Rebecca Cooke flips Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District for Democrats

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.

Originally published by Wisconsin Examiner, a nonprofit news organization.