The truth is out. Former Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden is the real working-class candidate in the 3rd congressional district race that could determine control of Congress.
His leftist opponent Rebecca Cooke screwed over liberal Emily Berge and Democratic primary voters, tricking them with her fake ‘Swiss Miss’ fresh-faced rural/working class waitress routine. It’s now exposed. She’s actually been on the payroll all along of two liberal George Soros-linked orgs – and raking in rental income. Rebecca Cooke is a wily leftist operative and Chardonnay liberal, not a yodeling farm girl.
Too bad she managed to hide this essential truth from voters (and Berge, the primary opponent she defeated) until two days after the primary election.
Candidates for Congress are required to disclose their finances 30 days before elections. The point is so voters can get a clearer picture of who they are and how they make their money. Cooke, of course, requested an extension, so voters couldn’t see her records until (worth repeating) TWO days after she defeated Berge in the 3rd Democratic congressional primary. Of course.
There was a crafty calculation behind the delay because, when the records came out, they exposed who Cooke really is and always was – a liberal political operative. That’s not the carefully crafted image she’s created. At this point, I half expect her to plait her red hair into braids and run around a mountain top in a blue dress with white apron, carrying a mug of hot chocolate with little marshmallows. It’s all fake.
She’s really a stone-cold liberal political operative, like one of those black-clad female assassins in John Wick.
Cooke is an avid supporter of DSA socialist Zohran Mamdani. That’s on video because occasionally she slips up. She is disgusted by immigration enforcement and would almost certainly erode your 2nd Amendment rights if elected. Soros’ vision for America is clear.
Cooke would likely join those trying to systematically implement a dystopian hellscape with hobbled police and empowered criminals, legal hard drugs, open borders, a weak military and feckless DAs. As for working class affordability? She would push economic policies that would bankrupt the country, penalize success and move the United States closer to Mamdani-style socialism.
She doesn’t really fit the independent-minded swing area of the state she’s running in (LaCrosse area), so she appears to have carefully assembled a persona like the mad scientist building a robot in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and the goal is to destroy a city.
Derrick Van Orden Is the Working Class Candidate in This Race
The real working class candidate in this race is former Navy SEAL intelligence chief Derrick Van Orden. Say what you want about his salty rhetoric – the guy is completely self made, came from poverty, and gives it to you straight. While Cooke was in middle school and then building her now hidden career as a leftist fundraiser and campaign consultant, he was serving five combat deployments in the Horn of Africa, Asia, Europe, and South and Central America. He was responsible for planning Special Operations contingency operations for the European Continent.
rebecca cooke
He was raised in rural poverty by a single mother who relied on food stamps and government cheese.
Cooke’s liberal supporters have been trashing the guy for getting… a military pension. That’s sick. Meanwhile, Swiss Miss was cozying up to veterans. Imagine what he saw and did for this country. Yet her supporters routinely show him gross disrespect, even trashing him for getting military benefits that he surely greatly earned.
Van Orden’s Heritage Action score shows that he has an independent streak even as he typically votes with Republicans. If Van Orden wasn’t in the swing district once held for decades by a Democrat (Ron Kind), he would widely be regarded as the independent-streaked tell-it-like-it-is patriot that he is. Because he’s in a swing district, he’s been mischaracterized, caricatured, insulted and lampooned by a media more concerned about his jokes than Cooke’s dishonesty. As with Ron Johnson, voters seem to appreciate authenticity. They don’t demand perfection or want slick words.
I’ll tell you something about Van Orden too. He’s incredibly transparent. I could call him right now and ask him anything. He’d answer.
Meanwhile, Cooke is a failed political candidate, failed businesswoman and career political operative. Bio matters because it informs how you would lead.
Two Democrat Women Tried to Warn You
Don’t believe me if you don’t want. Listen to the words of two respected Democrat women who tried to warn voters about Cooke’s audacious dishonesty.
Berge, a liberal mental health counselor who sits on the Eau Claire city council, tried to warn everyone. She was shouting it all from the rooftops but in the end her candidacy was drowned out by Cooke’s spending and establishment ties.
“It’s about transparency and to know what’s in her financial disclosure report,” Berge told the media before the primary. “I think that’s only fair… Elected officials and candidates, I believe, are held to a higher standard, and people need to know all the information when they’re voting. And so the fact that it comes after the election, I think, is worrisome to a lot of people.” Berge also outright accused shadowy Democratic establishment powerbrokers from out of state of trying to rig the primary for Cooke.
And another liberal woman, Katrina Shankland, who also lost in a primary to Cooke, tried to do the same – warn people about who Cooke really is.
In 2024, Shankland, a Democrat who served six terms in the state Assembly, released a press release accusing Cooke of lying to voters.
Shankland’s press release was headlined: “Rebecca Cooke caught lying about her background as a political fundraiser, backs out of debate, and begs for dark money help against Shankland.”
It reads: “Wisconsin voters in the 3rd Congressional District yesterday learned a lot about the real Rebecca Cooke. Cooke has fashioned herself as ‘just a waitress,’ a ‘small business owner,’ and a ‘nonprofit leader,’ but it turns out that she has primarily spent her career as a political fundraiser—raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
So, yes, Cooke has been doing this for years, but the latest finance report shows that she is STiLL doing it. She is and always was a very liberal campaign and political operative. And she has always tried to obscure that with her working class waitress routine. She once posted a photo showing her broken down car, so she really lathers it on thick.
A Failed Small Business
By the way, Cooke’s small business failed and her nonprofit? It only gave out 17 grants while Cooke was earning compensation there during recent years, and, in the most recent tax form available, the nonprofit spent more money on its employees than it did on grants.
But the establishment and big donors from out of state keep screwing over other Democratic women like Shankland and Berge to prop up Cooke, even though she lost to Van Orden last time. I guess who you know pays off. This time, Cooke is getting money from George Soros’ son and Melinda Gates, who share nothing in common with actual working class folks in the 3rd, which is located on the western side of the state.
Cooke once ran the campaign for leftwing nutball Kirk Bangstad, of Minocqua Brewing infamy.
In Metropolis, the ‘False Maria’ robot – known as the Maschinenmensch – is created by the mad scientist to trick working class people and ruin a city. Perfect. Only I suspect that the wily leftist political operative Cooke is the mad scientist herself who set out to create the image she thinks could win, instead of giving voters who she really is. It’s too late for the primary – but not the general election.
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