Rebecca Cooke, the Wisconsin Democrat expected to take on Republican incumbent Derrick Van Orden in the state's swingy third district, has repeatedly described her politics as "somewhere in the middle," complaining that "everyone in Washington is either too far left or too far right." Then she endorsed Zohran Mamdani, the socialist frontrunner in New York City's mayoral race.
A potential voter at La Crosse County Democrats' monthly meeting on Monday asked Cooke who she "would be supporting for mayor" if she lived in New York City.
"Mamdani," she said to applause.
Cooke's support for the socialist stands in stark contrast with her efforts to bill herself as a moderate Democrat. Mamdani has promised to pursue a range of far-left policies, such as raising taxes to fund free buses and city-owned grocery stores and freezing rent. He's also consistently defended the anti-Semitic slogan "globalize the intifada."
Cooke has already lost two bids for Wisconsin's Third Congressional District, which backed President Donald Trump by a 7-point margin in 2024. She centered her last campaign around her self-described middle-of-the-road politics.
"It seems like everyone in Washington is either too far left or too far right," she said in a September 2024 campaign ad filmed on her Eau Claire family dairy farm. "I'm Rebecca Cooke, and like most folks in Wisconsin, I'm somewhere in the middle."
And just two months before she endorsed Mamdani, the Democrat-affiliated Welcome PAC released a promotional video showing Cooke repeating those claims and arguing that there's "too much chaos and division in D.C."
Cooke's history also casts doubt on her moderate bona fides. In 2021 and 2022, she sat on the steering committee for Opportunity Wisconsin, an alias of the George Soros-backed North Fund, a D.C.-based dark money group, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Cooke did not return a request for comment.
