Trump, and Tuesday night Wied thanked the Republican presidential candidate, calling Trump’s support for Wied’s campaign “second to none.”

Before the race was called, Lyerly said at a Brown County election watch party that regardless of the election outcome, the campaign had built a foundation with volunteers “who have pitched in to help us that we can build on for years to come.”

Lyerly said she believed her campaign was “changing the converasation” around reproductive rights, and shared a story about a restaurant server who had confided in her and “was grateful for the work that I was doing.”

This will be Wied’s first time holding public office. The Republican-leaning northeast district covers the city of Green Bay and the rest of surrounding Brown County as well as Marinette, Oconto, Menonominee, Shawano, Waupaca, Outagamie, Calumet counties and part of Winnebago County. 

Wied, who previously owned Dino Stop, a Green Bay-based gas and convenience store chain, won a three-way primary with Trump’s endorsement and leaned heavily on the Trump during his campaign.  

While Lyerly sought to center reproductive health issues, Wied focused on economic issues, including taxes and immigration. He highlighted his support for lowering taxes and said he wants to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts which Democrats have complained unfairly benefited the rich. He has also said that government spending has led to inflation and he wants to work to decrease it.

Wied also highlighted his support for finishing Trump’s border wall and reimplementing the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires migrants seeking asylum to remain in Mexico until their U.S. immigration court date. 

This report has been updated.

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden tours Gilbertson's Dairy in Dunn County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

In the race for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, both Republican incumbent Rep. Derrick Van Orden and his Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke pulled up to campaign events last week in pickup trucks as they’ve each sought to claim status as true “political outsiders” who can bring a different perspective to Washington D.C. 

Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, had never held an elected office before he ran for the seat and lost in 2020 to former Democratic Rep. Ron Kind, who had held the position for 26 years. After Kind retired in 2022, Van Orden ran again and won, defeatingstate Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska). Running for re-election for the first time, Van Orden tells voters he’s focused on making policies “where the rubber meets the road.” 

Cooke, a nonprofit leader, business owner and waitress, points to her upbringing on an Eau Claire County dairy farm and has criticized both parties, depicting herself as a moderate in the purple district — which has been won twice by former President Donald Trump.

Both candidates say they represent the working class voters of western Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. Each has  accused the other of being a political insider. 

Van Orden and Republicans have highlighted Cooke’s previous work as a Democratic political fundraiser while Cooke, at an event last week, said that since being elected, Van Orden has “gone Washington.” 

Since Van Orden won in 2022, Wisconsin Democrats have been haunted by the national party’s abandonment of Pfaff’s campaign. Late in the cycle, the national party and its allied groups pulled spending in the district and moved it elsewhere. Van Orden won the race by 3.8 percentage points. 

This year, the outside money has continued to flow towards Cooke’s campaign. House Majority PAC, the Democrats’ largest outside funder of  congressional campaigns, has more than $4 million in advertising reserved in the district while both candidates have individually raised more than $4 million, keeping Cooke’s campaign closer to her opponent’s in available cash than Pfaff had two years ago. 

William Garcia, chair of the 3rd District and La Crosse County Democratic Parties says that national Democrats “learned their lesson” after Pfaff’s loss. 

“Look what you did, you took money out of the 3rd and gave it to places that lost by more,” Garcia said, describing conversations he had with national Democrats after 2022. 

Garcia says with Cooke on the ticket and the renewed national support, he’s confident in Cooke’s ability to return the seat to Democrats. 

“We’re doing great,” he says. “Rebecca Cooke is good at connecting with people, talking with the press and engaging in the issues. We’re going to keep moving that needle.” 

But with just a few weeks left in the campaign, election forecasters believe that needle still points toward Van Orden. Public polling on the race has been limited, but most have shown Van Orden with a lead. Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, designates the district as leaning Republican. 

Throughout the campaign, Democrats have criticized Van Orden for contributing to Congress’ inability to pass an updated farm bill. Since taking office, Van Orden has celebrated his appointment to the House agriculture committee, but despite a farm bill passing out of the committee with his vote, it has not passed the full House. 

The 3rd District is home to much of the state’s cranberry industry and a large number of dairy farms. The area, like other parts of Wisconsin and around the country, has seen a growth in the number of large factory farms. But factory farms haven’t become as dominant as in eastern Wisconsin, with some small and mid-size farms holding on. 

“For this congressional district it’s the biggest disappointment,” Garcia says. “He made a big deal of being on the agriculture committee but one of the great failures of this Congress is the inability to pass a farm bill.” 

Van Orden blames the Democratic controlled Senate for the impasse, saying the House is waiting on them to introduce their version of the bill. 

Last Thursday, Van Orden and a small group of supporters toured the 550-cow Gilbertson’s Dairy Farm in Dunn County as he received the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau.

At the event, Van Orden said “I’m not gambling with your farm,” when discussing the importance of getting a farm bill passed. He talked about making sure the policies set at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are kept up to date with modern farming practices. 

“Government has to operate at the speed of farming,” he said. “Farming should not be beholden to government policies that are decades behind.”

Throughout the race, he’s discussed goals to reduce government regulations on farms and let farmers do their work. 

“We have to understand that farmers are shepherds of the land, they’re the greatest conservationists around,” he said. “Because if you destroy the land, you can’t farm and you’re out of business. So what I want to do is make sure that USDA is keeping up with what farmers need. We absolutely want to maintain this beautiful land, but when you have onerous amounts of regulations, the farmers can’t afford to farm anymore, which means we can’t afford to feed everyone. So the federal government needs to get out of the way of their private businesses, including the agricultural industry, and let them do their job.” 

At an event nearly 100 miles south in La Crosse, Cooke — speaking to a small group of supporters — mocked property Van Orden owns as a “hobby farm” and later told reporters that the version of the farm bill he voted for in committee “doesn’t support small and mid-sized farmers.” 

During the campaign, Van Orden has focused heavily on immigration policy, complaining about unauthorized crossings of migrants at the country’s southern border and highlighting crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in the district. Democratic voters at the Cooke event worried about the effect that Republican immigration proposals, saying Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants could devastate a number of local industries, including agriculture. 

On the road between the two events, the city of Arcadia is home to Ashley Furniture, the largest furniture manufacturer in the world, which is heavily dependent on Hispanic immigrant workers. More than 63% of the city’s population is Hispanic, according to census data, and 44% of the community speaks Spanish. In western Wisconsin, an estimated 70% of the workforce on local dairy farms is made up of immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Central America.

At her La Crosse event, Cooke appeared at the local Korean War Memorial where she received the endorsement of National Security Leaders of America, a group of retired members of the military and former staff at the Departments of Defense, State and Veterans Affairs. 

After losing his first campaign to Kind in 2020, Van Orden attended the rally in Washington D.C. that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The veterans’ group highlighted Jan. 6 saying Van Orden’s presence near the Capitol that day should disqualify him from office. Cooke said she was “humbled” by the endorsement, which also gave her campaign an avenue to contrast Van Orden’s military record without criticizing his service. 

“[Van Orden] has done an incredible amount since launching his first campaign for this seat,” she said. “Unfortunately, none of it has been to benefit his constituents and our community. It has been in service of his own ego and his own political advancement.” 

Pfaff’s campaign in 2022 focused heavily on attacking Van Orden for perceived  character flaws. In addition to his  attendance at the Trump rally on Jan. 6, Pfaff pointed to an incident in which Van Orden tried to bring a loaded gun onto an airplane and a time he yelled at a teenage library employee in Prairie du Chien over a LGBTQ book display for Pride month. After he was elected, Van Orden made headlines for yelling at teenage Senate pages for taking pictures in the Capitol rotunda.

While Cooke mentioned some of those outbursts, she kept the focus on policy. 

“We have so much to do here in this district when it comes to service,” she said. “Our communities still need access to better health care, health care that they can afford, and so many of our families really are struggling to make ends meet. Whether that’s filling up at the gas tank or getting to the grocery store and being able to pay for their rent all in the same month, and to have a little bit of money left over.”

“We also know that we deserve leaders that build up our democracy,” she continued. “As these folks mentioned, I’m running against someone who is an election denier. He participated in the Stop the Steal rally. He is shaking the very pillars of our democracy.” 

But Van Orden, asked about his attendance at the Trump rally on Jan. 6, said he condemned the attack on the Capitol and criticized a reporter for asking about it, saying, “next time do your homework before you ask me that question.” 

Despite all the negative headlines that have surrounded Van Orden before and since he took office, he summarized the choice in his re-election race as a simple calculation: Are voters better off now than when President Joe Biden won office four years ago? Although Republicans have held a majority in the House since 2022.  

“Are you better off now than you were three and a half years ago or four years ago? The answer is no,” he said. “We’re closer to World War III than we have been in my lifetime because of weak strategic leadership by the Biden administration. So everybody just ask yourself, are you better off now than you were four years ago? And if they’re honest, they’re going to say no. That means you need a change in leadership.”