Mitchell Berman and Rebecca Cooke, the two Democrats running to unseat incumbent Republican Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden in two of the most closely watched congressional races in the country, outraised their opponents in the most recent filing period. 

Both Democrats also received more individual and small dollar donations than Steil and Van Orden, who are more reliant on wealthy donors and the aid of GOP-aligned PACs. The latest campaign finance reports show that all four candidates will be funded enough for the final push to Election Day in both hotly contested races. 

In the 1st Congressional District, Berman is running closer than expected to Steil. He narrowly outraised Steil between July 23 and Sept. 30. 

Still, Steil spent four times as much money during the period and retains a massive cash-on-hand advantage.

Berman raised $897,321, with almost all of that coming from individual donations. He spent $710,725 during the reporting period and finished September with $338,069 in the bank. In the middle of the reporting period, Berman was added to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of target races — bringing national infrastructure and support to the campaign. 

Steil raised $783,582 during the period, including $215,637 from individuals, $268,500 from PACs and other committees, and $204,908 in transfers. He spent more than $2.9 million and had $4.2 million in the bank at the end of September. 

Steil’s fundraising has recently drawn scrutiny, with the Milwaukee Courier reporting on donations he’s received from industry groups shortly before taking votes related to their business interests. 

“Southeast Wisconsin is tired of politicians like Bryan Steil who get rich in office while working families pay more for everything,” Berman said in a statement about the finance reports. “Steil stood with Trump on tariffs, health care cuts, and a war that’s driving up prices, while handing billions in tax breaks to data center developers and his billionaire donors who are funding his campaign. No amount of dark money can cover up that record. I’m proud to have a campaign powered by the people of Southeast Wisconsin – not a dime of corporate PAC money – and in Congress, they’re the only ones I’ll answer to.”

In the 3rd Congressional District, Cooke has long been outraising Van Orden, but after a closer than expected Democratic primary election, her cash-on-hand advantage was depleted. For the cycle, she’s raised $12 million compared to Van Orden’s $9.3 million — a feat for a candidate who doesn’t have the fundraising advantage of incumbency. 

During the most recent reporting period, Cooke more than doubled Van Orden’s fundraising, bringing in $3.4 million, with $883,128 of that money coming from donations of less than $200. She spent about $4.3 million and ended September with $901,408 in the bank. 

Van Orden raised $1.2 million during the period, with $312,312 coming from donations of less than $200. He spent $3.8 million during the period and finished September with $2.1 million in cash and reported debts of $271,170.

U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil’s investments helped make him millionaire, nearly doubling his net worth from $812,000 to nearly $1.9 million since he went to Congress, Wisconsin Watch reports. According to the financial data tracking platform Unusual Whales, Steil’s stock portfolio was the fourth most profitable among members of Congress in 2025, outperforming the S&P 500 by 62.5%. Yet Steil is running as a watchdog on congressional stock trading. 

“You deserve a Congress you can trust, that’s working for you. … I’m leading the charge to ban members of Congress from trading stocks,” Steil says in a campaign ad now running in Wisconsin’s suddenly competitive 1st Congressional District.

The ad refers to Steil’s Stop Insider Trading Act, which failed in the Senate this week. Steil blamed Democrats for blocking his attempt at “ethics reform” and vowed to keep fighting.  But Wisconsin’s Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin called the bill a “sham,” pointing out that there are much stronger bills that, unlike Steil’s, require members to divest their stock holdings.

Steil’s bill allows members of Congress to keep and sell stocks. It places no restrictions on their purchases of cryptocurrency holdings, betting in prediction markets or trades in industry-specific mutual funds or private stock offerings from corporations. 

These giant loopholes drew the attention of Steil’s colleague U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, who grilled Steil on the shortcomings in his bill during a House Rules Committee hearing on July 20. 

“There are many bills that have been introduced … that would ensure that the sale and the purchase of stocks is banned, and this bill does not do that,” Neguse pointed out. He and Steil debated whether a disclosure rule in Steil’s bill is a sufficient safeguard (Neguse didn’t think so), and why the bill didn’t cover prediction markets. 

The Senate unanimously passed a ban on members and staff participating in prediction markets, just one week after a U.S. special forces soldier was charged with using classified information to bet on the capture of the Venezuelan president. Members of Congress have access to all kinds of sensitive information they could use for personal gain by placing bets on wars, economic crises or elections, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned. Why can’t the House pass the same ban, Neguse asked. Steil replied that he has been working on a separate bill concerning prediction markets, which are a “new and novel technology.” 

“It took the Senate a day!” Neguse shot back. “It’s a one-page resolution. It literally is a paragraph. It just says members of the Senate are banned from participating in prediction markets.” Neguse suggested that the House adopt the Senate’s language and pass the same resolution immediately. 

Instead, Steil has crafted a narrow bill that imposes fines on members and their families if they bet on specific government policy matters that come to their attention through their congressional work. Like his narrow stock-trading bill, which avoids making members give up lucrative investments, the Stop Lawmakers from Predicting Act takes a permissive view of members interested in playing in prediction markets unless there is a specific, demonstrable conflict of interest that a member’s colleagues on the House ethics panel deem worthy of a fine.

At best, that’s a different goal than the “Congress you can trust” Steil talks about in his campaign ad. Instead of protecting the public from corrupt public officials who seek to profit from their privileged perch, Steil is intent on not making things too uncomfortable for his fellow members sitting on cushy portfolios.

It says a lot that Steil’s prediction market bill and his Stop Insider Trading Act both have the full support of President Donald Trump. As Baldwin points out, Trump is exempt from Steil’s proposed restrictions on stock trading, even though Trump made 21,000 stock trades and added $2.2 billion to his personal wealth in just the first year of his second term.

This is the real hole in Steil’s claim to be an ethics watchdog in Congress. His compromised reform proposals don’t come close to making up for the heavy lifting he has been doing in office carrying water for Trump. He has been a chief enabler for a president who is setting new records for unethical behavior as he uses his office to enrich himself. Along with his weak efforts at “ethics reform,” Steil has been pushing new voting restrictions dear to Trump’s heart. His proposed national Voter ID Act is even more restrictive than Wisconsin’s toughest-in-the-nation voter ID law, barring the use of student IDs to vote and potentially disenfranchising millions of eligible voters who don’t meet the requirements. 

Steil does not present as a rage-filled MAGA warrior. Like his mentor, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, he has repeatedly won reelection by comfortable margins while projecting a friendly, thoughtful image in his home district, even as his work in Washington diverges from his constituents’ interests. But as crises pile up, it’s getting harder to put a pleasant gloss on loyalty to an administration that is rapaciously devouring the nation’s wealth while trying to disenfranchise its citizens. 

Wisconsin’s 1st CD has attracted national attention recently as the political landscape gets tougher for Republicans even in solidly red House districts. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added Steil’s reelection race to its Red to Blue list and an internal DCCC poll conducted Sept. 21-23 — with a margin of error of 4.4% — found the race is a dead heat between Steil and his challenger, former VA hospital nurse Mitchell Berman, with the two candidates tied 48-48 among likely voters, a plurality of whom identified as Republicans.

A new Berman campaign ad, paid for in part by the DCCC, which now sees Steil as a target, emphasizes Steil’s stock portfolio. In it, Berman declares, “Public service shouldn’t be about getting rich.” Steil couldn’t have said it better himself.

With less than 50 days before the midterm elections, national figures and groups of both parties have increased their attention on Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Bryan Steil is running against former VA hospital nurse Mitchell Berman. 

The focus on the 1st CD race comes as the national map of competitive congressional districts has expanded with Democrats increasingly challenging Republicans in areas where President Donald Trump won handily in 2024. A national Marquette Law School poll of likely voters released earlier this week found that Democrats are leading on a generic ballot by 13 points. 

Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., is spending heavily in a number of districts that Trump won by more than 5 points two years ago, The New Republic reported Thursday, signaling that Republicans are being forced to devote resources to defending previously safe seats. 

In Wisconsin, Trump’s PAC plans to spend $90,000 boosting Steil and just $21,000 boosting U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in the state’s 3rd Congressional District, the New York Times reported. The 3rd CD has previously been one of the most hotly contested seats in the country. 

On Tuesday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced that it was adding Berman to its “Red to Blue” program, signaling a coming influx of national financial and infrastructure support. 

“Wisconsinites in the First Congressional District are tired of Bryan Steil’s votes to make life more expensive for working people while also ensuring that he, his wealthy donors, and Donald Trump can enrich themselves,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson Rachel La Due said in a statement. “Mitchell Berman joining the DCCC’s ‘Red to Blue’ program shows what Wisconsinites have seen for years: Bryan Steil has failed to stand up for working families, work to lower costs, or make healthcare more accessible.”

Since Trump’s return to office, Steil has regularly been involved in high profile political efforts, including as one of the lead authors of the bill, championed by Trump, to implement strict national voter ID requirements. 

Steil was first elected in 2018 following the retirement of former House Speaker Paul Ryan. Republicans have won the district by large margins in every congressional election since 1998. 

In 2018, with the seat open for the first time in more than two decades, the DCCC supported Randy Bryce’s run against Steil. Steil still won that race by more than 12 points — in a year in which Democrats won back control of the House nationally. The 1st CD has not been represented by a Democrat since Peter Barca in 1995. 

Zach Bannon, a spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said in a statement that Berman’s campaign is “out of touch” with voters in the district. 

“Liberal activist Mitchell Berman is completely out of touch with southeast Wisconsin, pushing a radical far-left agenda that puts politics ahead of common sense,” Bannon said. “While Berman marches in lockstep with the extreme left, Congressman Bryan Steil continues delivering real results for hardworking Wisconsin families.”