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One of the biggest question marks in the Democrats’ fight for a swing seat in western Wisconsin is the extent to which their national opponents will get involved in the election campaign.
On Thursday they received a hint of an answer.
The House Democrats’ main campaign arm has added nonprofit owner Rebecca Cooke to its “Red to Blue” program, a list of top candidates they plan to support to flip Republican-held seats and win back the majority. Cooke won a three-Democratic primary on Tuesday and will face incoming Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in November.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s addition of Cooke to its list is the latest signal that national Democrats may be focusing on Wisconsin’s swing 3rd Congressional District. The group had listed the district last year as one of more than two dozen “in the race” for 2024. But Red to Blue’s addition suggests the group is “interested in giving Cooke … the support needed to continue to build a successful campaign,” the DCCC said Thursday.
“Western Wisconsin residents can trust that Rebecca Cooke is there for them because that is what she has done her entire life – from opening a small business in Eau Claire to helping other women in her community become entrepreneurs to working with Governor Evers to create jobs in Wisconsin,” said DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene, a congresswoman from Washington.
How much national Democrats will engage in the 3rd Congressional District this year has been in question since Wisconsin Democrats accused the national party of abandoning their candidate last election cycle. Van Orden defeated Onalaska Democratic Sen. Brad Pfaff by about 4 percentage points, making the seat a red seat for the first time in 26 years.
Van Orden raised far more money than Pfaff and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from outside Republican groups during the campaign, while the DCCC and other Democratic groups abandoned Pfaff. In fact, the DCCC invested no money in Pfaff, and Pfaff was not placed on the group’s “Red to Blue” list.
House Majority PAC, the largest outside group for congressional campaigns for Democrats, reserved $1.68 million for ad buys for Pfaff at the end of the campaign, but later cancelled these reservations.
Republicans have seized on the Democrats’ negative showing in the primaries this year as a sign that Van Orden has a better chance of winning in November. The National Republican Congressional Committee has tried to label Cooke “extreme” as Democrats have targeted Van Orden’s temperament.
The DCCC’s move Thursday is no guarantee that the group will invest heavily in Cooke’s campaign against Van Orden. But Wisconsin Democrats have gained confidence in recent months that support will come.
The House Majority PAC late last month reserved nearly $4 million for October television advertising across the district. The total included about $1.2 million in the La Crosse media market, $1.2 million in the Madison media market and $1.4 million in the Wausau market.
Cooke told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that her campaign team had “done everything we could to get people to want to invest in this district.”
She said she is determined to convince people that the 3rd Congressional District is a “prime opportunity” to persuade Democrats to flip the Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the House. She said she wants to reach moderate and independent voters by campaigning not only in the more populous cities of Eau Claire, La Crosse and Stevens Point, but also in the district’s rural, Republican towns.
“I know we share a lot of similar values,” Cooke said. “So this is going to be a really important task for us to get people off the sidelines and win voters over.”
Cooke reported raising more than $2 million before the primary — the most ever raised by a Democrat in the race — and had about $590,000 in cash on hand. Van Orden has raised nearly $4.9 million so far this cycle. He had $2.4 million in cash on hand at the end of last month.
“I think it’s about doing the work and investing time in reaching out to voters and building a grassroots campaign,” Cooke said of the Democrats’ nationwide support.
She added: “We will continue to raise the necessary resources on our own to show that we are strong in this race.”
