Cooke for Congress/Katrina Shankland for Congress
Democrats Rebecca Cooke, left, and state Rep. Katrina Shankland are challenging each other’s working-class bona fides in the race for Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District.
As the child of dairy farmers and a small-business owner in western Wisconsin, Democratic candidate Rebecca Cooke has presented herself as a working-class political newcomer. But her congressional campaign has only vaguely referenced her behind-the-scenes work in political fundraising. As Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s Third District draws closer, Cooke’s main opponent, state Rep. Katrina Shankland, has accused her of lying about her background to voters.
As originally reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cooke’s work in political consulting and fundraising goes back as far as 2012. She has served as a finance director for congressional campaigns in four states. Cooke would go on to register a political consulting firm, Cooke Strategy LLC, and serve on the steering committee for Opportunity Wisconsin, a nonprofit dedicated to progressive economic policies. FEC records indicate that from 2015 to 2021, Cooke earned over $190,000 for her consulting work with Cooke Strategy. This isn’t a lot of money to make over the course of six years. However, her political career thus far doesn’t quite match up with the image she has sold to voters.
Cooke’s campaign has consistently framed her as a working-class political outsider. In response to criticism that she lied to voters, her campaign has downplayed her fundraising work as a way to make ends meet. In an interview with the Wisconsin Examiner, she positioned herself as a voice for Wisconsin’s rural working class, distinguishing herself from so-called “career politicians” like Shankland, her main opponent in the primary, who was first elected to the Wisconsin State Assembly in 2013. She repeated this framing in an interview with the Prospect, before the revelations about her political work came out.
Shankland has also accused Cooke of taking money from conservative PACs that has been used to discredit Shankland’s record in office. The “conservative dark money” comes from the influential Blue Dog PAC and the “Blue Dog–aligned” Welcome PAC. Both PACs work to elect moderate-to-conservative Democrats. FEC records show that Cooke has received $5,000 from Blue Dog PAC (also a prominent endorser of Cooke) and $7,600 from Welcome PAC. Welcome PAC also spent an additional $170,000 to boost Cooke’s campaign.
Since its founding in the 1990s, the Blue Dog Coalition, which houses the Blue Dog PAC, has had a reputation as a “Southern boys’ club.” Part of this is because some of its early membership was formed by the last of the Southern Democrats, who previously opposed racial integration. Past members had also opposed abortion and same-sex marriage. A failed attempt to rebrand in 2023 led to eight of its 15 members leaving the coalition. It currently stands at ten members.
Shankland said that the money from the conservative Democratic PACs is being used to run attack ads against her campaign. Cooke’s campaign website has outlined three main points of attack on Shankland’s record. She has accused Shankland of voting alongside Republicans to block the expansion of Medicaid (under a state program called BadgerCare), cut taxes for the wealthy, and remove restrictions on how close sex offenders could be to parks and schools.
Shankland has devoted an entire page on her own website to debunking Cooke’s attacks. For example, she has co-sponsored legislation to expand BadgerCare every year that she has served in the legislature. The law that Cooke is referring to that Shankland voted against was also opposed by every Democrat in the legislature. It gives the legislature, which in Wisconsin has been gerrymandered until this year to be heavily Republican, a veto over any federal waiver in the BadgerCare program, including the expansion of eligibility. Because this moves a typical bureaucratic process of the executive branch to the legislature, Democrats opposed it. “Cooke is willingly misrepresenting and distorting Katrina Shankland’s record on healthcare,” according to the website.
The page also addresses Cooke’s other claims, including the ones regarding tax cuts (the bill in question was a property tax measure also broadly supported by Democrats in the legislature) and restrictions on sex offenders (that law, which created a setback for sex offenders that ended up pushing them into harder-to-track rural areas, was opposed overwhelmingly by Shankland and her fellow Democrats, and eventually repealed).
Shankland has also played up her own rural working-class roots. She spoke to the Prospect about growing up in a small town as the child of public school teachers, working a minimum-wage job out of college, and struggling with medical bills. She also touted her endorsements from 17 different unions (though it should be noted that Cooke has also received endorsements from several unions).
Wisconsin’s Third District seat is currently held by Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden. The results of the race could help shape the balance of power in the House. A June GQR poll shows Cooke at 46 percent in a matchup with Van Orden, who polled at 50 percent.
Cooke’s campaign has fired back against Shankland with its own accusations that she has accepted outside donations. According to FEC filings, Shankland’s campaign has received $194,000 in independent expenditures on behalf of the Leaders We Deserve PAC, which works to elect young progressive candidates. Leaders We Deserve was founded by David Hogg, one of the survivors of the Parkland school shooting, and it claims to disclose all of its donors, a fact Shankland cited when condemning the dark-money Welcome PAC.
Eric Wilson, who is also running in the Democratic primary for the Third District, has not faced any accusations of accepting “outside” money for his campaign. In fact, he has distinguished himself from his opponents by citing his campaign’s reliance on small individual donations.
“Both of my opponents are receiving a lot of help from outside groups,” Wilson said. “They seem intent on attacking each other. People are tired of this type of politics. I am running a positive, progressive, issue-based campaign. We are people powered with 99 percent individual contributions and an average contribution of $27.”
