WATERTOWN, Wis. — In Wisconsin’s most competitive House race, Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke is positioning herself as a moderate on a top issue for Republican voters, immigration — despite having criticized her opponent for running a campaign on securing the border.
The Trump-endorsed incumbent, Rep. Derrick Van Orden, has been an outspoken opponent of the Biden administration’s border policies.
Although Cook Political Report rates the race lean Republican, Democrats view Cooke’s candidacy as a possible pick-up opportunity this November since she defeated a sitting state legislator who was closely aligned with party leaders in Wisconsin’s August primary.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), a former Navy SEAL, flipped western Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District red by 3.7 percentage points after long-time moderate Democrat Ron Kind retired.
Cooke, a political strategist and part-time waitress, has focused on her platform on healthcare, unions, abortion and rural issues in her campaign.
Van Orden has been crystal clear with his positions on illegal migration and border security. He’s visited the border to highlight the issues there, and cast a national spotlight on migrant crime after a suspected Tren de Aragua member carried out an alleged assault on a mother and daughter in his hometown of Praire du Chien.
His Democratic opponent’s position on these issues are more difficult to nail down.
Cooke’s website does not mention immigration in her list of priorities. Yet, in a recent ad, her talking points are carefully calibrated to appeal to voters who are “somewhere in the middle.”
That’s how Cooke defines herself in the ad, as she stands, quite literally, in the middle of the road on her family’s farm, firing off promises of a Goldilocks policy platform.
“I’ll stand up to Democrats to fight for a secure border, and stop wasteful spending,” she says, before vowing to also stand up to “extremists like Derrick Van Orden.”
In the most recent Marquette Law School Poll of registered voters in Wisconsin, Democrats ranked immigration and border security as the least important issue to them (1%), compared to Independents (6%) and Republicans (31%).
Cooke’s moderation on border security may signal she’s looking to pick up Republican votes her rural district, which is rated R+4 on Cook’s Partisan Voter Index.
Per an April 2023 survey by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School for Workers, more than10,000 undocumented migrant workers perform an estimated 70% of labor on Wisconsin’s approximately 5,500 dairy farms.
During her hotly contested Democratic primary earlier this year, Cooke took part in a Zoom panel with her fellow primary candidates hosted by Citizen Action Wisconsin in December of 2023.
In response to a community question on immigration, Cooke took the opportunity to distinguish herself from the Republican incumbent.
She characterized herself as “somebody that would support DACA, support the American Dream and Promise Act,” referring to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy and the subsequent legislation introduced in 2021 to provide permanent residential status to certain illegal immigrants who entered the country as a minor.
“This is a stark contrast to somebody like Derrick Van Orden, who ran his campaign on securing our borders, without any consideration of the impact that has on communities and people that are already living in the US, and contributing so much to our economies and our communities as a whole,” Cooke continued.
The Post contacted Cooke and Van Orden for specifics on their immigration policies and how they differ in their approach to the border.
Cooke’s response was short on specifics about securing the border, other than hiring more border patrol agents, and reiterated her position on immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
“We can do both,” Cooke said in a statement to The Post. “We can secure the border and keep law-abiding immigrants in this country who were brought here as children. I support more border agents and securing the border, which has to be part of Congress fixing our broken immigration system in Washington.”
Rep. Van Orden attacked Cooke on multiple fronts but also spoke about his work to address the immigrant labor issue.
“Two significant differences between Cooke and myself is that I will always put the safety of my fellow Americans first, and I have proven that over decades serving as a Navy SEAL in multiple combat zones,” the Republican said in a statement to The Post.
“A final difference is unlike the hyper-partisan Cooke I have been working diligently in Congress on the Bipartisan Agricultural Labor Working Group to solve the issues with the broken immigrant labor system centered on the H-2A program,” the statement continued.
“We can ensure border security and economic stability in the job market at the same time, you just have to have the will and the wherewithal to do so. I have both, Cooke does not.”
The H-2A program currently allows foreign nationals to legally fill temporary agricultural jobs, provided they meet specific regulatory requirements.
The latest polling on the District 3 race is from late September, and comes from the GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund. That survey puts Van Orden 5 points ahead of Cooke, 49% to 44%, with a +/- 4.9% margin of error. The Democrat-aligned House Majority PAC poll conducted Sept. 8-10 showed Cooke leading Van Orden, 49% to 47%.
