The Rebecca Cooke Endorsement

Why this Wisconsin challenger is America's next top overperformer

ICYMI, Welcome identified the top Democratic overperformers of the 2022 cycle in supporting Will Rollins and Adam Frisch. Since then, we’ve worked to perfect a recipe for how Democrats can take on and beat MAGA incumbents in districts that aren’t traditionally competitive to build out an expanded “Red to Blue” target list. Give or take a few “ingredients,” we’ve found that this recipe comes down to three critical elements: a center-right district, a villainous extremist Republican, and a dynamic moderate Democratic challenger who elevates all that is wrong with MAGA — and right with Democrats.

Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin’s third congressional district fits the mold, and we’re thrilled to add her to this year’s Win The Middle slate as she takes on Derrick Van Orden. 

At first glance, WI-03 appears to be outside of the range of districts Democrats can successfully contest (Trump won it by 4.7 points). But the contrast of the villainous Van Orden’s extremism with Cooke’s deep rural roots in the district makes this a race that could prove critical in reclaiming and expanding a Democratic majority in the House come 2025.

Welcome Track Record of Picking Overperformers And Our Process

Welcome has an excellent track record of finding the races that pundits and race-raters miss. In 2022, we targeted two races: Colorado’s 3rd and California’s 41st — districts that pundits and race-raters said were “Safe” Republican seats. We recognized that the incumbents, Lauren Boebert and Ken Calvert, had fallen out of touch with their districts and were embracing an extreme right politics that didn’t represent the interests or sentiments of their constituents. 

We found two moderate, pragmatic Democrats committed to welcoming people into the Democratic coalition – not turn voters away with purity-test politics. With strong candidates like Adam Frisch and Will Rollins, these districts became tightly contested battlegrounds. Frisch’s strong performance led Boebert to seek employment elsewhere in a more reliably Republican district, while CA-41 has been added to the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” program.

In preparation for this November’s election, we put together a group of advisors from both the center-left and center-right. We solicited input from dozens of practitioners and analysts. We pored over national data and talked to on-the-ground experts to deepen our analysis of the races. We followed local media to determine which incumbents were getting out of step with their districts. 

We looked for those aforementioned criteria as we continue to build out our slate of endorsements for the 2024 cycle:

• Under-the-radar districts. It’s a fact: politicos understate the variance in politics. This leaves them vulnerable to missing districts that are outside of the traditional bounds of party competition including races like Boebert’s and Calvert’s as well as Alaska’s At-Large seat that Mary Peltola won, Jared Golden’s Maine district and Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez’s Washington seat.

• Non-traditional Democrats who welcome independents and moderates. The theory that you can “mobilize” your way to victory has been a proven failure everywhere it has been tried. The path to victory is distinguishing yourself from the national brand of the Democratic Party and welcoming moderate Republicans and independents into the anti-authoritarian coalition.

• Extremist incumbents. To pull moderate voters into the Democratic Party, we need a push in the form of extremist Republicans. That’s why we look for Republicans who are out of touch with their voters, pushing voters to consider moderate options. Extremists like Lauren Boebert have made the districts they represent ripe for disruption with their antics. 

Wisconsin’s Third District has every one of these crucial components.

Why Rebecca Cooke Will Overperform

Rebecca Cooke doesn’t sound like your average congressional candidate – let alone a Democratic candidate. Growing up on her family’s dairy farm, Rebecca’s family instilled in her the importance of perseverance and empathy. She later became a small business owner and was one of the millions of Americans whose livelihoods were dramatically impacted by the covid pandemic. Since then, she’s picked up shifts at a local restaurant and continues to waitress three nights a week — all while running for Congress. 

Rebecca understands people and their unique needs in Wisconsin. She intentionally reaches out to voters in the middle and works to earn their votes, particularly focused on the independent and moderate voters who embody the interests of her district. Rebecca’s quintessential “Welcome” campaign is building a coalition among Democrats, Republicans and Independent voters, which will help her defeat Van Orden in November. 

As a story from the Wisconsin Examiner shows, Cooke is laser-focused on moderate and persuadable voters. 

Cooke tells a story of a Republican voter she met at the Richland County fair last summer who at first wasn’t interested in talking to her because of her identification as a Democrat. She says she was able to connect with him because she could talk about the needs of people in the district. She says that after talking about her parents’ experience traveling to Mexico to get cheaper dental care and how that makes her believe in expanding Medicare to cover dental and vision, he opened up. 

“We had this long conversation, he told me he voted for Donald Trump and that I didn’t seem like a politician,” she says. “And that’s because I’m not one and I think that that’s what people in this district are really looking for, is someone that has shared a lot of those lived experiences, is also pragmatic in the types of policies that they’re putting forward.” 

Rebecca Cooke has raised the most money out of all the potential Democratic candidates, with $1.2 million raised thus far — $500k of that raised in Q1. She also touts the endorsement of the Blue Dogs, the leading Democratic entity with a track record of being able to win districts like Wisconsins’s 3rd.

However, to get a chance to take on Van Orden, she must first best Katrina Shankland, who is running a race backed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, the Elizabeth Warren arm of the Democratic Party.

The District

Wisconsin’s 3rd district is the type of district that parties often fail to contest because its electoral statistics fall just outside of the traditional range of competitiveness. The district voted for Trump by 4.7 points, but Van Orden, the incumbent, won by only 3.7 points in 2022. In 2022, Democratic SuperPACs spent $0 on the district, which ended up being far closer than projected by forecasters. Last year, WI-03 was rated “Likely Republican” but this year, it’s rated as only “Lean Republican,” indicating that the ratings agencies are catching up to our analysis. Before Van Orden, WI-03 – a rural-suburban district covering western Wisconsin –  was represented by moderate Democrat Ron Kind. 

When Kind retired ahead of the 2022 election, Democrats declined to spend significantly to protect this seat. But in a surprise, the district’s election results ended up being significantly closer than projected. This tightness was likely due to Van Orden’s extremism. WI-03 is a seat that Governor Evers won twice (in both 2018 and 2022) and that Senator Baldwin won by 13 points in 2018.

The Incumbent

Van Orden conducts himself as though he represents a district that Trump won by 10+ points. He participated in Trump's January 6th insurrection rally and said of his participation, "I went there to stand with them, to stand up for electoral integrity." He has been seen yelling and cursing at teenaged Senate pages after partying in his office where alcohol was spotted, drawing rebukes from members of his own party. Van Orden also wrote a book called the Book of Man: A Navy SEAL's Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood that included a story about exposing a man's genitals to female officers. He has missed a number of key votes, but did find time to vote against expelling serial liar George Santos. Van Orden is not from the district and only moved there a few years before first running for Congress in 2020. More recently, he interrupted President Biden’s State of the Union speech by shouting “lies,” which means that in his boorishness, he can’t even manage to be original. 

Join Us

We’re asking the Welcome community to join us in supporting Rebecca Cooke. Our Community has a long history of picking the winners, and we hope you’ll join us as we seek to Win the Middle and protect democracy by practicing it - especially in districts that lean to the right. Support Rebecca Cooke so we can send Derrick Van Orden home and return order to the House.

You can contribute to Rebecca via our Win the Middle slate.