Van Orden rides with Trump in campaign for third term

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, the Republican incumbent running for reelection in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, one of the most hotly contested House races in the country, has decided his best chance is to dance with the one who brought him — President Donald Trump. 

“Derrick, this guy he fights like hell. He’s in a little bit of a community that tends to be on slightly, a little bit more than we wanted, left, but he loves them all, and he’s very popular, and he’s going to win by a lot,” Trump said of Van Orden at a June rally in Chippewa Falls. “You’re doing well. I understand you’re really doing well. So, thank you and he’s a real fighter … we’ve been friends right from the beginning.” 

Trump’s approval ratings have hit all-time lows in Wisconsin recently, a potential problem for Van Orden, whose seat is one of the Democratic Party’s top targets for flipping this year. The two-term Republican is running for the second time against Democrat Rebecca Cooke, who two years ago lost to Van Orden by only 2.7 points, in a district where Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris by 7.4 points. 

Between the two campaigns and outside groups, the increasingly heated race is nearing $30 million in spending on mostly negative ads. Van Orden’s ads have alliteratively accused Cooke of being “corrupt” and “communist” while calling her authenticity into question — largely over charges that she’s highlighted her work as a waitress while downplaying her previous work for Democratic political campaigns and interest groups. 

“I think the campaign has gotten intensely negative, with authenticity being a core theme,” Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said. “I’m seeing authenticity come up on both sides, where Congressman Van Orden and his allies are going after the persona or biography of Rebecca Cooke, particularly her waitressing, has become kind of a flashpoint in this campaign. And for Congressman Van Orden, Democrats are going after him as kind of saying that he’s part of the problem in Washington, and that’s a tried and true strategy for unseating an incumbent, to portray them as part of the problem.”

Congress, Chergosky continued, “has rock bottom approval ratings as an institution, so incumbents are often targeted due to their membership in an unpopular institution. Chergosky expects the attack ads will blanket the airwaves up to Election Day, he said. “I think that this is going to continue to be a very negative campaign.” 

Across the country, a number of vulnerable Republicans have sought to find areas to distance themselves from an unpopular president. Even in Wisconsin, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany — despite a voting record that has been in near perfect lockstep with the Trump administration — has tried to put some breathing room between himself and Trump. 

But Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, has gone the other way, continuing to vocally support the Trump administration, the war in Iran, Trump’s tariffs, his steering of the economy and the administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown. 

In September, Van Orden was the only member of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation to speak at Trump’s midterm convention in Texas. 

Throughout the year, the 3rd CD has hosted a parade of high-profile administration officials and top-ranking Republicans. 

Van Orden has appeared in his western Wisconsin district with Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Administrator Mehmet Oz and House Speaker Mike Johnson. 

“We are defending, right now, the foundational truths, and I’ve got to have warriors in the room to do it,” Johnson said at a rally in Sparta earlier this month. “There is no stronger warrior than Derrick Van Orden.” 

In recent weeks, Van Orden has made online posts suggesting he would volunteer to join the firing squad in the planned execution of Nidal Hasan, the man convicted of a mass shooting at Fort Hood, accusing Cooke of supporting the “chemical and physical castration of children and men in woman’s locker rooms” and alleging that she wants to bring “Somali fraud” to Wisconsin. 

He’s also posted a number of AI-generated videos of Cooke and other Democratic Party of Wisconsin officials, a tactic that drew a cease and desist letter from the Cooke campaign. Van Orden called the letter a “publicity stunt.” 

A spokesperson for Van Orden did not respond to a request for comment, but in an interview with Channel 3000, Van Orden strongly endorsed Trump’s ongoing war in Iran and argued that the high price of gas and diesel is not only because of the war causing shocks to global oil markets but also due to Democrats “chasing the green new scam” and U.S. oil companies “profiteering.” 

“Is this politically convenient right now? Absolutely not,” Van Orden said in the interview, in which he also referenced the “radical Muslim mullahs” who led the Iranian revolution in the 1970s. “Would it be much easier for Republicans to maintain the House and the Senate if we weren’t involved in this conflict in Iran? Yes. I would be a fool not to acknowledge that. But at some point, we have to deal with this issue that’s been going on for a half a century.”

Chergosky said that Van Orden “doubling down on Trumpism” might be a valid strategy in a district that’s voted for Trump three times. 

The problem, he said, is that those Trump voters haven’t always been reliable when Trump isn’t on the ballot. 

“I think Republicans in this district are making a play to turn out the pro-Trump base, and it’s a base that has delivered for Trump three times, but with any midterm election, we’re going to see a significant drop-off in voter turnout,” Chergosky said. “So a lot of times these midterms come down to the question of, among the voters who voted in the presidential election, which of them stay home this time around? In other words, who drops out of the electorate compared to the presidential election? And so I think the concern for Republicans is that a lot of these pro-Trump, low-propensity voters are going to drop out of the electorate, and I can see them trying to avoid that certainly through Congressman Van Orden’s strategy.” 

But the 3rd CD is also a district that for decades was represented by Ron Kind, a moderate Democrat. Van Orden, with his divisive and confrontational style, has been elected twice deploying a different approach to politics; still, joining forces with some of the most controversial members of Trump’s cabinet could alienate voters. 

At an agricultural roundtable hosted by the Cooke campaign last week, voters complained about the anti-vaccine “conspiracy theories” espoused by figures such as Kennedy resulting in measles outbreaks in the area. At a town hall hosted by the Wisconsin Farmers Union in Gays Mills, attendees lamented the treatment of immigrant workers at the district’s farms and manufacturing plants. 

“Derrick Van Orden has not delivered a successful farm bill out of this Congress,” Cooke said last week. “I don’t think that he’s really done very much at all to support our family farms or people in agriculture across this district.”

In the Channel 3000 interview, Van Orden made the case that he’s been a serious legislator, listing the three committees he sits on.

While in Congress, he voted in favor of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut billions from federal healthcare programs and has hurt the bottom line of rural hospitals in the 3rd CD. After voting for the law, Van Orden has touted his work to provide millions of dollars to rural hospitals in Wisconsin. But that funding provides only $200 million after the OBBBA cut $7 billion in federal healthcare funds meant for the state, an analysis by KFF found last year

From his position on the House Agriculture committee, Van Orden has suggested expanding the H2-A visa program to help the district’s dairy farms get more immigrant labor. But the H2-A program only applies to seasonal farm workers, not the year round workers needed on a dairy farm. Van Orden has also proposed the creation of a new system in which currently undocumented workers return to their home country and pay $2,500 to get in line and wait to be approved for a new visa. 

“They should expect me to work doggedly, like I have been doing. I’ve been an incredibly effective legislator,” he said.