Sitting in an Onalaska bar festooned with Green Bay Packers paraphernalia, House Democratic candidate Rebecca Cooke swigged Miller Lite and promised union leaders to push for their priorities if she wins the race for a rural Wisconsin seat.
Over her shoulder, a television blared a super PAC ad bashing her opponent, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), for attending the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington, D.C.
Both candidates talk about economic and national security issues in this competitive House race that could decide which party controls that chamber next year. But the specter of the Capitol insurrection looms over the race for Wisconsin’s 3rd District, one filled with rolling hills, farmlands and small college towns along the Mississippi River.
Van Orden, the first-term conservative lawmaker and a former Navy SEAL, is the only sitting member of Congress who was a part of those protests. His candidacy tests whether voters will punish him over it. Other candidates tied to the deadly insurrection have failed to win House races.
Van Orden has repeatedly rejected attacks on his actions tied to Jan. 6. He took to X, then known as Twitter, at the time calling for prosecution “to the fullest extent of the law” of insurrectionists’ violence that “disgraces” the service of veterans.
“Do me a favor: next time, do your homework before you ask me that question,” said Van Orden, when asked by Bloomberg Government about participating in the riots. He has stressed he never entered the Capitol itself and left when the insurrection broke out.
Cooke, who leads a small, non-profit organization that makes grants promoting women leaders, believes Jan. 6 concerns resonate in a district that Van Orden only narrowly won two years ago. But she also said it cannot be the sole focus of her campaign.
“There’s a part of the electorate that really cares about it and that is very concerned with the future of our democracy,” Cooke said in an interview. “But what I hear the most from about people in this district is they’re concerned about just being able to get food on their table, to be able to afford their rent.”
Van Orden’s district flipped from supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 to former President Donald Trump four years later. The same voters that sent him to Congress in 2022 split their preference between statewide races that year, backing both Gov. Tony Evers (D) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R).
“It’s the ultimate swing district,” said former Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), a senior counsel at Arnold & Porter who represented the district for 26 years before his 2023 retirement. Van Orden’s reputation is “one of the reasons why this is such a competitive race this year.”
Dueling Messages
Van Orden has tried to avoid Jan. 6 on the trail. Instead, he’s pushed TV ads promising to secure the southern border with Mexico and zeroing in on Cooke’s years as a former professional fundraiser for Democrats.
After touring a dairy farm in Republican Dunn County with Wisconsin Farm Bureau members this month, Van Orden said his messaging in the closing weeks will center on inflation and ratcheting military tensions in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.
“Everybody just ask yourself: are you better off now than you were four years ago?” Van Orden told reporters. “And if they’re honest, they’re going say no. That means you need a change in leadership.”
But it remains to be seen if Van Orden will get voters to see beyond Jan. 6.
Van Orden’s participation in the Washington insurrection is a cornerstone of Democrats’ broader argument that he lacks the temperament to remain in Congress. Democrats cite Van Orden’s verbal abuse of Senate pages and a local librarian as often as they point out Van Orden crossed police barricades during the Capitol riots.
“Anybody that had any part in that, I can’t get past that,” said Steve Scholtz, an Eau Claire mushroom farmer who said he voted for both Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush before more recently supporting Democrats.
In La Crosse, Cooke recently joined retired top military and civilian officials at memorials to foreign wars where they declared Van Orden’s Jan. 6 participation disqualifying.
“I just could not understand how a person in our district could be there at the January 6th thing and post about it,” said Laurie Brindle, a Navy veteran who voted for Republicans until Trump’s ascension and is supporting Cooke.
Republicans meanwhile have leveraged the federal indictment against Trump for his efforts to overturn the election to turn out their base.
“Everything we do is illegal and everything they do is just overlooked,” said Gayle Johnson, an Eau Claire Republican who said Van Orden was “peacefully and patriotically” protesting President Joe Biden’s victory. “It’s always a Republican that gets in trouble for nothing.”
House Leaders Spending
Van Orden has the support of Trump and has been a stalwart ally of the former president, blasting the judge that oversaw Trump’s conviction on charges of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payments to a porn star as “communist scum.”
Both parties are spending on the race, a sign of its competitiveness.
Van Orden has raised about $6.3 million as of Sept. 30 compared to Cooke’s $4.6 million.
House Majority PAC, the top super PAC for House Democrats, has spent over $3 million on TV, digital and mail ads highlighting Van Orden’s opposition to abortion.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) preferred super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, responded by dumping nearly $1.5 million in TV ads across the district’s two main media markets and another $250,000 in spots on streaming services.
Cooke believes voters will be thinking about the 2021 Capitol protests ahead of the elections and it could win her votes.
“I think there is some fear around with 2024 not seeing the same thing happen,” she said.
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