The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
I asked former GOP Majority Leader state Senator Dale Schultz about his take on Wisconsin GOP Representative Derrick Van Orden, 3rd Congressional District (CD). Schultz said: “Van Orden is definitely beatable. He has failed to establish solid community contacts.” That’s a pretty telling observation from Wisconsin’s wisest Republican. Van Orden, a first-term representative, won narrowly in 2022. He has done nothing to indicate that he represents all voters. Van Orden’s misbehavior, temper tantrums, mudslinging and extremist views are not a substitute for legislative results that solve problems and constituent services that help regular Wisconsinites.
Moreover, former Wyoming GOP Representative Liz Cheney, at the CapTimes Idea Fest, said she would “not vote” for Van Orden because he was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 to unlawfully overturn the 2020 presidential election. “She suggested Democrats should win the House to prevent (GOP) Speaker Mike Johnson … from trying to reverse another Trump defeat” (NYT). Most House Republicans, including Wisconsin Representatives Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany, voted to refuse to certify the 2020 Electoral College results from Arizona and Pennsylvania, despite Biden’s victory.
Van Orden is not qualified to serve in Congress. It’s not a question of Van Orden’s being a conservative. There are honorable conservatives who accepted the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. But Van Orden is a threat to the U.S. Constitution because he does not take his oath seriously to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic… .” Moreover, Van Orden is incapable of hearing different points of view, has no empathy for others and lacks common sense. Case in point. Van Orden voted for a government shutdown a few days ago, ignoring Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s warning: “The one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown. It would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election because certainly we’d get the blame.” Luckily, Van Orden (and Tiffany) failed.
What would a shutdown have meant for regular folks in Wisconsin? No pay for the military and federal workers, inadequate federal inspection of our food and water, unsafe flying with less plane inspections and fewer air traffic controllers, farmers not getting aid or loans, stopping medical and scientific research, little help for seniors with questions about Social Security and Medicare and shredding the safety net. Chaos and misery.
Fortunately, voters in the 3rd CD have a solid alternative, Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke, the polar opposite of Van Orden. Cooke has common sense, empathy for others and listens to different points of view. She doesn’t care for whom you voted for president in 2020. Instead, Cooke is focused on kitchen table issues and more: “It seems that everyone in Washington is either too far left or too far right. I’m Rebecca Cooke, and like most folks in Wisconsin I’m somewhere in the middle.” She is also “for a secure border”, against “wasteful spending”, for reproductive rights and “fed up and ready for change.”
– Kaplan wrote a guest column from Washington, D.C., for the Wisconsin State Journal from 1995 – 2009.
