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.
Democratic candidate Rebecca Cooke votes in Wisconsin's 3rd CD race | Photo by Frank Zufall
Democratic 3rd Congressional District candidate Rebecca Cooke held a short press conference at Spirit Lutheran Church in Eau Claire Tuesday morning after she cast her ballot.
The parking lot of the church was packed and Cooke was enthusiastic about turnout. “I think we’re going to see going to see some record turnout numbers here,” she said.
Several of young voters at the church said they had voted for Cooke. She was asked if the enthusiasm among younger voters was shared by older voters around the 3rd Congressional District.
“We’ve done a lot of work really … getting around all 19 counties throughout the congressional district, knocking on doors, communities the size of 300 people,” Cooke said. “So we’ve been doing the work outside of urban areas to really motivate people, show them that we’re willing to show up. There’s no community too small or too red that we’re not working to to get out the voting.”
Asked about critical issues in her 3rd CD race against incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, Cooke said: “I think the things that we focused on all the way along is increasing access to health care and making it more affordable, stopping wasteful spending, taking on the corporations that priced out consumers at the gas pump and at the grocery store and restoring reproductive freedoms — that’s something that I’m hearing about from people across the 3rd Congressional District.”
“The polling place was popping,” Cooke added. “I think people are energized to get out, to exercise their right to vote, but it’s still early, and so we’re going to be doing a lot of work throughout the day, really working to mobilize voters. We’re calling into the electorate, encouraging people to get out there if they don’t have a ride to the polls, helping them figure that out, and working to just, you know, pull out any barriers that might be keeping people from getting out to vote today.”
After voting in Eau Claire, Cooke said she was driving over to Menomonie to encourage students to vote at UW-Stout.
“There’s six UW campuses and universities in this district, and we have teams throughout the 3rd CD working to energize students in particular to get out to vote,” she said, “so I’ll be at UW Stout, then I’m going to hop on the phones and talk to people that we identified as undecided voters and encourage them to get out to vote for me, because it’s really going to come down to a small part of the electorate that’s going to be able to flip this seat.”
She was asked what is the key to appealing to undecided voters.
“When I’m talking to people, I encourage them and remind them that I’m a working-class candidate, that I grew up working class, that we need more regular voices like me in Congress, people that aren’t so far left or so far right, but really working to get things done for working families throughout the 3rd CD,” she said. “And I think when I talk to people about that, they’re excited to have a moderate voice to represent them in Congress.”
Several of those who voted at the church said they didn’t like the negativity of the campaign, especially remarks by Van Orden, who has taken to calling his opponent Rebecca “Crook.”
“Look, I’ve run a campaign that’s really authentic to myself, and I think Derrick Van Orden has sought to undermine that,” Cooke said, “But I think at the end of the day, people in the 3rd Congressional District know who I am, that I’m somebody that’s going to work to secure our border and make sure that our law enforcement has the resources that they need to keep our community safe. And when I’ve been out talking on doors, and some of our communication that we’ve also been putting up, I think that’s been really clear about where I stand on those issues.”
Concerning Van Orden’s charge that she supports “defunding the police,” Cooke responded, “I support funding police fully.”
Regarding why the two candidates never had a debate, and Van Orden’s criticism that she was avoiding him, Cooke responded: “There were opportunities for debates, but neither race could agree on a date that worked for everyone or a format that worked for everyone.”
Control of the U.S. House of Representatives runs through a notoriously swingy region of western Wisconsin, where U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden faces a challenge from Rebecca Cooke.
Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District covers much of the Driftless Area in southwestern and western Wisconsin bordering Iowa and Minnesota. The district includes small towns and rural areas, as well as the cities of Eau Claire, La Crosse and Stevens Point, each with University of Wisconsin System campuses.
As both candidates trade attacks, they are vying for support from a block of moderates whose votes are tied less to political party and more to decency and character.
“They are able to have their minds changed on a partisan level,” said Republican Brian Westrate, a lifelong resident of the district and treasurer of the state Republican Party. “They are not committed to a party. They are voting, generally speaking, for a person.”
This district is being targeted nationally as one of Democrats’ top flip opportunities, and Cooke’s campaign has been added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s competitive “Red to Blue” program after the DCCC abandoned the district in 2022.
Democrats see Van Orden as a prime target. In the months since her campaign began, Cooke has laid into her opponent’s character. Van Orden is a close ally of former President Donald Trump, who endorsed the freshman congressman in May. Even before he took office, his time in the public spotlight has been tainted by a number of controversies.
Van Orden attended Trump’s Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6, 2021, allegedly lost his temper over an LGBTQ+ book display in a Prairie du Chien library, drew criticism from his own party after cursing at a group of young Senate pages in the U.S. Capitol for taking photos, shouted “lies” over President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address and got into an altercation with a protester at the RNC this year.
“Derrick Van Orden is known as this very polarizing figure,” UW-La Crosse political science professor Anthony Chergosky said in an interview with PBS.
Van Orden’s campaign did not return numerous messages seeking an interview for this story.
Van Orden refers to his opponent as “Rebecca Crook” online, accusing her of lying about being a political outsider. As originally reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cooke previously worked as a finance director for four Democratic congressional races and has a Democratic political and fundraising consulting firm registered in her name.
Cooke’s campaign did not follow through with Wisconsin Watch’s numerous attempts to schedule an interview.
Where there’s an energized Democratic electorate for Vice President Kamala Harris, there’s a chance of lifting Democratic turnout and narrowing the margin by which down-ballot Democrats in Republican-leaning areas must outperform the top of the ticket, said Amy Walter, a political analyst and editor-in-chief of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
“In the 3rd District in particular, the hope is that Democrats are able to make this — much like a referendum on Trump — a referendum on the Republican incumbent Van Orden and the controversies surrounding him,” Walter said.
The district
This district has historically favored moderates like former Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, who held office for 26 years before retiring in 2022. That year, Van Orden beat Democratic state Sen. Brad Pfaff by four points. Before Kind, moderate Republican Steve Gunderson held the House seat for 16 years.
The district twice voted for former Democratic President Barack Obama, then voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 as rural areas have trended further right.
“It’s hard for anyone to get too comfortable here because things can really change,” Chergosky said of the district in an interview with Wisconsin Watch.
Because of that, Harris, Tim Walz, Trump and JD Vance have all campaigned in the western Wisconsin district this year.
“Whoever wins western Wisconsin is going to win by less than three percentage points,” Westrate said.
He described district voters as practical, common-sense, down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth working folks and said that’s exactly what they look for in their candidates, especially at the local level.
“I like folks who have a family, who have a mortgage, who have the things that define most of our lives,” Westrate told Wisconsin Watch. “We want to know that our candidates know what our life is like.”
In 2022, Van Orden and Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson won the district, but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers won it too.
“It shows you that candidates matter in this district,” Chergosky said.
Christian Phelps, a Democrat running for an Assembly seat in western Wisconsin’s 93rd District, said Democratic energy in the region is high, especially after Republican lawmakers and Evers agreed on new legislative maps in February, ending more than a decade of partisan gerrymandering in the state.
“No voter was more disenfranchised than the rural progressive, and there’s a lot of progressive energy in rural Wisconsin,” Phelps told Wisconsin Watch.
Last year, the Cook Political Report moved Van Orden’s congressional seat from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.”
Cooke’s success in the race will be closely tied to the turnout Harris gets in Wisconsin. The same can be said for Van Orden and the Trump ticket, Chergosky said. There appear to be far fewer ticket-splitting voters in the district who used to cast their ballot for a Republican presidential candidate and a Democratic representative like Kind, he said.
Pfaff beat Cooke by 8 points in the district’s Democratic primary in 2022, but he ultimately lost to Van Orden. Wisconsin Democrats pointed fingers at the national party, blaming the DCCC for not investing in Pfaff’s race or putting the campaign on the committee’s “Red to Blue” priority list. The Democrat-aligned House Majority PAC also cut its ad reservations for Pfaff after losing confidence in the race.
“This time, you can already see the investments from the DCCC, so western Wisconsin is not being overlooked like it was in 2022,” state Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler told Wisconsin Watch, calling Van Orden a “weak link.”
The DCCC recognizes its mistake and is much more involved this cycle, said William Garcia, Democratic chair of the 3rd Congressional District.
“They are here in a way that they were not years ago. I think it’s because they saw two years ago that they had a winnable seat and didn’t help,” Garcia told Wisconsin Watch. “Also, they see that Derrick Van Orden is in an exceptionally vulnerable position.”
The candidates
Van Orden is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL who first ran in the district against Kind in 2020, when he lost by less than 3 points. Before running for office, he appeared in the 2012 film “Act of Valor,” authored a book and consulted with Fortune 500 companies.
Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (Provided photo)
“Here in southwestern Wisconsin, honestly, we want to talk about policy,” Van Orden told a PBS Wisconsin reporter at a Trump rally in La Crosse in August. “We want to talk about issues. We really don’t want to talk about personality.”
But the policy issues on his campaign website haven’t been updated since 2021. The page still mentions “getting our children back to school” after “the last year of imposed (COVID-19) restrictions.”
Former Republican U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney — who endorsed Harris in Wisconsin this month — told a reporter she would not vote for Van Orden if she were a Wisconsin resident. Cheney has widely criticized Trump and other members of her party for the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
“It makes sense that someone who is new to office, their first attempt at reelection is a referendum on their behavior in office, and Van Orden’s behavior has been abysmal,” Garcia said.
Much like Cooke, Van Orden brands himself as a political outsider. But the status may not hold up this election cycle given he is now a member of Congress.
“Clearly both Cooke and Van Orden have the view that the political outsider brand will resonate with voters, and there’s certainly a logic to that,” Chergosky said. “Congress is not popular. The political outsider brand is a way for someone to distance themselves from the mess in D.C.”
This has been a historically unproductive two years for the House, Chergosky said, having passed a much fewer number of substantive bills than previous sessions.
“That means that any House incumbent is going to have a complicated task in front of them,” Chergosky said. “Standard playbook for a House incumbent is to tout their policymaking achievements, but what happens if there aren’t really any policymaking achievements?”
The House passed four bills Van Orden sponsored, mostly relating to the armed services. Van Orden so far has the most moderate voting record of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, according to Voteview.
Hannah Testin, vice chair of the 3rd Congressional District GOP, said Van Orden “is somebody that voters in the 3rd District can really relate to.”
“In this era, voters seem to be wanting change in Washington,” Testin told Wisconsin Watch. “I don’t think you see that change in Washington by electing a political consultant.”
Rebecca Cooke (Courtesy of Rebecca Cooke)
Cooke, who came out on top of a three-way Democratic primary this year, is a small business owner and nonprofit director from Eau Claire. She grew up on a dairy farm and was appointed by Evers to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. She advertises herself as a working-class political newcomer, writing on social media, “I work as a waitress while running for Congress to make ends meet.”
“Like most folks in Wisconsin, I’m somewhere in the middle,” she said of her politics in a recent ad.
But she criticized the bipartisan record of her main Democratic primary opponent, state Rep. Katrina Shankland, D-Stevens Point.
After media outlets and opponents called out her background in political fundraising, Cooke’s campaign downplayed the role as one of her “interests” that “paid the bills,” adding that while she has worked in politics, she is not a career politician.
“I think that folks appreciate authenticity,” Westrate said. “Around here, they can handle a truth they don’t like. What they don’t want is to be lied to.”
During her first run in 2022, Cooke shared that she worked in politics in her early 20s.
Nevertheless, the criticism has delivered a blow to her political outsider status, especially given that she attacked Shankland for being a “career politician.” Shankland lost to Cooke by nearly 9 points after an unusually negative primary that prompted other Democrats like U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan to speak out in defense of Shankland.
After Shankland released an ad pointing to Cooke’s lack of experience in public office, Cooke put out a request for help from political action committees. Shankland later called Cooke out for accepting dark money from moderate Democratic PACs attacking her in the race after Cooke’s campaign accused Shankland of voting with Republican lawmakers to block Medicaid expansion, which was misleading.
Days after the primary, Cooke, Shankland and third Democratic primary candidate Eric Wilson “came together to showcase Democratic unity to defeat Derrick Van Orden.”
Garcia said Cooke excels at talking to voters in the district one-on-one and spends time at dairy breakfasts “milling around with people.”
“She is just incredible at this one-on-one politicking, and it’s something that Derrick Van Orden is not good at,” Garcia said. “He is kind of afraid of the public. He doesn’t like to mill around with people unless he knows they’re all Republicans. He doesn’t like to talk to the press unless he knows they are on his side, or at the very least, are very limited in the questions they can ask him.”
Testin mentioned some of Van Orden’s most recent campaign activities in the district, which were events hosted by local Republican parties, and said he recently knocked on doors with her husband, state Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point.
Chergosky said both candidates are strong fundraisers, but outside spending is going to significantly impact the race.
Van Orden has raised just over $6 million to Cooke’s $4.5 million, according to September campaign finance reports compiled by OpenSecrets. Cooke’s campaign pulled in more than $2.75 million in the third quarter alone.
A debate has not yet been scheduled and likely won’t be before Nov. 5. Cooke declined attempts to schedule a primary debate this summer, citing scheduling conflicts. Van Orden declined to debate Pfaff in 2022, accusing the media of being biased.
The Farm Bill
Van Orden and his supporters most often tout his appointment to the House Committee on Agriculture, becoming the first member of Wisconsin’s delegation in almost a decade to be on the committee, and the first from the rural 3rd District to be on it since 2002.
“I think when you have somebody who fights tooth and nail to get on a very important committee to his district, that speaks well for the effort of the individual,” Westrate said.
“I don’t serve on the agriculture committee. I will actually rely on Derrick for a lot of advice on some of these more detailed and complex issues in terms of agriculture,” Sen. Johnson told Wisconsin Watch. “That’s a real credit to him.”
The committee’s main piece of legislation is the bipartisan 2024 Farm Bill, which Van Orden said he and other lawmakers have spent “hundreds if not thousands of hours” working on. He added that it is “a remarkable piece of legislation that’s going to help everybody, from our smallest farmers all the way to the larger farms.”
But the bill that will establish food and farm policy for the next five years still hasn’t been signed into law and is more than a year behind schedule as lawmakers wrestle over how to pay for it.
In May, Van Orden voted to advance the bill with billions in potential cuts to food assistance programs like SNAP, which assists over 700,000 Wisconsin residents as of March 2024, including about 78,000 people in the 3rd District.
Still, Van Orden has touted provisions of the bill he says will help the 3rd District, including better compensating dairy farmers for their milk and providing whole milk products for children in school.
Cooke’s campaign site says she would restructure the Farm Bill to focus more on agriculture and the farming community “versus the bulky package it has become.”
Pharmaceutical, manufacturing and big agriculture interest groups spent over $400 million lobbying on the Farm Bill.
Cooke wrote on social media: “We need a Farm Bill that delivers for family farms in communities across Wisconsin, not one built around subsidizing agricultural conglomerates and prioritizing corporate profits.”
Last year, Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden criticized Van Orden for “choosing big corporations” over small dairy farms in the state.
“Despite raising these concerns with Van Orden’s office, he hasn’t included amendments to help small farms in the Farm Bill and hasn’t stood up to the big corporations who are using the current policies to put family farms out of business,” Von Ruden wrote in an op-ed.
Von Ruden told Wisconsin Watch he was happy to see that Van Orden got the position on the committee, but his “lack of agricultural knowledge” does nothing to help Wisconsin’s industry.
Abortion
Abortion is likely a top issue for voters in the district, according to Chergosky. While leaning Republican, the district still voted for Evers in 2022 after he ran a successful campaign against Republican Tim Michels focused largely on reproductive freedom. Liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz also won the district in her successful 2022 campaign centered on state abortion rights.
“Reproductive rights is what is bringing people out and getting people motivated to knock on doors and volunteer and canvas,” Garcia said of voters in western Wisconsin.
Chergosky said it’s obvious Cooke sees opportunity on the issue of abortion in this race, calling Van Orden an extremist and highlighting concerns over a national abortion ban in campaign ads.
“I really have a very, very difficult time trying to justify abortion under any circumstance,” Van Orden said in a radio interview with WSAU Feedback in 2020, adding that seeking an abortion after instances of rape or incest is only “compounding the evil.”
But this year he wrote on social media: “I made my position crystal clear last April. This is a state issue. Period.”
Cooke supports codifying abortion rights into law. She says she will fight to keep western Wisconsin’s two Planned Parenthoods open and federally funded and advocate against the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding, including Medicare and Medicaid, from being used for abortions. Her site also says she will support federal programs that improve access to family planning services.
“I know Democrats want to turn this into a referendum on abortion, but what the Dobbs decision has done is turn that decision back over to the states,” Johnson said, referring to the court decision that overruled Roe vs. Wade. “An individual member of Congress’ view on this is basically irrelevant to the debate.”
Immigration
Van Orden has consistently attacked Cooke on immigration, criticizing her for not speaking out about a case he has widely circulated, in which Prairie du Chien police reported that a man tied to a Venezuelan criminal organization sexually assaulted a woman and attacked her daughter in September.
But Van Orden has made false claims that police in Madison arrested the suspect “for a series of violent crimes” but released him because it is a “sanctuary city.” The city police department and Dane County Sheriff’s Office confirmed he was never in their custody.
Cooke said in an ad that if elected, she will “stand up to Democrats to fight for a secure border,” but includes no specific policy priorities on her campaign site.
Van Orden, while a staunch opponent of southern border policy under President Joe Biden’s administration, also has not proposed or identified policy solutions.
More than 10,000 undocumented immigrant workers perform an estimated 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms, according to an April 2023 survey by the School for Workers at UW-Madison.
Rural health care
Access to rural health care is another important issue to the district as the region had two hospital and 19 clinic closures earlier this year, leaving thousands without local options for care.
Health care systems have pointed to low staffing, insufficient Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, higher health care costs and a declining number of patients on private health insurance.
Soon after the closures, Van Orden called for state and federal resources, introducing legislation to extend telehealth services in rural health clinics and other health centers. This year, he also helped secure $600,000 in federal funds for Gundersen Health System in La Crosse for emergency equipment to improve access to ambulance services in surrounding rural areas.
“Enforcing price transparency on hospitals and doctors offices will allow everyone, with or without insurance, to shop around and find services in their budget,” Van Orden wrote in a recent op-ed.
Cooke’s campaign site lists health care as her top priority and says she would take steps to expand Medicare to cover vision, dental and hearing, annually lower the age that seniors can start receiving Medicare benefits, address antitrust issues in the health care system, provide more tax credits to lower premiums, and ensure affordable access to prescription drugs with prices negotiated through Medicare.
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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.”
Democratic candidate for the 3rd Congressional District Rebecca Cooke speaks after receiving the endorsement of National Security Leaders of America. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
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.”
The Dome of the U.S. Capitol Building is visible as protective fencing is erected around construction for the 2025 inauguration platform on the West Front on Capitol Hill on Sept. 17, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The country’s next president will need a friendly Congress to make their policy dreams a reality, but control of the two chambers remains deeply uncertain with just weeks until Election Day — and whether the outcome will be a party trifecta in the nation’s capital.
Recent projections tilt in favor of Republicans taking the U.S. Senate, an already closely divided chamber that is sure to be near evenly split again next Congress.
And though Vice President Kamala Harris injected a jolt of energy into the Democratic Party, prognosticators still say the prizewinner of the House is anybody’s guess.
“The House is highly close and competitive, and really could go either way. And I say the same thing about the presidential race,” Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told States Newsroom on Thursday.
A ‘district-by-district slug fest’
Control of the 435-seat House remains a toss-up, with competitive races in both the seven swing states and in states that will almost certainly have no bearing on who wins the top of the ticket.
Sabato’s, an election prognosticator, currently ranks nine Republican seats of the roughly 30 competitive races as “toss-up” seats for the party — meaning the GOP incumbents are locked in competitive races.
The GOP has held a slim majority this Congress, and Democrats only need to net four seats to gain control.
“It really is right on the razor’s edge,” Kondik said. “It’s pretty crazy that, you know, we’ve had two straight elections with just 222-seat majorities. And it’s pretty rare historically for there to be, you know, majorities that small twice in a row — unprecedented.
“Usually you’d have one side or the other breaking out to a bigger advantage, and I think both sides are viewing this, really, as a district-by-district slug fest.”
Sabato’s adjusted its ratings on five races Thursday, including moving Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska to the “toss-up” category from a safer “leans Democratic.” Kondik also nudged the race for Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York to “leans Republican” from “toss up.”
“The big ones are probably Peltola, and then Mike Lawler, who holds one of the bluest seats held by a Republican, but I moved him to ‘leans R.’ It seems pretty clear to me that he’s in a decent position,” Kondik said.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s fundraising arm for House races, announced in June nearly $1.2 million in ad buys in Alaska. The organization launched a new ad in the state this month that accuses Peltola of not supporting veterans.
It’s always about Pennsylvania
In addition to Peltola, Kondik ranks nine other Democratic incumbents — of the nearly 40 competitive races — as toss-ups.
Among the toss-ups is the seat currently held by Rep. Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the presidential race. Cartwright’s Republican challenger, Rob Bresnahan, runs an electrical contracting company in the northeastern Pennsylvania district that he took over from his grandfather.
Democrats are investing in the seat: Cartwright is running a new ad featuring union workers praising him, and just last week Harris hosted a rally in the district, which includes Scranton.
But the NRCC thinks they have a pretty good chance of flipping his seat.
Breshnahan’s company is “a union shop,” said NRCC head Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina. “So he can talk union talk. He’s a great candidate for us.”
“Matt Cartwright is in trouble,” Hudson said on the conservative “Ruthless Podcast” on Sept. 12.
“I think the way we’ve structured it, the type of candidates we recruited across the country, from Maine to Alaska, from Minnesota to Texas, regardless of top of the ticket, we’re going to pick up seats,” Hudson said.
Van Orden targeted in Wisconsin
But Sabato’s also nudged three seats toward the Democrats’ favor on Thursday.
Kondik moved Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin from the safety of “likely Republican” to the weaker “leans Republican” category.
Rep. Suzan DelBene, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, sees an “important opportunity” in Van Orden’s district. The GOP congressman, who represents central and western Wisconsin, became known for his profanity-laced outburst at young Senate pages for taking photos of the Capitol rotunda.
The Democrats are running challenger Rebecca Cooke, a small business owner, in the hopes of unseating him.
“We have an incredible candidate in Rebecca Cooke (against) one of the most extreme, which is saying a lot, Republicans in the House,” DelBene told reporters on a call Monday.
“We have put Rebecca Cooke on our Red-to-Blue list and are strongly supporting her campaign. She’s doing a great job, and this absolutely is a priority for us,” DelBene said, referring to the DCCC’s list of 30 candidates that receive extra fundraising support.
DelBene said she’s confident in the Democrats’ chances to flip the House, citing healthy coffers and revived interest.
“We have seen huge enthusiasm all across the country. We have seen people, more and more people turning out to volunteer, to knock on doors, to make phone calls,” she said.
Democrats’ cash ‘flooding,’ NRCC chief says
Erin Covey, a House analyst with The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, wrote on Sept. 5 that Democrats have a brighter outlook after Harris assumed the top of the ticket, though November remains a close call.
“Now, polling conducted by both parties largely shows Harris matching, or coming a few points short of, Biden’s 2020 margins across competitive House districts,” Covey wrote.
The NRCC has taken note. During his interview on the “Ruthless Podcast,” Hudson compared Harris becoming the Democrats’ new choice for president as a “bloodless coup,” and said the enthusiasm she’s sparked is a cause for concern for Republicans. Democratic delegates nominated Harris, in accordance with party rules, to run for the Oval Office after Biden dropped out in late July.
“A lot of people, even Democrats, you know, just weren’t comfortable voting for Joe Biden. With Kamala on the ticket, we saw a surge in Democrats coming home and having the enthusiasm,” Hudson said.
Hudson said he also worries about Democrats’ fundraising numbers.
“The one thing that keeps you awake at night is the Democrat money. It’s flooding,” Hudson said. “The second quarter this year I was able to raise the most money we’ve ever raised as a committee, and the Democrats raised $7 million more. I mean, it’s just, they just keep coming. It’s like the Terminator.”
“But we don’t have to match them dollar for dollar,” Hudson said. “We’ve just got to make sure we’ve got the resources we need. And so we’ve just got to keep our pace.”
The DCCC announced Friday it raised $22.3 million in August, bringing its total for this election cycle to $250.6 million.
Senate map tilts toward GOP
Republicans are inching closer and closer to flipping the Senate red during this year’s elections, thanks to a map that favors GOP incumbents and puts Democrats on the defensive in several states.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is widely expected to win his bid for the upper chamber, bringing Republicans up to 50 seats, as long as they hang on in Florida, Nebraska and Texas.
But Democrats will need to secure wins in several challenging states, including Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and break the 50-50 tie through a Democratic presidency — if they want to remain the majority party.
That many Democratic wins seems increasingly unlikely, though not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
Montana, where Sen. Jon Tester is looking to secure reelection against GOP challenger Tim Sheehy, has been moved from a “toss-up” state to leaning toward Republicans by three respected analysis organizations in the last few weeks.
The Cook Political Report wrote in its ratings change earlier this month that several “public polls have shown Sheehy opening up a small, but consistent lead.”
“Democrats push back that their polling still shows Tester within the margin of error of the race, and that those are exactly the type of close races he’s won before,” their assessment said. “Tester, however, has never run on a presidential ballot in a polarized environment of this kind before — and even with his stumbles, Sheehy is still the strongest, best financed candidate he’s ever faced.”
Republicans winning Montana’s Senate seat could give them a firm, though narrow, 51-seat Senate majority.
Florida, Texas, Nebraska
That, however, would require the Republican incumbents in states like Florida and Texas — where it’s not clear if evolving trends against Republicans will continue — to secure their reelection wins.
The Cook Political Report says it’s “worth keeping an eye on a unique situation developing in Nebraska, where independent candidate Dan Osborn is challenging Republican Sen. Deb Fischer.”
CPR also noted in its analysis that Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities, which could rebalance the scales a bit, are Florida and Texas.
“Today, the Lone Star State looks like the better option because of the strengths and fundraising of Democrats’ challenger there, Rep. Colin Allred,” CPR wrote.
If Democrats do hold onto 50 seats, through whatever combination of wins and losses shakes out on election night, majority control would depend on whichever candidate wins the presidential contest.
Given the close nature of several Senate races, it is entirely possible control of that chamber isn’t known until after recounts take place in the swing states.
Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Gary Peters, D-Mich., said during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this week that he’s known all along Democratic candidates will be in “very right races.”
“In a nutshell, I’m optimistic,” Peters said. “I believe we’re going to hold the majority. I feel good about where we are. We’re basically where I thought we would be after Labor Day in really tight races. None of this is a surprise to us. Now we just have to run our playbook, be focused, be disciplined.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, led this cycle by Montana Sen. Steve Daines, is confident the GOP will pick up the Senate majority following November’s elections.
The group highlighted a Washington Post poll this week showing a tie between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and GOP candidate Dave McCormick in the Pennsylvania Senate race.
NRSC Spokesman Philip Letsou sent out a written statement after the poll’s release that Casey is in the “race for his life…because Pennsylvania voters know Casey’s lockstep support for Kamala Harris and her inflationary, anti-fracking agenda will devastate their economy. Pennsylvanians have had enough of liberal, career politicians like Casey and Harris.”
No change in filibuster in sight
The GOP acquisition of a handful of seats would still require the next Republican leader to constantly broker deals with Democrats, since the chamber is widely expected to retain the legislative filibuster.
That rule requires at least 60 senators vote to advance legislation toward final passage and is the main reason the chamber rarely takes up partisan bills.
A Republican sweep of the House, Senate and White House for unified government would give them the chance to pass certain types of legislation through the fast-track budget reconciliation process they used to approve the 2017 tax law.
How wide their majorities are in each chamber will determine how much they can do within such a bill, given Republicans will still have centrist members, like Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Maine’s Susan Collins, balancing the party against more far-right policy goals.
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