By: Henry Redman – August 10, 2024 5:30 am – Wisconsin Examiner
In the weeks before polls opened in the Democratic primary in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, two of the candidates traded increasingly heated attacks against each other as the race ramped up.
State Rep. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point) and Rebecca Cooke, who runs a local non-profit and previously ran a small business, are running to take on Republican incumbent Rep. Derrick Van Orden. A third candidate, Eric Wilson, who has worked in real estate and health care, is also running but has not been involved in the attacks.
In the final days of the race, the election has become more combative as outside super PACs have injected money into the race on behalf of Cooke while Shankland cries foul and touts her experience as a legislator.
The 3rd Congressional District in western Wisconsin is a big target for Democrats this year, with hopes of unseating Van Orden after just one term. The Republican has regularly made headlines nationally for public outbursts. Prior to Van Orden winning the seat in 2022, the district was represented for more than two decades by Democrat Ron Kind.
Cooke also ran in the 2022 Democratic primary, losing that race to state Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska). Pfaff lost the general election by 3.7 points, with many Democrats across the state blaming the loss on national Democrats for withdrawing financial support for Pfaff in a winnable race.
“This is a dramatic shift in tone from the 2022 primary, and that could be for a number of reasons,” UW-La Crosse political science professor Anthony Chergosky says. “One reason could be, I think, Democrats are no doubt fired up about the prospect of defeating Derrick Van Orden, and that means that the opportunity to be the party standard bearer is a highly coveted opportunity, and so Shankland and Cook have gone negative.”
In this year’s primary, Shankland has run on her record as a legislator and won the support of 20 labor organizations, while Cooke has painted herself as a political “outsider” and is supported by groups that represent centrist Democrats.
Despite the divide in the candidate’s “branding,” Cooke told the Examiner in March that Shankland “might lean a little bit more left” than her, but that their policy views on issues such as abortion rights and health care are similar. Rather, Cooke said, “I think it comes down to the profile that’s going to be able to take on [Van Orden].”
“It remains unclear what exactly the policy differences are,” Chergosky says. “If there are, in fact, any policy differences between Cooke and Shankland. Largely the campaign has been about the development of their brands.”
Last month, Shankland’s campaign released a TV ad in which Shankland cuts her husband’s hair and asks, “Would you hire a barber who’s never cut hair before? So why send someone to Congress who’s never held public office and never passed a single bill?”
A few weeks later, an outside group supporting Cooke began running an ad that claimed Shankland is “working for Republicans, not you.” The ad from New Democratic Majority PAC mirrored talking points criticizing Shankland that had been posted to Cooke’s campaign website. The PAC has spent $150,000 on the attacks. Cooke has also accepted $170,000 in support from other conservative-leaning PACs.
The attacks highlight Shankland’s 2018 vote with Republicans on a bill that included a provision to prohibit the governor from expanding Medicaid without the approval of lawmakers.
The bipartisan legislation created a reinsurance plan, approved by the federal government in connection with the federal Affordable Care Act, to stabilize individual health insurance costs and lower premiums. Republicans added the Medicaid expansion restriction midway through the debate over the bill, and Democrats attempted to nullify it but failed. The final bill passed with some Democrats’ support in both houses.
Shankland has responded to the attack by pointing to her co-sponsorship of a bill to expand BadgerCare for the past 12 years.
Other Democrats have come to Shankland’s defense against the super PAC’s attacks. In a call earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who has endorsed Shankland, said the focus should be on defeating Van Orden, “not to hack our fellow Democrats like this.”
Britt Cudaback, spokesperson for Gov. Tony Evers, disputed the claims in the attack against Shankland.
“There are few legislators who’ve fought to expand BadgerCare and access to affordable healthcare in Wisconsin for as long as Katrina Shankland has,” Cudaback said. “And it’s especially disingenuous to invoke the governor in attack ads that aim to mislead people into believing otherwise.”
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine), also criticized the ad’s claims and its source.
“Shankland is a steady and experienced leader who shows up for her constituents and colleagues,” Neubauer posted on X. “She has been at the forefront of Assembly Democrats’ fight to expand BadgerCare, help working families, and keep our communities safe and healthy. I’m incredibly disappointed to see her record and character under attack by a dark money super PAC from Washington, D.C. This kind of dishonesty doesn’t belong in our politics, especially coming from fellow Democrats.”
In recent days, Cooke’s campaign has pushed back, pointing to outside funding Shankland has received in her previous legislative races and in this election from a PAC affiliated with David Hogg. Hogg is a survivor of the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, who has become politically active in the years since.
“For Katrina Shankland it’s do as I say not as I do: she says she opposes outside spending but benefits from it, she says she cares about rural families but votes to take our health care away,” Cooke’s campaign manager Alex Obolensky said in a statement. “We can’t trust Katrina Shankland.”
Shankland’s campaign said the difference is that she didn’t use the outside money to attack fellow Democrats.
Shankland’s campaign also unsuccessfully pushed for a debate to be held between the Democratic candidates, but Cooke’s campaign never agreed to terms. The lack of a debate in the primary surprised Chergosky after Democrats criticized Van Orden heavily in 2022 for refusing to debate Pfaff.
“I think it would have been helpful for voters to just see them kind of hash things out face to face,” says Chergosky, who has previously moderated debates in the district.
He is also involved in a coalition of local civic institutions and media to host debates.
“But yeah, it came as a big surprise to us,” he says, “because we figured Democrats would be very eager to debate, given the opportunity that a debate would provide for them to make the case for themselves before a large TV and radio audience and to build on their party’s criticism of Van Orden for not debating.”
Cooke has released internal polling suggesting she may be leading the race, though the poll included a large number of undecided voters. She also leads Shankland heavily in fundraising, with federal campaign finance reports showing Cooke has received more than $2 million in contributions while Shankland has raised about $860,000.
Chergosky says there are two risks of a highly competitive primary. The competition could force the candidates to take positions that push them further to an ideological extreme, which he says he hasn’t seen in this race, or it could empty the campaign coffers before the general election.
“I do not think that the competition in this primary has caused the race to take the most liberal positions possible,” he says. “In fact, I have not seen Cooke or Shankland really rush to take more progressive positions. So I don’t think that’s the issue so much as the effect on their campaign resources. The question for them would be, how much money is left in the bank after the primary is all said and done for whoever is the winner of this race?”
Add comment