As Democrats try to unseat controversial Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden this November, Tuesday’s primary in Wisconsin has divided them on who’s best to do it.
Democrats are largely split between the two most competitive candidates: small business owner Rebecca Cooke and state Rep. Katrina Shankland.
On Cooke’s side are a number of moderates and groups associated with vulnerable Democrats — like the Blue Dogs and New Democrats — as well as Reps. Brad Schneider, Jared Golden, Mike Thompson, Raul Ruiz, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Sharice Davids.
And on Shankland’s side are Wisconsin’s two Democratic congressional representatives, Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore — both of whom are, like Shankland, solidly progressive — as well as Reps. Betty McCollum of Minnesota and Eric Sorensen of Illinois.
Pocan, one of the founders of the Progressive Caucus, is even campaigning with Shankland ahead of the primary and going after Cooke for her attacks on his preferred candidate.
Cooke “keeps up her negative, malicious campaign against Katrina Shankland,” Pocan posted on X last week. “From push polls to tv ads, WI-3 will push back against the lies on 8/13.”
Pocan has also criticized Cooke for not condemning dark money, writing on X, “If people can try to buy your election, what will they do when you’re elected?”
(Cooke’s campaign has received $5,000 from the Blue Dog PAC and $14,200 from Blue Dog-aligned WelcomePAC. WelcomePAC has also spent around $206,000 supporting Cooke. Meanwhile, the David Hogg-affiliated Leaders We Deserve PAC has spent $194,000 supporting Shankland.)
New Dems Chair Rep. Annie Kuster told NOTUS in a statement that the New Democrats are “dedicated to defeating Derrick Van Orden and wholeheartedly believe Rebecca Cooke is the best candidate to make that a reality.”
“The House majority runs through districts like Wisconsin’s third,” she said.
The Democratic primary race has become increasingly heated over the last month. Cooke and Shankland have been publicly attacking each other, with Shankland accusing Cooke in late July of “begging” for “dark money” groups to launch “false attacks” on Shankland’s record.
Cooke’s campaign website indeed includes a “media toolkit” that claims Shankland has “consistently voted with Republicans,” made it harder to expand health care in Wisconsin, voted for tax cuts for the wealthy and tried to “remove restrictions that prevented sex offenders from being close to schools, parks and daycare centers.”
(Shankland has a dedicated page on her campaign site — “Get the Facts” — denying those claims from Cooke.)
But while neither Democratic candidate has yet to earn a slot on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “Red to Blue” list, and the tough primary may not help either woman, the DCCC clearly thinks Democrats have a shot in the district no matter who wins on Tuesday.
The campaign arm for House Democrats has put out numerous press releases about Van Orden over the past months, and the DCCC placed the seat on its “Districts in Play” list last year. A Democratic strategist familiar with the DCCC’s thinking said the group hadn’t put the district on the “Red to Blue” list because of the competitive primary, but this strategist suggested that would change once there’s an official Democratic candidate.
Another Democratic operative said the DCCC thought both candidates were capable of winning in November and that, because of that, there was no use in trying to “block” one person over the other.
“If you’re going to light a fire inside of your caucus and create a headache, be calculated inside of that,” this operative said. “Don’t do it haphazardly.”
While some Democrats may prefer one candidate over another, the DCCC seems to think it could win with either Cooke or Shankland.
The group has been highlighting news reports about Van Orden cursing at Senate pages and attending a “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C. (Van Orden actually used campaign funds to attend the rally and watched the riots from Capitol grounds, past the barricades that the crowd stepped over when protesters overwhelmed police.)
Wisconsin’s Democratic Party has also been careful to stay out of the primary, though the deputy director of communications for the state party, Haley McCoy, told NOTUS that the party planned to get involved once there was a candidate. The state party hoped national Democrats would also pay attention to this race, unlike in 2022 when Van Orden won.
“In 2022, that race was really a missed opportunity,” McCoy said, noting that the Democratic candidate at the time, Brad Pfaff, got within 4 points of winning.
“And that was after the DCCC bowed out of the race,” McCoy said. “They didn’t put in any funding, they canceled TV reservations, and so there was sort of this hesitancy from national Democrats to get involved in a race that we thought would be really competitive.”
Despite not getting involved in the primary, the state party has been knocking on doors in the district, advocating for specific state legislators. And when Democratic volunteers campaign for those state lawmakers, the script includes that “we also want you to vote against Derrick Van Orden.”
“So once we have a candidate, it’ll be like second nature for them to listen in to us,” McCoy said.
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Nuha Dolby is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.