The likely Democratic nominee in Wisconsin's Third Congressional District, Rebecca Cooke, identified a crucial "voting bloc" for her campaign during a recent fundraiser: out-of-state college students "from Minnesota" who can be "re-register[ed]" to vote in the Badger State, an audio recording obtained by the Washington Free Beacon shows.
Cooke, speaking at a June 9 fundraiser organized by anti-Israel group J Street, noted that six University of Wisconsin campuses are in the district, which Republican incumbent Derrick Van Orden has represented since 2023. As a result, she said, student voters make up "a huge voting bloc" and "are gonna be really important" in choosing the district's next representative—particularly those who come to Wisconsin from the more liberal neighboring state of Minnesota.
"I think one thing that we're really interested in doing, we've seen the state party in the past put a lot of resources into those four-year universities, and they put a lot of resources into Wisconsin as a same-day voter registration state," Cooke said. "And so, it's like, okay, people are from Minnesota, let's re-register them, like, that's great."
Wisconsin is a same-day voter registration state, meaning residents can register to vote and cast a ballot on Election Day. It also has lax residency requirements. College students who move to Wisconsin from states like Minnesota only need to live at their Wisconsin residence for 28 days to be eligible to vote, and they do not need a Wisconsin driver's license or state-issued ID to do so. Students at three of the schools Cooke mentioned—UW-Eau Claire, UW-La Crosse, and UW-Stout—can vote with their normal student ID. Students at the remaining three schools—UW-Platteville, UW-River Falls, and UW-Stevens Point—can do so using a compliant student ID that the schools provide upon request. This means that a freshman student from Minnesota can move to the third district at the start of the fall semester and vote with a student ID roughly two months later.
Cooke's remarks could feed into a common rallying cry from Wisconsin Republicans like Van Orden: "Don't Minnesota our Wisconsin." The third district shares a border with Minnesota, and Van Orden has used the phrase since at least 2024, when then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris tapped left-wing Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate.
"As the congressman representing the Minnesotans who fled to my district seeking relief from [Walz's] leadership, here are four words for the new ticket: Don't Minnesota our Wisconsin!" Van Orden said in August 2024. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R., Wis.), the leading candidate in the state's GOP gubernatorial primary, has also said that "let's not 'Minnesota' our Wisconsin" is one of the "key messages" of his campaign.
"I mean, regardless of where you stand, what is happening in Minnesota, it's very clear that the state is not well run at this point," he told an ABC affiliate in the state in January. "We don't want to end up like that, and that's part of the message that I'm going to take to the voters, especially in western Wisconsin."
Polling in the third district has been sparse in the buildup to Wisconsin's August 11 primary, but Cooke is widely expected to secure the Democratic Party's nomination. The Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss-up, and the few general election polls available—all conducted by Democratic pollsters—have Cooke with a small lead over Van Orden.
Cooke has billed herself as a moderate, a tactic she also used in her failed 2024 bid—her second of three attempts at flipping the district, which backed President Donald Trump by a 7-point margin in 2024. In September, though, Cooke said she would support far-left Zohran Mamdani's mayoral campaign if she lived in New York City.
She has also described herself as having a background "rooted in agriculture, small business and helping women entrepreneurs." That description leaves out Cooke's position on the steering committee for Opportunity Wisconsin, a group that calls itself a "coalition of Wisconsin residents fighting for an economy that works for all Wisconsinites, not just the wealthy few." In reality, the organization is an alias used by the North Fund, a George Soros-backed dark money group managed by Arabella Advisors, the Free Beacon reported.
Cooke's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
