Cooke Defeats Rep. Van Orden to Flip Third Congressional District

After falling short in the 2024 election, Democrat Rebecca Cooke has emerged victorious in the rematch for Wisconsin's Third Congressional District.

Cooke defeated incumbent Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden in Tuesday's election, flipping the seat back to Democratic control after two terms under Republican control. Speaking to an excited crowd of supporters after Congressman Van Orden called to concede the race, Cooke promised Western Wisconsin residents that help was on the way.

"This is a victory for all of us," she said. "For anyone who is struggling to pay your rent or your mortgage, drowning in medical debt, worrying if you'll have to sell the farm, help is coming."

While the result was different this time around, Cooke's campaign strategy remained largely the same as 2024. Speaking at her campaign headquarters in Eau Claire on Tuesday morning, she highlighted her increased capacity to connect with Western Wisconsin residents on the persistent issues like healthcare accessibility they've struggled with over the past few years as well as new issues like the impact of tariffs and higher gas prices as the difference maker.

"When you look at the impact the healthcare cuts have had to people in this district, hospital closures," she said. "You also look at this war in Iran which nobody voted for, jacked up diesel prices, fertilizer prices, and that increases the cost for everybody because it just takes more to ship goods to the grocery store. And so I think people are hurting more than ever and need people that are rooted in reality that are going to deliver results and actually really work across the aisle. So I think a lot of the things that we've been talking about are similar, but also we've just grown our capacity to be able to communicate and talk to people around this district about those issues and I think that's been one of the difference makers for sure."

The Associated Press officially called the race just before midnight on Tuesday. Cooke's lead stood at around 12,000 votes with 99 percent counted.