She’s a waitress raised on a farm – can Rebecca Cooke win a key Wisconsin seat?

Wisconsin’s third congressional district has voted for Donald Trump every time he’s been on the ballot, but the moderate Democrat Rebecca Cooke, a waitress who grew up on a dairy farm, thinks she can flip the state’s most competitive seat next year.

Last year, Cooke outperformed other Democrats when she tried to unseat incumbent Derrick Van Orden, a retired US Navy Seal who attended the January 6 “Stop the Steal
” rally at the Capitol and shouted “lies” during Joe Biden’s 2024 state of the union address. She lost the race by less than three points.

She’s trying again. She launched her 2026 campaign in March, amid constituent anger at Van Orden for refusing to face questions at in-person town halls. She is doubling down on the campaigning that worked for in November, hitting the pavement across the western Wisconsin district.

In the soul-searching among Democrats over the future of their party, Cooke aligns with the moderate Blue Dog coalition led by Washington state representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who told Mother Jones that after she endorsed Cooke, Van Orden “shoulder-checked me on the floor”.

But Cooke rejects a label within the party, calling them “somewhat harmful” and polarizing in her district. She tells voters that she thinks lawmakers in DC are either too far left or too far right, and that there need to be more regular folks willing to work across the aisle to get things done. The idea resonates with people, who tell her they’re over the polarization and chaos. She needs votes from people across the political spectrum to win in the moderately right-leaning district.

Cooke’s resumé is the kind often cobbled together in small towns across the US: she works as a waitress, she ran a retail business and an Airbnb business, she worked on Democratic campaigns, and she started a nonprofit to support women entrepreneurs. She first ran for the congressional seat in 2022, losing in the Democratic primary, then again in 2024, beating out two other Democrats to take on Van Orden.

She has been waitressing since she was a teenager, she said. “I love that work. I love the hospitality industry. I think there’s so much dignity in hospitality work, and it’s something that allows me being able to work at night, to be able to campaign all day.”

She said her “more working-class” background aligns with the district but upsets her opponents, who have brought up her work on Democratic campaigns. The National Republican Campaign Committee has repeatedly called her a “sleazy political activist” and said she is lying about her background.

“I’d love them to see the car that I drive around, and the place that I live,” she said. “Anybody that knows me knows that I’m not rolling in dough by any means.”

Cooke grew up on a dairy farm, but her family had to sell their cows because of how competition affected the price of milk. Losing the farm wasn’t just losing a business, she said. “It’s just very much a part of our way of life, and we’ve lost thousands of dairy farms in Wisconsin.”

In June, farmers around the state will host breakfasts to promote dairy farming. She said she’ll be at every dairy breakfast she can get to in the district, shaking hands and introducing herself.

“I don’t know what people’s political background is, but when I’m shaking their hand, I’ll say, I’m Rebecca Cooke, I grew up on a dairy farm, and I tell them a little bit about my background,” she said. “By the end of the conversation, they go, so, what party are you from? And I would rather that question if they’re agreeing with me on similar values.”

Cooke said she thinks Democrats need to bring people back into a big tent through pragmatism and detailing how their agenda would help Americans afford their housing and groceries.

The party needs to create its own “prosperity gospel instead of just demonizing the right”, she said. “What are we going to do better? And how are we going to help people find their path to the middle class?” Democrats need to be bold, fresh and and willing to be “more uninhibited”.

“I really think the change that we want to see has to come from the inside out and not from the outside in,” she said. “We need to look to our communities to solve these gaps and this vacuum and work to recruit people to be those strong voices and to run for office.

“It shouldn’t be like, this is coming from the national party, and this is what you should think or do. It should be, this is what’s coming from our communities, and this is what we want the party to do.”