The depth and breadth of Republicans’ stunning losses in Tuesday’s blue wave are still coming into focus. Unprecedented Democratic wins in red states including Texas, Kansas, South Carolina and possibly Mississippi ushered in a new era. Democrats won big majorities in the House and Senate. They gained control of governorships and legislative chambers across the country, including in Wisconsin. 

Perhaps most dramatic was what didn’t happen. Menacing threats of armed federal agents at the polls melted away as Republicans crumbled. President Donald Trump accepted the results. So did Wisconsin’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany, who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election, but who conceded early and graciously this week.

Fear itself was vanquished on Tuesday. The dread of an authoritarian government poised to crush dissent with coercion and violence yielded to ordinary citizens voting, by the millions, to oust a self-dealing, out-of-touch party led by a malignant narcissist busy enriching himself at the people’s expense.

Just days before the election, voting rights groups in Wisconsin sent a letter to Attorney General Josh Kaul urging him to provide additional guidance to election workers in case federal agents showed up to seize ballots and tamper with election results.

Instead, voting went smoothly and the results, a massive rebuke to President Donald Trump and his party, now stand.

The lesson of the 2026 midterms was that regular people are not powerless in the face of this aggressive, anti-democratic regime. There is still time and hope left for our country. 

That, more than any particular surprise win, was the biggest thrill of the night.

In Wisconsin, Democrats took over both houses of the Legislature and David Crowley celebrated a convincing, historic win as the state’s first Black governor. Jan. 6 rallygoer and MAGA blowhard U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden was shown the door. The 2026 change election also swept away incumbent U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who lost to Mitchell Berman in the 1st Congressional District. As Erik Gunn and Heather Asiyanbi report, Berman broke Steil’s four-term winning streak and Republican control of the district stretching back more than three decades, through the Paul Ryan era. 

Berman represented the mood of the country’s fed-up electorate. An emergency room nurse dismayed by seeing patients who could not afford health insurance, he took on the smooth-talking, well heeled Steil on his support for Medicaid cuts, tariffs and his record of coddling the very wealthy and corporations, voting in lock-step with President Donald Trump. Corruption and the abandonment of regular working people were the themes of the 1st District race and of the midterms generally. Not, as Republicans hoped, trans people, “woke” politics and a debate about the decorative aesthetics of the Cheesecake Factory.

It turned out people were too fed up to be distracted from their own very real struggles by these culture war topics. Nor were they dissuaded by the massive infusion of cash from billionaires Elon Musk, Dick and Elizabeth Uihlein and Diane Hendricks.

There will be plenty more struggle ahead. But it’s a good time to bask in the glow of the complete rout of fear, hate and division as our inevitable national political atmosphere. 

In Wisconsin, Democrats set an example for what it means to overcome division. Francesca Hong, after narrowly losing the primary on a progressive, democratic socialist platform, worked hard to help elect Crowley — despite the hard feelings among many of her supporters who felt he big-footed her by getting back in the race after dropping out and narrowly winning with Gov. Tony Evers’ endorsement.

Angela Lang, founder and director of Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, told Isiah Holmes at Crowley’s joyful, raucous victory party that Crowley’s personal history — being evicted along with his parents, who struggled with poverty and addiction when he was a child — and his efforts as Milwaukee county executive to do right by people who have also struggled, moved her.  “I’ve always been nervous. Because sometimes Wisconsin doesn’t always do the right thing. But I always knew it was possible and I’m glad to know that the rest of Wisconsin felt it was possible, too,” she said.

So much is possible if the majority of us unite against the corrosive politics of the Trump era and look out for our shared interests.

This week, it became suddenly clear that a bad era is coming to an end, and a new era of possibility is dawning. 

Democrat Rebecca Cooke has defeated Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, notching a win in one of the Democratic party’s highest priority House districts. 

AP called the race at 11:48 p.m. with 90% of the vote counted. Cooke led Van Orden 52.4% to 45.8%.

Cooke, who lost in the Democratic primary for the seat in 2022 and narrowly lost to Van Orden in 2024, ran as a moderate — staking out a number of positions counter to progressive priorities — but benefited from the support of U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Bernie Sanders as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

Cooke’s seven point victory, at the time the race was called shortly before midnight, was driven by winning large margins in the district’s bigger cities of Eau Claire and La Crosse while keeping Van Orden’s margins small enough in the rest of the largely rural district. 

Cooke won by more than 20 points in both Eau Claire and La Crosse counties while keeping it close enough in the more rural counties — which had driven Trump’s wins in the state after the district voted for former President Barack Obama twice. Under a map in which Van Orden had to run up the score among rural voters, as of 11:45 p.m. on Tuesday evening, he was leading only a single county, Adams, by more than 20 points.

A former political consultant, Cooke has also previously run a non-profit, owned a small business and worked as a waitress. During the campaign, Van Orden had attempted to raise questions about Cooke’s authenticity while tying her to left-wing ideas, frequently referring to her as “commie Cooke.” 

But Van Orden, whose aggressive temperament and frequent scandals had made him a divisive figure among voters in the district, ran on embracing the first two years of President Donald Trump’s second term. He appeared at campaign events with more than a dozen high ranking Trump administration officials while defending his support of Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran, which voters in the district had blamed for increasing costs. 

The district has been hit hard by several of the Trump administration’s most unpopular policies. Hospitals have closed; farmers have struggled to keep up with rising diesel prices and the burden of tariffs and last winter Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities extended into western Wisconsin as far as Eau Claire.

At the only debate of the campaign in October, Cooke argued that she was the only candidate of the two who would actually put “America first.” 

Cooke’s win brings Democratic control back to the district, which voted for Trump three times but was represented by former Democratic Rep. Ron Kind from 1997 to 2023.

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Democrats flipped both of Wisconsin’s battleground congressional districts Tuesday, winning the long-Republican-held 1st District as well as the 3rd — part of a blue wave that flipped control of the U.S. House and Senate. 

As of midnight Tuesday, Democrats were on their way to winning a solid majority in the House and control of the Senate by flipping seats in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. Races in Alaska and Michigan were too close to call. House districts that Republicans had gerrymandered over the past year in Florida, North Carolina and Texas were proving to be “dummymanders.”

Democrats poured tens of millions of dollars into races across the country in an effort to flip Republican-held seats and regain control of both chambers of Congress. The party sought to capitalize on growing dissatisfaction with the economy and President Donald Trump, whose approval rating has fallen to a historic low.

Eleanor Powell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor, said Democratic control of Congress will create a new dynamic for the rest of Trump’s term. 

“We’re going to see a pretty different dynamic in the rest of President Trump’s term,” Powell said. “We’re also likely to see a fair bit more congressional oversight of what the executive branch has been doing.”

Wisconsin’s 1st and 3rd congressional districts were both among the targets of national Democrats seeking to flip Republican-held seats, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee including both races in its “Red to Blue” program. The program provides selected candidates with additional financial and campaign resources. 

Powell said the outcomes of the two races would help determine the size of the next congressional majority. She described the 1st Congressional District race as a “bellwether” for the size of a potential Democratic wave.

Democrat Mitchell Berman defeated four-term U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, flipping a seat that has been held by Republicans for more than three decades in southeast Wisconsin. He declared victory shortly before 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, with AP reporting 93% of the votes and Berman leading by 4.6 percentage points. 

The district emerged as an unexpected battleground and received national attention from Democrats trying to gain control of the U.S. House. Berman campaigned on his more than two decades of experience in health care and positioned himself as an outsider who could relate to working-class voters. 

Steil spent nearly $6.4 million in the race compared to Berman’s more than $1.6 million, according to October Federal Election Commission filings. Outside groups spent more than $17.9 million on the race, including about $6.1 million opposing Berman and about $6 million opposing Steil. Another $4 million supported Steil and nearly $1.7 million supported Berman.

In the 3rd Congressional District, Democrat Rebecca Cooke defeated U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden by about 6.5 percentage points in a rematch. Van Orden has faced multiple controversies and remained closely aligned with Trump throughout his campaign. 

The district was represented by moderate Democrat Ron Kind for more than two decades before Van Orden was elected in 2022. Cooke previously challenged Van Orden in 2024 and lost by 3 percentage points. Van Orden conceded around 10 p.m. when AP reported Cooke with an 8-point lead and about 70% of the vote in. 

Cooke spent more than $12.2 million in this election cycle, while Van Orden spent over $8.4 million, according to October FEC filings. Outside organizations poured more than $30.1 million into this race. Of that, about $13.6 million went toward opposing Van Orden and more than $11.2 million toward opposing Cooke. Another $2.7 million supported Cooke and $2.4 million supported Van Orden.

Other Wisconsin congressional results:

Congressional District 2

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan ran unopposed in the general election. He has represented the Madison-area district since 2013 and will begin his eighth term in Congress in January. 

Congressional District 4

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore won a 12th term in the Milwaukee-focused district, defeating independent Arthur Burks and Republican Tim Rogers. 

Congressional District 5

U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald won reelection, defeating Democrat Andrew Beck. Fitzgerald will serve his third term in Congress.

Congressional District 6

U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman won reelection to a seventh term, defeating Democrat Brad Smith, Green Party candidate Matthew Arndt and independent candidates Mike Thurow and Elizabeth Anne Fitgibbon. 

Congressional District 7

Republican Michael Alfonso won Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, defeating Democrat Fred Clark. Alfonso, son-in-law of former 7th Congressional District representative and U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, will replace U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who lost his race for governor. 

Congressional District 8

Freshman U.S. Rep. Tony Wied won reelection in the northeastern district against Democrat Rick Crosson.

Democrats flip two Wisconsin battleground congressional districts as blue tsunami wipes out Republican majorities is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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For 26 years, Wisconsin’s Driftless Area was represented in Congress by a moderate Democrat. Through multiple presidencies, including President Donald Trump’s first administration, Ron Kind was considered to be one of the most bipartisan House members and was easily reelected.

Now the 3rd Congressional District is one of the biggest battlegrounds in the nation. 

Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden was first elected in 2022 after Kind retired and has held the seat since. He’s now seeking a third term. 

Van Orden has shown a fiery reputation in Congress, faced some controversies and been an ardent Trump supporter. But this will be his first election as an incumbent where the odds aren’t in the GOP’s favor, particularly with Trump’s approval rating polling at a historic low. Despite that, Van Orden has continued to align with the president throughout his reelection campaign. 

Democrats, after losing the House in 2022, are heavily targeting the district. In a rematch, Democrat Rebecca Cooke is challenging Van Orden for the seat after losing by 3 points last election. 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has put the 3rd District, along with the 1st in southeastern Wisconsin, on its “Red to Blue” list. The program provides candidates with organizational and fundraising support.

Kind, who has endorsed Cooke, told Wisconsin Watch he believes Van Orden “can’t afford to have any degree of separation” from Trump because the president is a large part of his political success. But in the current political climate, that could also be a liability for the 26-year Navy veteran.

“People are beginning to realize what this guy is all about back home and the fact that he’s not making their lives any easier by supporting the president’s policies,” Kind said.

Kind won some of his last few elections by substantial margins, winning by 13 points in 2014, unopposed in 2016 and almost 20 percentage points in 2018. In 2020, though, Kind defeated Van Orden by less than 3 points. In 2022, national Democrats weren’t targeting the open seat and canceled its ad spending for the district, according to WPR. That year, Van Orden defeated state Sen. Brad Pfaff by just under 4 percentage points.

Democratic polls show Cooke ahead of Van Orden by up to 4 points. A Republican poll in September showed Van Orden leading by 5 points. 

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse political science professor Anthony Chergosky said GOP candidates faced a strategic choice with their campaigns this year.

“Are they going to double down on Trumpism in a bid to motivate the president’s supporters, or are they going to try to open up some daylight between them and the president?” Chergosky said. 

Van Orden’s strategy of sticking with Trump, Chergosky said, is likely a move to lean into the president’s heavy supporters to carry him to reelection. He said many voters were highly motivated in 2016, 2020 and 2024 simply because Trump’s name was on the ballot, but those same voters didn’t turn out as much when Trump wasn’t on the ballot. Over 95,000 more votes were cast in the race for the 3rd Congressional District in the 2024 presidential election than in the 2022 midterm.

The district voted for Trump all three times he ran, even when Kind won in 2016 and 2020, so Van Orden’s presidential ties might help bring out those voters again.

“There’s something that’s sorely lacking in this political business and it’s loyalty,” Van Orden told The Associated Press before the GOP midterm convention in August. “I think we’d be a lot better off if we were more loyal to our fellow Americans to begin with.”

Van Orden’s campaign spokesperson did not respond to requests for an interview for this story.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, one of the most liberal members of the Senate who won Wisconsin’s Democratic presidential primary in 2016, joined Cooke at a rally in Eau Claire on Sunday.

“In my view, this is the most important midterm election in the modern history of our country,” Sanders said. “What Rebecca’s race is about and the reason that I am here is that the time is long overdue for us to hold the most dangerous president in the history of the United States accountable.”

He applauded Cooke for her working class background as a waitress and emphasized the importance of that representation in Congress.

Candidates take starkly different positions on issues

Van Orden and Cooke overlap on few issues that have been part of Trump’s first term. Those differences were clear when they met Oct. 20 for their first and only debate and sparred over the economy, immigration, health care and the war in Iran.

Cooke said she would not have supported Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and criticized it for giving “billionaires tax breaks and tax credits.” The tax incentives on average benefited higher earners rather than lower earners, according to the Tax Policy Center. 

“Big corporations and the ultra wealthy should be paying their fair share of taxes,” Cooke said. 

Van Orden touted the act and how its changes led to an influx of revenue for BadgerCare, the state’s form of Medicaid. The act, however, made $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid overall through mandatory work requirements for able-bodied adults and tighter caps on provider taxes.

He also criticized Cooke for not condemning unauthorized immigrants who commit violent crimes. She said they should be deported and the border should be secure. She also said she does not support sanctuary cities, but affirmed that there should be a “clear pathway to citizenship” and acknowledged immigrant contributions to the workforce.

According to an April 2023 study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Workers, unauthorized immigrants alone make up an estimated 46% to 70% of the dairy farmers in the state. Van Orden has emphasized in his campaign his support for Trump’s immigration policies, which have emphasized large-scale deportations and rolling back authorized immigration.

Cooke said one of the first things she would like to see in Congress is ending the war in Iran, which Van Orden has voted against ending. While he said he does not inherently want to be at war, he said it’s the only way “radical Muslim mullahs” will listen.

“I know about war. I spent my entire adult life either training for war, training others for war or a war myself. I do not want our country to be involved in war,” Van Orden said. “We tried diplomacy. We tried sanctions, upped them again and again and again, and these radical muslim mullahs don’t respond to that … they only respond to this horrible thing that is war.”

Van Orden currently sits on the Agriculture, Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees. Since his election to Congress, he has introduced and passed veteran-forward legislation, like aiming to help veterans avoid foreclosure. He has also co-sponsored passed laws like providing whole milk in schools, expanding autism and developmental disability programs and allowing for hunting programs in schools.

Cooke, a waitress and former political consultant, wants to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, address teacher shortages with pay increases and signing bonuses, change the school funding formula to give more funding to low-income districts and double Pell college grants for low- to moderate-income families. She also advocates for expanding Medicare to dental, hearing and vision coverage and protecting abortion rights.

One of the few issues that Van Orden and Cooke seem to agree on is supporting agriculture and dairy farms. Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District ranked 17th in the nation in 2022 for most farm producers at 31,470. Both Van Orden and Cooke have promised to support the state’s agriculture system and dairy farms. Cooke wants to ensure tax incentives and subsidies for small farms, expand export markets and fight big agriculture to support small farmers. 

As for data centers, Van Orden wants local communities to decide on new developments and to protect farmland and water resources. He has co-sponsored the bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act, which would ensure ratepayers aren’t forced to pay new energy bills required by large data centers. Cooke wants a moratorium on new developments and to end the tax breaks given to data centers, but data center laws are largely up to state and local governments.

National polarization and negativity

Similar to their first matchup two years ago, Van Orden and Cooke continue their heated rivalry in the high-stakes election. Van Orden has posted AI-generated fake videos of Cooke on social media, making it seem like she was saying she was the “anointed one” and that voters will “comply” and vote for her. She sent him a cease-and-desist letter in September and boosted a citizen complaint filed Oct. 22 with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission.

Cooke told Wisconsin Watch the district is looking for a “representative that’s rooted in reality” and focused on issues rather than making these deepfakes. She called for more AI regulation for campaigns in the future.

Chergosky said it’s unclear how the AI deepfake issue will play out and what voters think about this new territory.

Van Orden and Cooke also have been trying to undercut each other’s authenticity in their campaigns. Van Orden has slammed Cooke for portraying herself as a political outsider while working as a Democratic fundraiser and political consultant for controversy-courting Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad. She also has worked with the center-left think tank Third Way. 

Van Orden also has found himself in controversies throughout the years, including inflammatory social media posts and his presence in Washington during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. In 2023 he scolded teenage Senate pages and in 2021 accosted a Prairie du Chien library worker over an LGBTQ+ book display.

Cooke blasted how Van Orden has never held an in-person town hall throughout his time in Congress, as well as his support for Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran. 

“His devotion to this administration is greater than his devotion to people in this district,” Cooke said. “I think it’s a mistake on his part, but it’s like a blind loyalty that he has to the president.”

Kind said Van Orden has “insulated” himself from his constituents, and Pfaff told Wisconsin Watch that Van Orden has been at the “beck and call” of the White House and has “never had any original thought.”

“I do not believe he has a vision,” Pfaff said. “I don’t believe, deep down, he has a fundamental understanding of what this district is, who the people are in this district and what it would take in order to work the public, private effort in order to continue to move this area forward.”

Kind was noted for being one of the more bipartisan members of Congress, ranking 17th most bipartisan in the House in his last congressional session, according to The Lugar Center’s bipartisanship index.

Van Orden ranked 138th most bipartisan in his first year in office and the second-most bipartisan House member representing Wisconsin, behind former Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher at 33rd. The least bipartisan from Wisconsin was Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is now running for governor, in 379th place.

What’s different this year?

Given the rematch, 2024 and 2026 look very similar. Both years, the district was heavily targeted and categorized a toss-up, but one thing remains largely different: It’s not a “Trump year.”

This is the first year since 2020, when Van Orden lost and Joe Biden narrowly won the state, when he is running in a likely poor year for Republicans. In 2022, Democrats controlled the White House — historically the president’s party has fared worse in midterms. In 2024, Trump narrowly won Wisconsin. Now, with a Republican president, Democrats are favored to flip some seats and take back Congress.

Whichever party comes out of November with control of Congress will “profoundly influence the final two years of Trump’s presidency,” Chergosky said.

“In 2022, it was about Republicans trying to gain control of Congress. In 2024, Republicans were trying to retain control,” Chergosky said, “and now, Democrats are trying to get it back … this could be one of the decisive seats in a high-stakes race for Congress.”

In western Wisconsin, Democrats seek to flip what was once one of the most moderate congressional districts is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A complaint has been filed with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission against U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden over his use of artificial intelligence to generate images of his Democratic opponent Rebecca Cooke that were posted to his and his campaign’s online accounts. 

Ahead of the Oct. 20 debate between the two candidates, a Van Orden campaign account posted an advertisement for the event that included what Cooke’s campaign says is a computer generated deepfake image of her. 

Van Orden has spent much of the campaign cycle posting AI photos and videos to social media. Late last month, Cooke’s campaign sent a cease and desist letter to Van Orden seeking to stop him from posting fake material about Cooke, including a video in which she is made to look as if she’s saying she’s running to “take advantage of as much corruption as possible, and give every illegal immigrant free healthcare.”

After the debate advertisement was posted, Eau Claire resident Cassandra Butzler filed a complaint against Van Orden with the state ethics commission, alleging he has broken a 2024 law which requires that any political ad that contains AI must be clearly labeled as such. So far, Van Orden’s posts have not been subject to the law because they don’t qualify as advertisements. 

“Derrick Van Orden continues to spend his time posting AI-generated deepfakes instead of offering real solutions for the working families of our district,” Cooke said in a media release. “He has now gone so far as to violate Wisconsin’s ethics rules, but voters won’t be fooled, Van Orden has never put his constituents first, and he never will.”

Van Orden has previously dismissed the complaints about his AI use as a stunt. Grace Kim, his spokesperson, similarly told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the ethics complaint is a “cheap publicity stunt.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and his Democratic opponent Rebecca Cooke met Tuesday at Chippewa Valley Technical College in Eau Claire for a debate in which Van Orden continued his ardent defense of President Donald Trump and Cooke worked to establish her moderate bonafides. 

The debate Tuesday morning was the first that Van Orden has appeared in since he first ran for Congress, losing in 2020 against former U.S. Rep. Ron Kind. In his two successful campaigns since then against state Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) in 2022 and Cooke in 2024, he refused to participate in any debates. 

The two candidates met two weeks before the election on the day that early voting opens across the state. Democrats are hoping the president’s record low approval ratings and voters’ concerns about the direction of the economy and war in Iran will spur a sweep in competitive districts across the country. On Tuesday morning, the election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball changed its rating of the race from a toss-up to leaning Democratic. 

Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District stretches across the Driftless Region from the state’s southwest corner up to Eau Claire, with an extension into central Wisconsin and Stevens Point. One of the most closely contested districts in the country, the seat has frequently been a top target for both parties. 

Millions of dollars in spending have flooded into the area from both campaigns and outside groups in a race that observers have seen get increasingly negative — with Democrats attacking Van Orden’s often aggressive temperament and vociferous support of Trump while Republicans take jabs at Cooke’s authenticity and history of work as a political consultant for Democratic groups. 

During the hourlong debate hosted by the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce and WEAU 13 News, Van Orden defended his votes to pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, sustain his trade wars on countries around the world, send masked federal immigration agents into communities across Wisconsin and continue his war in Iran. He also repeatedly plugged a website created by his campaign that accuses Cooke of being a “commie” who supports defunding the police, giving sex change surgeries to transgender youth and letting undocumented immigrants vote. 

Cooke argued that Van Orden’s support of Trump has hurt working class people, farmers and families across the district while at the same time trying to establish that she disagrees with her party’s left wing. During the debate, she said that she’s actually the candidate in the race who is “putting America first and that we’re investing in our communities, putting Wisconsin first.” Van Orden responded that he’d get her a MAGA hat.  

Cooke also said she doesn’t support sanctuary cities, banning assault rifles, estate taxes or forgiving student loan debt. 

“I think that voters on the trail feel like this administration has been a disaster, and that their policies have made their lives harder and not easier,” Cooke said in a post-debate news conference. “I’m hearing from a lot of working families and retirees who are just really hanging on by a thread.” 

Moderated by WEAU’s John Frank and Kim Leadholm, the debate covered  the economy, government spending, immigration, healthcare, housing, childcare, energy, higher education, infrastructure and foreign policy. 

Economy

On the economy, Van Orden argued that the struggles people are currently facing began during the Biden administration. He named several home staples that are cheaper now than under Joe Biden. He also touted the tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as offering support to working people. 

“I’m so glad you said that out loud. You would have voted against what you called the One Big Beautiful Bill. That’s the Working Families Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” he told Cooke. “This is the largest tax cut in the history of our country, and Rebecca Cook is now again officially on record saying that she would not vote for it.”

Polling shows that the law is broadly unpopular, with a July survey from Politico finding that about one in three Americans believe it has hurt their personal finances. 

Cooke countered by saying that the only permanent tax cuts in the bill are the ones that went to the wealthiest Americans while the provisions that Van Orden touted, most notably cutting taxes on tips and overtime, expire after two years. She also argued that the war in Iran and Trump’s tariffs have done nothing but squeeze people in the 3rd CD. 

“I’m focused on an America-first agenda and making sure that we’re putting more resources back into the pockets of American taxpayers,” she said. “I want to make sure that you can afford your healthcare. I want to make sure that our public schools are not having to vote on a referendum every year, and I want to make sure that you can go to the grocery store, to the gas pump, pay your rent or mortgage and have a little left over.” 

Immigration

In January, when federal agents flooded into Minnesota’s Twin Cities as part of Operation Metro Surge, immigration enforcement actions also stretched into Wisconsin, going as far as Eau Claire and affecting the manufacturing plants and dairy farms in the 3rd CD that rely on immigrant labor. 

Van Orden brought up a 2024 incident in which a 26-year-old Venezuelan man attacked a woman and her teenaged child in Prairie du Chien — saying Cooke has refused to condemn violence by immigrants — while touting the endorsements he’s received from law enforcement organizations in the state. 

He also touted his proposed legislation through which currently undocumented farm workers will obtain legal status by going back to their home country, paying a fine and waiting in line to be given a visa — a policy proposal that some farmers see as unworkable. 

“Rebecca Cooke is saying that she wants these secure borders. There was up to 200,000 illegal aliens entering into the country every single month under Joe Biden’s presidency, and she said nothing,” Van Orden said. “Rebecca is right. Cows aren’t going to stop milking because of foreign immigration policy. A hog’s not going to stop growing because of foreign immigration policy. So as opposed to saying one thing and doing another, I’ve actually been working on this within the three years that I’ve been in Congress.”

Cooke said she supported some of the visa reforms that Van Orden has been working on while also arguing for a pathway to citizenship for the district’s immigrant workers, which she said hasn’t been achieved because both parties have used immigration as a political wedge. 

“It’s very, very important that we make sure that our border remains secure, right? And I want to make sure that our communities remain safe places to live and work and play, but I also want to recognize what a big part immigrant labor is to our workforce here in west central Wisconsin,” she said. “You look at the contributions from the manufacturing sector to our dairy farmers, and I think that we’ve got to have a clear pathway to citizenship and one that puts people that are playing by the rules that don’t have criminal backgrounds on that track. And I think for too long people have been playing partisan politics when it comes to immigration and playing partisan football. And we’ve got to focus on getting something done.”

Healthcare

On healthcare, Van Orden blamed rising costs on Democrats’ 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act and took credit for protecting local healthcare providers by working to get hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding into the state. 

“Those programs exist for a reason. They’re critically important,” he said. “I’ve done everything I can to fully fund them into the future, so that babies don’t have to worry about whether they’re getting pre-natal care or whether we’re delivering the babies. Or if we’re breaking arms, we can afford to get a cast.”

But that funding, Cooke pointed out, is a “backfill” that amounts to only a “drop in the bucket” when compared to the billions that will be lost because of the cuts to Medicaid included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

“I think everybody knows about the hospital closures here in the Chippewa Valley, and that was out of Derrick Van Orden’s watch,” she said. “We saw Sacred Heart close. We saw St. Joe’s and Chippewa Falls close. We’ve seen labor and delivery close in neighboring Menomonie. This was during his term as a congressman, and then you look at the vote that he took for the One Big Beautiful Bill, they cut healthcare for millions of Americans.” 

Tariffs and Iran 

Two of the Trump administration’s most unpopular policies have been the president’s tariffs and the war in Iran. Van Orden backed both on Tuesday. 

He argued that in Trump’s trade wars with Canada, Mexico, the European Union and China, those other countries are “not the good guy,” that the tariffs are helping the district’s farmers and that they’re an important tool for fair trade. 

“Tariffs are a tool to make sure that we have fair trade throughout the United States, and Canada is not the good guy of the story. China is not the good guy of the story. Mexico is not the good guy in the story. The European Union is not the good guy in the story. What you’re about to hear is a candidate for federal office take Canada, Mexico, China and the European Union over Wisconsin farmers,” Van Orden said. “So, do I like tariffs for everything? Absolutely not. But they’re a tool.” 

Cooke said the tariffs are unpopular for a reason and that the district’s farmers don’t want “handouts” from the federal government to make up for the harms of federal policymaking. 

“I grew up on a dairy farm, like two miles down the road from here. I have lived a lot of failed policies from many different administrations,” she said. “People that have put partisanship or D.C. politics over the livelihoods of farmers across the state and across this country, and these tariffs, I’ve talked to people all across the 3rd Congressional District, at dairy breakfasts, county fairs, I’ve convened roundtables to talk to farmers explicitly about tariffs. Nobody likes them, right?” 

On Iran, Van Orden mentioned his military record as a former U.S. Navy SEAL while arguing the United States had to fight the “radical Muslim world” and prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

“So if people can rape, murder, torture, hold us economically hostage, and Rebecca Cooke is unwilling to fight that conflict, then I’d say that it’s disqualifying to be a member of Congress because we have to make decisions we don’t want to make, oftentimes,” he said. “And this is one: Do I want to be in a war with Iran right now? No, I don’t want to be in a war with anybody right now. Is it making it exponentially harder for Republicans to hold the House and the Senate? Yes, it is. But we have to think about our children and grandchildren. We’ve been fighting the war that the radical Muslim world has declared on us for 50 years, and I don’t want my grandchildren fighting the same war that I do. I think it’s time for this to stop. We must finish this.” 

Cooke said American foreign policy should lead with diplomacy — a tactic that Van Orden said amounted to a “strongly worded email” to Iran — while standing up to bullies around the world but that Congress should be more focused on the everyday needs of Americans right now.  

“We’ve seen so much spending — billions of taxpayer dollars go overseas when they could be invested in things here to put Wisconsin first, to put our communities first,” she said. “We’re looking at hospital closures here. We’re looking at our public schools flailing. We’re looking at so many difficult things for our Main Street businesses to be able to keep their doors open. So I’d like to end the war in Iran, which no one voted for. Even if they voted for Derrick Van Orden or for President Trump, they voted for no more foreign forever wars.” 

Energy

With energy prices rising across the country, both candidates said they opposed the controversial proposed transmission line that will cross through the region and attempted to tag the other with support for data centers. 

But Van Orden denounced the “war on fossil fuels” that he says Democrats have been waging while Cooke called for an “all of the above” energy strategy. 

Van Orden said Wisconsin should get its power from natural gas, “clean burning coal” and nuclear power. 

“It’s going to get 20 degrees below zero in the state of Wisconsin. Whether or not you want to have a windmill or a solar panel, we have to have base load power, nuclear, cleaner coal, gas,” he said. “That’s what we need to turn to. We need to stick with it. And then guess what? When it’s locally generated, you don’t need these monstrosities that they’re going to wreck the driftless with. It’s physics.” 

Cooke accused Van Orden of being “in the pocket of big tech” because of financial support from people including Elon Musk while saying she supported building renewables and maintaining other energy sources like nuclear. 

“I believe in mixing renewables while keeping our grid reliable. I also support advancements in small modular nuclear, which weans us away from our reliance on fossil fuels,” she said. 

Higher Education 

Colleges and universities across Wisconsin have been financially struggling due to decreasing enrollment, rising costs and federal cuts to both student aid and grants for universities. In the 3rd Congressional District, the University of Wisconsin campus in Richland Center closed in 2024. 

Cooke said she wants to better support the area’s students and higher education institutions through better grant programs for students in traditional colleges and the trades. 

“I was able to go to college with the help of Pell grants. I think that we need to have more federal funding to be invested into Pell grants, so more low-income and middle-income young people have the opportunity to go into whatever school they’d like to,” she said. “I also believe strongly in work-study programs, and also thinking about how that builds pipelines into our workforce within our communities.”

Van Orden said that his “trade happened to be war” and argued that government support should go to education in the trades or STEM programs. He also proposed that federal student loans should be offered interest free. 

“These lights are not on because someone has a degree in 13th century French poetry, they’re not,” he said, indicating the lighting on the debate stage. “They’re on because someone did get a STEM degree, then they got a master’s degree in electrical engineering. They wrote those plans and handed them to someone that went to trade school. That’s why the plumbing works. That’s why the road is flat. That’s why this glass is in place. That’s why we’re not freezing right now because we have heat here, which is an HVAC tech. So we have to invest money in younger people because that is an actual investment in the United States of America.”

In the debate room, the dozens of invited attendees — mostly the invited guests of the campaigns and local leaders — strictly followed the rules against vocal responses to the candidate’s remarks and after it ended, both candidates claimed victory. 

With Election Day two weeks away, voting has already begun. Locations for voting early absentee and in-person on Nov. 3 can by found at MyVote.WI.gov

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. Derrick Van Orden, the Republican incumbent running for reelection in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, one of the most hotly contested House races in the country, has decided his best chance is to dance with the one who brought him — President Donald Trump. 

“Derrick, this guy he fights like hell. He’s in a little bit of a community that tends to be on slightly, a little bit more than we wanted, left, but he loves them all, and he’s very popular, and he’s going to win by a lot,” Trump said of Van Orden at a June rally in Chippewa Falls. “You’re doing well. I understand you’re really doing well. So, thank you and he’s a real fighter … we’ve been friends right from the beginning.” 

Trump’s approval ratings have hit all-time lows in Wisconsin recently, a potential problem for Van Orden, whose seat is one of the Democratic Party’s top targets for flipping this year. The two-term Republican is running for the second time against Democrat Rebecca Cooke, who two years ago lost to Van Orden by only 2.7 points, in a district where Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris by 7.4 points. 

Between the two campaigns and outside groups, the increasingly heated race is nearing $30 million in spending on mostly negative ads. Van Orden’s ads have alliteratively accused Cooke of being “corrupt” and “communist” while calling her authenticity into question — largely over charges that she’s highlighted her work as a waitress while downplaying her previous work for Democratic political campaigns and interest groups. 

“I think the campaign has gotten intensely negative, with authenticity being a core theme,” Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said. “I’m seeing authenticity come up on both sides, where Congressman Van Orden and his allies are going after the persona or biography of Rebecca Cooke, particularly her waitressing, has become kind of a flashpoint in this campaign. And for Congressman Van Orden, Democrats are going after him as kind of saying that he’s part of the problem in Washington, and that’s a tried and true strategy for unseating an incumbent, to portray them as part of the problem.”

Congress, Chergosky continued, “has rock bottom approval ratings as an institution, so incumbents are often targeted due to their membership in an unpopular institution. Chergosky expects the attack ads will blanket the airwaves up to Election Day, he said. “I think that this is going to continue to be a very negative campaign.” 

Across the country, a number of vulnerable Republicans have sought to find areas to distance themselves from an unpopular president. Even in Wisconsin, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — despite a voting record that has been in near perfect lockstep with the Trump administration — has tried to put some breathing room between himself and Trump. 

But Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, has gone the other way, continuing to vocally support the Trump administration, the war in Iran, Trump’s tariffs, his steering of the economy and the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. 

In September, Van Orden was the only member of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation to speak at Trump’s midterm convention in Texas. 

Throughout the year, the 3rd CD has hosted a parade of high-profile administration officials and top-ranking Republicans. 

Van Orden has appeared in his western Wisconsin district with Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and House Speaker Mike Johnson. 

“We are defending, right now, the foundational truths, and I’ve got to have warriors in the room to do it,” Johnson said at a rally in Sparta earlier this month. “There is no stronger warrior than Derrick Van Orden.” 

In recent weeks, Van Orden has made online posts suggesting he would volunteer to join the firing squad in the planned execution of Nidal Hasan, the man convicted of a mass shooting at Fort Hood, accusing Cooke of supporting the “chemical and physical castration of children and men in woman’s locker rooms” and alleging that she wants to bring “Somali fraud” to Wisconsin. 

He’s also posted a number of AI-generated videos of Cooke and other Democratic Party of Wisconsin officials, a tactic that drew a cease and desist letter from the Cooke campaign. Van Orden called the letter a “publicity stunt.” 

A spokesperson for Van Orden did not respond to a request for comment, but in an interview with Channel 3000, Van Orden strongly endorsed Trump’s ongoing war in Iran and argued that the high price of gas and diesel is not only because of the war causing shocks to global oil markets but also due to Democrats “chasing the green new scam” and U.S. oil companies “profiteering.” 

“Is this politically convenient right now? Absolutely not,” Van Orden said in the interview, in which he also referenced the “radical Muslim mullahs” who led the Iranian revolution in the 1970s. “Would it be much easier for Republicans to maintain the House and the Senate if we weren’t involved in this conflict in Iran? Yes. I would be a fool not to acknowledge that. But at some point, we have to deal with this issue that’s been going on for a half a century.”

Chergosky said that Van Orden “doubling down on Trumpism” might be a valid strategy in a district that’s voted for Trump three times. 

The problem, he said, is that those Trump voters haven’t always been reliable when Trump isn’t on the ballot. 

“I think Republicans in this district are making a play to turn out the pro-Trump base, and it’s a base that has delivered for Trump three times, but with any midterm election, we’re going to see a significant drop-off in voter turnout,” Chergosky said. “So a lot of times these midterms come down to the question of, among the voters who voted in the presidential election, which of them stay home this time around? In other words, who drops out of the electorate compared to the presidential election? And so I think the concern for Republicans is that a lot of these pro-Trump, low-propensity voters are going to drop out of the electorate, and I can see them trying to avoid that certainly through Congressman Van Orden’s strategy.” 

But the 3rd CD is also a district that for decades was represented by Ron Kind, a moderate Democrat. Van Orden, with his divisive and confrontational style, has been elected twice deploying a different approach to politics; still, joining forces with some of the most controversial members of Trump’s cabinet could alienate voters. 

At an agricultural roundtable hosted by the Cooke campaign last week, voters complained about the anti-vaccine “conspiracy theories” espoused by figures such as Kennedy resulting in measles outbreaks in the area. At a town hall hosted by the Wisconsin Farmers Union in Gays Mills, attendees lamented the treatment of immigrant workers at the district’s farms and manufacturing plants. 

“Derrick Van Orden has not delivered a successful farm bill out of this Congress,” Cooke said last week. “I don’t think that he’s really done very much at all to support our family farms or people in agriculture across this district.”

In the Channel 3000 interview, Van Orden made the case that he’s been a serious legislator, listing the three committees he sits on.

While in Congress, he voted in favor of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut billions from federal healthcare programs and has hurt the bottom line of rural hospitals in the 3rd CD. After voting for the law, Van Orden has touted his work to provide millions of dollars to rural hospitals in Wisconsin. But that funding provides only $200 million after the OBBBA cut $7 billion in federal healthcare funds meant for the state, an analysis by KFF found last year

From his position on the House Agriculture committee, Van Orden has suggested expanding the H2-A visa program to help the district’s dairy farms get more immigrant labor. But the H2-A program only applies to seasonal farm workers, not the year round workers needed on a dairy farm. Van Orden has also proposed the creation of a new system in which currently undocumented workers return to their home country and pay $2,500 to get in line and wait to be approved for a new visa. 

“They should expect me to work doggedly, like I have been doing. I’ve been an incredibly effective legislator,” he said.

At a roundtable on her family’s Eau Claire area farm last week with former Montana Sen. Jon Tester, Democrat Rebecca Cooke argued that if she’s elected to represent Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, she’ll take on the issues that have been plaguing rural America for decades and work to undo the Trump administration policies that are making those problems worse. 

But Democrats all over the country, including in Wisconsin and the 3rd CD have had trouble winning rural support in the past. 

“We need people who are willing to stand up and speak. I come from an area that in the 1960s was solid blue, and now it’s solid red,” Tester said at the roundtable. That political shift happened, he said, “because Democrats don’t show up.” Nowadays, he added, “Republicans take it for granted” that rural areas are mainly red.  “So the opportunity here to help flip this situation around,” Tester said, “so we’ve got people in Washington D.C. that are working for us, everybody — not just rural America, but everybody — but making sure that rural America is at the table is really, really important.” 

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind represented Wisconsin’s 3rd CD for decades. After his retirement, state Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska), the former state agriculture secretary, ran and lost to Derrick Van Orden in 2022. Cooke subsequently lost narrowly when she challenged Van Orden in 2024. 

“Derrick Van Orden has put rural America squarely last,” Cooke said after the event on her family’s farm. “He’s voted time and again for the war in Iran six times that has increased diesel prices, increased fertilizer prices … Farmers here in the 3rd Congressional District are reeling from the impact of reciprocal tariffs on our soybeans and our cranberries, are struggling because of the increased input costs from diesel and fertilizer prices with this war in Iran. And Congress’s failure to expand the ACA tax credit premium for three more years has really hurt a lot of farmers, too. They have seen their premiums go up from $400 to $1,800 a month. Derrick Van Orden has not delivered a successful farm bill out of this Congress. I don’t think that he’s really done very much at all to support our family farms or people in agriculture across this district.”

This year, with the national environment fueling Democratic hopes for victories up and down the ticket in states across the country as President Donald Trump’s approval ratings hit record lows, and diesel prices and tariffs on Canadian fertilizer hurt western Wisconsin farmers, Democrats are confident about their chances. The 3rd CD is at the top of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2026 targets. Both parties and a lineup of outside PACs have already spent nearly $30 million on the district with ads that have become increasingly negative. 

Van Orden, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, has often brought a combative personality, a penchant for social media trolling and an eagerness to support Trump to his role. A member of the House agriculture committee, he’s touted his work on the farm bill and legislative efforts to change visa programs for immigrant dairy workers. A spokesperson for Van Orden did not respond to a request for comment. 

At the Oct. 9 roundtable and during a Wisconsin Farmers Union town hall in Gays Mills the same day, area farmers said Van Orden has done little to help them or mischaracterized their problems while supporting large factory farms over the smaller family operations that define western Wisconsin’s cultural identity even as they struggle to make ends meet. 

The group of farmers at the roundtable complained that it has gotten harder for them to get healthcare coverage and that the Trump administration’s cuts to food programs such as SNAP hurt farmers. They also said that Trump’s crackdown on immigration, which spilled over into western Wisconsin during Operation Metro Surge in the nearby Twin Cities, has hurt the labor they depend on. They also worried that a food system oriented toward giving the biggest players a leg up will hasten the destruction of  their way of life. 

“We can identify the problems, like we know what the issues are, right?” Cooke told the group. “And we need to have people that are solutions-oriented going into Congress. There is a lot of finger-pointing to be had because these are bad things that are happening, but we also need to think about how do we move forward.”

If elected, Cooke will be a first-year Democrat during a Republican presidency but she said she hopes to get assigned to the agriculture committee and that one of her first priorities would be establishing a “right to repair” — which would allow farmers to work on their own machinery rather than paying high prices for repairs at dealerships. She also said she wants to push for a farm bill that “caters to small, mid-size ag,” provide a pathway to citizenship for the district’s immigrant laborers, create a health insurance public option and to expand Medicare to cover vision and dental.

In the August primary election, Cooke defeated former Eau Claire City Council president Emily Berge by about 20 points in a contentious race that left some local party activists and voters embittered. Cooke has had to work to try to win those voters back. 

Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, told the Wisconsin Examiner that a contentious general election with reams of negative ads can often help a candidate bring their team back together after a bruising primary. 

“I think coming out of divisive primaries, parties often confront the challenge of uniting their supporters for the general election,” he said. “There are different ways to go about doing that, but one of the most tried and true methods is a negative campaign against the opposition, because that can really motivate a party’s supporters.” 

At the roundtable on her family farm, a roster of invited guests expressed enthusiastic support for Cooke.

“We can get this woman elected. That’s what we can do by getting one neighbor that never voted before, getting one neighbor who don’t think it’s worth it. It is,” Phil Swanhorst, chair of the Eau Claire County Democratic Party, said. “Each and every one of us can make a difference if we work a little bit harder to get her elected than we did two years ago. We got to get this type of woman in Congress to turn this shit around. We got to do it.”

When Van Orden was first elected in 2022, he beat Pfaff by 3.7 points — a result that many Democrats in the state blamed on the disappearance of national money and support in the final weeks of the race. Critics of the national Democratic party’s decision to pull out of the race pointed to the fact that  Democratic Gov. Tony Evers won the district in his reelection campaign that year. 

Two years ago, Cooke outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in the district, losing by only 2.7 points compared to Harris’ 7.4 point loss to Trump. This year national Democrats believe that the time is right for Cooke to get the job done. 

Chergosky said that the Cooke campaign doesn’t need to win a landslide among rural voters. Instead, Cooke’s path could involve picking off just enough rural Wisconsinites who vote for her or don’t vote at all — in addition to turning out the Democratic voters in the district’s urban centers of Eau Claire and La Crosse. 

“If Cooke can move the rural margins back in her favor even a little bit, then that would go a long way towards helping her win the district,” Chergosky said. “I guess the good news is that it can’t really get any worse for [Democrats] in many rural communities. And so, if they can turn the tide even a little bit, it could go a long way towards helping them win this district, and others like it.”

At the Farmers Union event in Gays Mills, Cooke was joined on the dais by three Democrats running for legislative seats and Alexander Kent, an independent running for the 3rd CD. None of the Republicans running in the area showed up — a fact that Cooke was quick to note. 

During his four years in office, Van Orden has developed a local reputation for avoiding his constituents. His debate appearance with Cooke next week, on Oct. 20,  will be his first since his 2020 campaign against Kind. He has neglected to hold open town halls with constituents and residents of the district often complain of being blown off by their congressional representative. 

“These are frustrating times for our agricultural communities,” Cooke said. “I’m running against somebody and an administration that has done little to help farmers … I’m here today and showing up because, unlike someone that doesn’t show up, I believe it’s important to have these conversations in our community.”

The influence of voter opposition to data center development on November’s elections has begun to show in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, in one of the state’s most hotly contested races. 

Both candidates in the race, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Democrat Rebecca Cooke, as well as outside spending groups, have each worked to connect the other to pro-data center policies. 

Van Orden’s campaign has pointed out that Cooke worked with the Wisconsin Technology Council and the think tank Third Way, both organizations that have supported data center projects in the past. 

Cooke’s campaign and the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC have recently run ads criticizing Van Orden for taking campaign contributions from people and organizations tied to the data center industry while voting for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which included tax breaks that data center developers have used over the past year. 

The House Majority PAC ad refers to the two-term congressman as “Data Center Derrick” marking the alliterative danger for candidates of both parties whose names begin with the letter D this year. In Wisconsin’s race for governor, Republican Tom Tiffany has run ads criticizing “Data Center David” Crowley for his previous statements of support for data center projects. 

Voters in the western Wisconsin district have been vocal in their opposition to data center projects, successfully working to kill a proposed development in Menomonie last year.

Nearly 900 miles from the southwest corner of his district, U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden appeared at President Donald Trump’s Dallas convention Wednesday afternoon to argue that the healthcare policies he and Trump have enacted are benefiting rural Wisconsinites. 

Van Orden represents Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District and his campaign against Democrat Rebecca Cooke is set to be one of the most hotly contested races in the country as Democrats seek to win back majority control of the House. 

During his two terms, Van Orden has been a staunch Trump ally, often taking a bombastic, confrontational tone and drawing criticism from opponents for his treatment of constituents. 

But onstage on Wednesday, as Republicans held a rare midterm convention while Trump’s approval rating plummets to record lows and Democrats express confidence they’ll win competitive races across the country, Van Orden and his fellow Republicans sought to sell a softer version of their record. 

“Whether you choose to live in a city or a village like my beautiful wife Sarah Jane and I do, you deserve high quality, readily available, and actually affordable healthcare,” Van Orden said. “You know who else knows this? Our great president Donald J. Trump. He is fighting to make quality healthcare a reality for everyday Americans.”

Last year, Van Orden voted for the Trump-signed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In his speech, he said the bill, and the tax cuts it enacted, brought millions of dollars in funding for rural hospitals in Wisconsin. 

“This massive investment would not have been possible without President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cut Act,” Van Orden said. “And shamefully, shamefully, not one Democrat voted for it. So, from Washington to Wisconsin, Democrats spent months demonizing the tax cuts we delivered.” 

In fact, the bill made huge cuts to Medicaid, which for Wisconsin will result in losing $7 billion in federal healthcare funds over the next 10 years, an analysis by KFF found last year. In his speech, Van Orden also touted more than $200 million that will go to Wisconsin hospitals because of the law, but that is far less than those hospitals would have received without the Medicaid cuts. 

“I worked with President Trump and Republicans in Congress to level up our Medicaid assessments and bringing billions of dollars back to Wisconsin’s Badger Care program,” Van Orden said. “So these investments have made a real difference to real people all over rural America, including back home at Black River Falls Memorial Hospital. It’s where our awesome doctors can now spend less time worrying about the future of the hospital and more time taking care of their patients, who are their neighbors and that they love.”

An analysis conducted last year by the centrist think tank Third Way found that after the enactment of the Medicaid cuts, hospitals in Van Orden’s district are projected to lose more than $42 million in annual revenue. 

Van Orden has on several occasions gotten into arguments with constituents over the effect of the law and has falsely denied that Medicaid was cut. 

In a statement from her campaign, Cooke noted that Van Orden has never done a town hall in his district, but has time to join Trump in Texas.

“Derrick Van Orden still hasn’t done a single town hall with his constituents in West Central Wisconsin. And lies from Dallas can’t change his record: Derrick Van Orden watched rural hospitals in his district close,” Cooke said. “Then, he voted to cut $7 billion from Wisconsin’s health care so that those funds could go to tax breaks for data centers instead. Congressman Van Orden can continue to defend the Big Ugly Bill all he wants. Folks here in West Central Wisconsin see their health care costs going up and their doctors leaving town.”

Republican members of Congress who are attending the convention had to pay $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee to access a hotel room in the committee room block and tickets to the welcome reception. Paying up to $100,000 earned members additional perks, including breakfast with House leaders. Vulnerable members did not have to pay the five-figure fee, Axios reported. 

A spokesperson for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin criticized Van Orden for attending a “lavish” Texas event rather than focusing on solving the problems of his constituents. 

“It should come as no surprise that D.C Derrick Van Orden decided to ditch his constituents to go bootlick an administration that is making life unbearably expensive for Wisconsinites,” the spokesperson, Haley King, said. “While Van Orden is out in another state trying to save his re-election campaign and promoting a delusional billionaire cosplaying as President, Wisconsin Democrats are meeting with voters and working to clean up the affordability crisis elected MAGA Republicans like Derrick Van Orden have created.”

A social media post from the Republican Party of Wisconsin showed that U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Glenn Grothman, and 7th Congressional District candidate Michael Alfonso, also traveled to Dallas for the convention. Only Van Orden, among Wisconsin Republicans, appeared on the program of speakers.

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As early voting starts next week in the Aug. 11 primary to determine who will be on the November ballot, Democrats hope to flip two U.S. House seats in Wisconsin.

Republicans took control of the House in 2022 and currently hold six of Wisconsin’s eight seats. The primaries feature several political newcomers and could offer insight into which wings of each party are exerting the most influence.

Here are the four House primaries we are watching in August:

Congressional District 1

Democrats are targeting this district to unseat four-term U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, who defeated Democratic challenger Peter Barca in 2024 by 10 percentage points. Barca wasn’t new to Wisconsin politics, having served in Congress and the state Assembly as minority leader. He also served as secretary of the state Department of Revenue before his 2024 run.

“On paper, it’s a competitive district,” said Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the Elections Research Center. “The trouble is Steil is a really formidable incumbent.”

Because Steil, who succeeded former House Speaker Paul Ryan in 2019, has a fundraising advantage and is not a controversial figure, Burden said this district is much harder to flip regardless of national Democratic efforts. Since the start of his latest term, Steil has raised $3 million, received more than $2 million from other committees and has $6.1 million cash on hand.

ER nurse Mitchell Berman has established a clear edge in the primary. He has received multiple lawmaker endorsements, including Reps. Ann Roe, D-Janesville; Ben DeSmidt, D-Kenosha; and Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha. He recently launched a six-figure ad buy, highlighting his experience as a nurse working with veterans and his campaign on protecting health care and lowering costs. He has raised over $650,000 and has about $220,000 cash on hand.

Milwaukee Ald. Peter Burgelis suspended his campaign after the July 15 campaign finance filing deadline and offered to support Berman. Burgelis’ report showed he had raised just over $54,000 in the most recent quarter. He had been campaigning on lowering costs, making communities safer and defending voting rights.

Lorenzo Santos, a Navy veteran and the former Young Democrats of Wisconsin chair, previously ran for the seat in 2024, but suspended his campaign before the primary. His top priorities include raising the federal minimum wage to $26 by 2030, universal Medicare and supporting veteran mental health services. He has about $10,000. 

Miguel Aranda is the Whitewater Unified School District Board vice president and the associate director of PreCollege Programs at UW-Whitewater. His campaign emphasizes that he is the only Spanish speaker in the race, and his priorities include criminal justice and immigration reform, supporting unions and protecting Medicare. He has more than $13,000 cash on hand.

What we’re watching: In what’s supposed to be a good year for Democrats and a bad year for incumbents, will a relatively unknown Democratic nominee give Steil any trouble?

Congressional District 3

The top Democratic target in Wisconsin is U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden. The 2024 Democratic nominee Rebecca Cooke and former Eau Claire City Council President Emily Berge are running in the Democratic primary.

Burden said this is the only congressional district in the state seriously in play for Democrats. 

Van Orden has had a controversial political career after succeeding longtime Democratic moderate Ron Kind. He is known for his incendiary tweets and past clashes such as scolding teenage Senate pages in 2023 and confronting a La Crosse library worker over an LGBTQ+ book display in 2021. He also closely aligns with President Donald Trump, who won Wisconsin in 2024 but has since seen his approval ratings crater.

“He’s in real jeopardy,” Burden said. “This could be a district that Republicans lose.”

Cooke lost to Van Orden in 2024 by less than 3 percentage points. Burden said her high-profile endorsements, including U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Bernie Sanders and state Sen. Brad Pfaff, D-Onalaska, give her a leg up in the Aug. 11 primary. Cooke leads in fundraising at nearly $7.5 million in the latest quarter with $2.5 million cash on hand while Van Orden raised $5.2 million with $4.7 million in the bank.

Cooke has faced criticism for portraying herself as a political outsider while working as a Democratic fundraiser and as a political consultant for controversy-courting Minocqua Brewing Company owner Kirk Bangstad. She has more recently worked with the center-left think tank Third Way.

Her biggest campaign priorities include expanding Medicare, supporting farmers and lowering costs for working families. 

Berge is running for the seat for the first time. She has received endorsements from legislators including state Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, and state Rep. Tara Johnson, D-town of Shelby. She touts her prior elected experience and supports universal health care and affordable housing. Berge has raised $686,000.

What we’re watching: What will Democratic turnout in the August primary tell us about Van Orden’s chances compared with 2024?

Congressional District 7

This far northern Wisconsin district has two loaded primaries as U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany wraps up three terms in Congress to run for governor. Five Republicans are vying to keep the seat red while three Democrats make their bids in what will likely remain a safe Republican district.

Wausau financial adviser Kevin Hermening, Chippewa County factory worker Jessi Ebben, Crescent business owner Niina Baum, Superior contractor Don Raihala, and Michael Alfonso, son-in-law of former congressman and current Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, are competing in the Republican primary. 

Alfonso leads the fundraising race at $1.25 million, with Ebben trailing behind with just over $460,000.

Hermening, a Marine veteran, has raised $103,000 for his campaign but also gave himself a $1 million loan. He is endorsed by lawmakers including state Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, and state Rep. Pat Snyder, R-Schofield. His top campaign issues include protecting Social Security and Medicare and supporting veterans.

Raihala said some of the biggest issues constituents have in the district are illegal immigration and the Jeffrey Epstein files, and he said he would continue to support deportations of immigrants lacking permanent legal status and the full release of the files.

Baum holds a more moderate view of immigration, saying that while she supports border security, she says immigrants are essential in Wisconsin and wants to create a “functional legal pathway” for workers. She also supports a data center moratorium and wants to uplift Wisconsin farmers. Baum has raised about $6,000.

Similar to Raihala, Ebben holds border security high on her priority list, as well as pro-life values, Second Amendment rights and strengthening rural communities. She also emphasizes her intense support for Trump, though she did not receive his endorsement for her campaign.

Trump’s endorsement went early in the race to Alfonso, 26, who also received endorsements from House Speaker Mike Johnson and four of the six Wisconsin Republican congressional incumbents. His top priorities include states’ rights, pro-life values and supporting school choice.

Burden said the Trump endorsement might not be enough to pull Alfonso through.

“Alfonso has these other liabilities,” Burden said. “His youth and inexperience are serious. He’s just old enough to serve in Congress and really has not had any experience being employed or working in party politics in any meaningful way.” 

The wealthy Republican Uihlein family split their donations in this district. Richard Uihlein donated to Alfonso’s campaign and gave $1 million to a PAC supporting him. But his wife, Elizabeth Uihlein, donated to Ebben’s campaign and gave $1 million to a PAC supporting her. Burden said this highlights the divide among party insiders whether to follow Trump’s lead or not.

What we’re watching: Is Trump’s endorsement enough to override concerns about inexperience and nepotism in northern Wisconsin?

Congressional District 8

Three Democratic newcomers are competing to unseat freshman U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, who won by about 15 percentage points against obstetrician-gynecologist Kristin Lyerly in 2024, in this solid Republican Green Bay area district. 

Mark Scheffler, a retired business owner, heavily campaigns on the idea of a “sustainable society,” which includes affordable health care, privacy rights and economic prosperity. He also prioritizes conservation and protecting the environment. Scheffler has raised just over $107,000, compared to Wied’s $1 million haul.

Rick Crosson is an Army veteran from Green Bay. His campaign says he wants to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs for more timely and quality treatment, fighting agriculture corporations to support small farmers and supporting rural reproductive health care. He has raised just over $63,000.

Democratic Socialist Katrina deVille, a transgender woman, advocates for a $22 federal minimum wage, universal health care and free child care. She also says she wants to file articles of impeachment against Trump on her first day if elected. She has raised just under $3,000.

What we’re watching: Can Democrats mount a credible challenge in northeast Wisconsin in what could be a blue wave year?

Here are four congressional races to watch in Wisconsin’s Aug. 11 primary is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.