Wisconsin Democratic congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke is facing questions over her post-primary effort to reach voters across the political spectrum after a Trump supporter was denied entry to an event that Cooke’s campaign had promoted as open to the public.
The episode came just days after Cooke made a direct appeal to supporters of President Donald Trump. On primary night, she declared, “If I see someone with a MAGA hat on, I’m shaking their hand.”
Her campaign followed that message with a two-day “Coming Together Tour.” Promotional material described the events as “free and open to the public,” while Cooke’s campaign separately said that “all are welcome.”
That message was put to the test last week when a Stevens Point resident arrived at one of the tour stops wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and an American flag around her shoulders. According to video of the encounter circulated by Townhall, the woman said she had seen Cooke’s remarks about welcoming MAGA voters. She was nevertheless denied entry at the door.
The incident has renewed scrutiny of Cooke’s attempts to demonstrate support among Republican and conservative voters.
During her 2024 campaign, Cooke posted a photograph featuring two supporters of Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden and described them as “Republicans for Cooke.” The people pictured subsequently objected to the characterization.
“We don’t appreciate being used in this way. We did not authorize her to use our picture. We’re voting for Derrick Van Orden,” they said.
Cooke’s past comments about MAGA voters have also drawn attention as she seeks to broaden her support. She previously called her hometown of Eau Claire “racist” while noting that “MAGA flags wave high” in the area. In previous campaign messaging, she has repeatedly used “MAGA” as a criticism of Van Orden.
Cooke also worked as a political consultant for Kirk Bangstad, who later faced backlash over comments he made following the assassination attempt against Trump.
Republicans are using those connections and Cooke’s political record to challenge the image she is presenting in the current campaign.
RNC spokesman Hunter Lovell told Breitbart News, “Rebecca Cooke can’t hide from her roots as a far-left Democrat political operative who proudly supports Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani’s socialist agenda. Rural Wisconsin voters can see straight through Cooke’s election-year charade.”
Cooke is once again challenging Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District after losing to him by 2.7 points in 2024. She has argued that she is well positioned to appeal to “swing, moderate and independent voters,” making her outreach beyond the Democratic base an important part of her campaign.
Her political résumé, however, has also become an issue in the race.
Breitbart News reported in May that Cooke has presented herself as a political outsider despite years of professional work in Democratic fundraising and consulting. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, she began serving as a finance director for congressional campaigns in 2012 and later created Cooke Strategy, which described itself as a “Democratic political and fundraising consulting firm.”
Cooke and the firm received more than $190,000 from political campaigns and committees, according to the reporting.
Financial records reviewed by Breitbart News also showed that Cooke received $56,830.37 in compensation from her Red Letter Grant nonprofit between 2021 and 2023. During that same period, the organization awarded $54,000 to businesses.
Cooke additionally served on the steering committee of Opportunity Wisconsin in 2021 and 2022. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Opportunity Wisconsin was an alias used by the North Fund, an organization backed by George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center and managed by Arabella Advisors.
Another point of contention emerged in June after Cooke promoted an endorsement from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Breitbart News reported that AFSCME had opposed aspects of the Trump administration’s enforcement policies involving commercial truck drivers who were in the country illegally, as well as citizenship-related requirements for certain industrial jobs.
Those enforcement efforts included Operation Checkmate, in which Border Patrol arrested 36 people described by the agency as illegal aliens who were driving commercial trucks in Arizona. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said states had “potentially illegally issued about 194,000” commercial driver’s licenses to foreign migrant truckers who would not satisfy Department of Transportation English-language standards. Duffy later said more than 20,000 drivers who were not proficient in English had been placed out of service and more than 28,000 improperly issued foreign commercial licenses had been revoked during the first year of the administration’s trucking reforms.
For Cooke, the immediate controversy is considerably simpler: her campaign publicly emphasized its willingness to engage MAGA voters, advertised a tour as open to everyone, and then faced questions when a woman visibly identifying herself as a Trump supporter was turned away.
