Rebecca Cooke, the Democratic congressional candidate in Wisconsin's 3rd District.Cooke for Congress

Rebecca Cooke has spent many nights this year waiting at tables in a swing district in Wisconsin during her race for Congress. She's a 36-year-old professional service worker and nonprofit leader with a chance to make a splash in a tight House race.

It's not the typical profile of a future member of Congress. She has no personal assets to self-finance her campaign or electoral experience. But Cooke — who is running in a district that covers much of rural southwestern Wisconsin and includes the cities of Eau Claire and La Crosse — is hoping a moderate version of Democratic populism can win back Trump voters.

“A big part of our identity and the reason I wanted to run for Congress is because I feel like there are a lot of corporate monopolies that have really robbed us of our agricultural traditions and really crippled a lot of our rural economy.” said Cooke told me. She emphasized the need for strong antitrust enforcement and support for organized labor. “I like to tell people a lot that I’m progressive where it counts,” she said.

Cooke's district leans Republican — but not by much. Trump defended the area by about 5 points. In 2022, Derrick Van Orden, a right-wing Republican and former Navy SEAL, won the seat after Ron Kind, the longtime moderate Democratic incumbent, announced his retirement. Cooke is now running to unseat Van Orden, who has quickly gained a reputation as one of the worst-behaved members of Congress.

Cooke belongs to the moderate Blue Dog wing of the party and has placed herself in the middle (literally): In one ad, she stands in the middle of a dirt road on her family farm and criticizes those who go “too far on the left”. and “too far right.”

When I spoke to Cooke last month, one of the first things she brought up about herself was that when she was a child, her parents had been forced to sell their cows because they couldn't compete with big companies. It was a disappointing development considering her family has been farming in the area for more than 150 years.

Cooke's victory could play a major role in allowing Democrats to retake the House, where they must flip four seats to regain the majority. It would also prove that electing young political outsiders like Cooke is a way for Democrats to win in Republican-leaning districts that have sometimes been considered out of reach.

Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, says Trump is expected to carry the district again. “I think it is very likely that Cooke will need a proper split of the vote in her favor to win the election,” he said.

Cooke isn't alone in embracing her combination of moderation and populism. Since 2022, the Blue Dogs have been taken over by a new generation, led by Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Mary Peltola (D-Alaska). The new Blue Dogs still hold positions that anger some on the left, such as voting against a student debt relief bill because it didn't do enough for workers. However, they lean less towards the Chamber of Commerce and more towards emphasizing supporting people in the trades.

Gluesenkamp Perez and Cooke are the same age and are also running against far-right Republicans who were once members of US special forces. Gluesenkamp Perez has a rematch against Joe Kent, the retired Green Beret she defeated in 2022 in perhaps the biggest upset of the last cycle.

The two millennial women have become friends and talk frequently. Cooke described Gluesenkamp Perez as an “incredible mentor.” The congresswoman met Cooke at the airport when she came to D.C. and gave her clothes. “Our districts are kind of similar,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “Rural. Family farms. People who care about American manufacturing. People in the trades. And, you know, she drives a crappy car. She's awesome.”

Gluesenkamp Perez has little patience for analyzing exactly how she and her Blue Dogs colleagues fit ideologically. “The political spectrum isn’t real,” she told me. “It doesn’t occur in nature. What actually exists is the consolidation of our farms, the fact that young farmers are being locked out of the country by Chinese investors, that big corporations are telling us we can't fix our own stuff, and that we can't buy a pair of work boots that last longer than six months lasts months.”

Gluesenkamp Perez said she and Cooke are “trying to build a body that better reflects the normal experience of being an American today.” As she put it, “America isn't just lawyers, and neither should Congress be. “

Kent and Van Orden, who attended the January 6 rally in Washington, DC, are similarly extreme, but Van Orden is perhaps the less likable of the two. “She’s going up against a really strange guy. That insurrectionist Derrick Van Orden,” Gluesenkamp Perez said of her House colleague. “After I supported Becca, he shoulder checked me on the floor.”

In March, Van Orden made headlines for shouting “lies” during President Joe Biden's State of the Union address. As I wrote, it was just the latest in a series of embarrassing outbursts. Last year, Van Orden was criticized for yelling at a group of teenage congressmen for lying on the Rotunda floor. He reportedly told them, among other things, the following:

“Wake the fuck up, you little shits.”

“What the hell are you all doing?”

“Get out of here. They litter the space.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I don’t give a fuck who you are, get out.”

In 2021, when Van Orden was running for Congress, he yelled at another teenage bellboy. In this case, the incident occurred at the Prairie du Chien library, Wisconsin. Van Orden opposed a Pride Month-themed exhibition and directed his particular ire at the inclusion of A day in the life of Marlon Bundoa satirical children's book that imagines a world in which Mike Pence's pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo, was gay. (Van Orden is the author of Book of Man: A Navy Seal's Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood.)

When we spoke, Cooke said the district's residents are ready for a congressman who will “go out there and get shit done and not embarrass us.” But she mostly stuck with a more typical Wisconsin style of shadowing her opponent. “He lives on a hobby farm in the county,” Cooke noted, “and I think there are some differences in the way we were raised.”

Cooke spent more time emphasizing her own priorities: defending women's right to vote, keeping the District's hospitals open, lowering prescription drug prices, protecting family businesses and fighting powerful corporations.

“People are struggling to be able to pay their rent, get gas at the pump, go to the grocery store and have a little bit of money left over,” Cooke said. “I owe a lot of this to the companies that charge consumers prices by exploiting their workforce. When you see record profits, it really means stolen wages.”