New DCCC Poll Shows Rebecca Cooke Ahead of Anti-Abortion Extremist Derrick Van Orden

Democrats, needing to gain only a handful of seats to flip control of the House, have reason to be optimistic about their chances in western Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, where a waitress at a farm-to-table restaurant is hoping to knock off incumbent and first-term Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden.

Rebecca Cooke leads Van Orden 49% to 48% in a new poll, according to a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee memo obtained by HuffPost.

The DCCC memo showed Cooke had leads when comparing who voters felt better reflected their position on abortion (an 11-point advantage) and which candidate was more relatable (a 6-point advantage).

Cooke, who said she campaigns during the day and then goes to her waitressing job at night three times a week, has emphasized her ties to the local community as a key part of her strategy.

"I'll spend all day talking to people at a parade, talking to people at a lutefisk festival. I'll be out with folks all day and then I'll go into work until about 10 o'clock at night," she told HuffPost in a phone interview.

With Republicans holding a narrow 220-212 edge in the House, Democrats need only to flip a few seats to take control of the chamber, and Van Orden's has been high on the target list.

"From repeatedly bullying children, to being on Capitol grounds on January 6th, to relentlessly attacking reproductive freedom, Derrick Van Orden is one of the most vulnerable members of Congress," said DCCC spokeswoman Mallory Payne, referencing a number of Van Orden's scandals.

In early September, a poll for the House Majority PAC, a Democratic group, put Cooke up 49% to 47%.

Cooke said she has little choice but to hold down a regular job, though, if she wants to run for office while still paying her bills.

"That's the reality if you want to be able to run for Congress and you're not independently wealthy or from an elite background that just allows you to not work. Most regular people can't just totally give up their job for a year or whatever it takes to run for Congress," she said.

That reputation has only grown with Van Orden's occasional headline-grabbing episodes. Van Orden was at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection attempt. In July 2023, he yelled at a group of Senate pages who were lying on the floor in the Capitol's rotunda to take pictures of the ceiling.