Rebecca Cooke wants western Wisconsin to see a waitress and a farmer’s daughter. The lawyer she hired says otherwise.
On Wednesday, Cooke said she sent Rep. Derrick Van Orden a cease-and-desist letter over AI videos. The La Crosse Tribune reported the letter came from Elias Law Group, the firm founded by Marc Elias, the Democratic Party’s longtime election lawyer. The letter told Van Orden he was airing “false content,” called the posts defamatory, and warned that the firm was “monitoring” his X account. Van Orden’s August clips used AI to put words in Cooke’s mouth, including a line that it does not matter what “peasants think.” The response was not a local attorney in Eau Claire. It was the dark money national Democratic litigation shop.
Elias is not a random hire. He was general counsel to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. His old firm, Perkins Coie, was the conduit that paid Fusion GPS for the Steele dossier. After he left, he built Elias Law Group and Democracy Docket, the hub Democrats use to sue over voting rules, ballot deadlines, and maps. Fox News reported in 2021 that his Democracy Docket Legal Fund was a project of the Hopewell Fund, and that the North Fund sponsored the Democracy Docket Action Fund. Both sit inside the Arabella Advisors network, the Washington operation that lets wealthy liberal donors move money without putting their names on the check. Americans for Public Trust later found the Arabella funds had sent about $17 million to Elias Law Group. Arabella rebranded as Sunflower Services in 2025, but the money flow from hidden left-wing mega donors to candidates and campaigns continues.
That is the network Cooke plugged into before she won a single election. She lost this same seat to Van Orden in 2024 by less than 3 points. Her own disclosure showed waitressing income alongside a George Soros-linked Third Way fellowship and years of fundraising work through Cooke Strategy LLC. This consulting firm advised campaigns from 2015 to 2021. Tony Evers put her on the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation board. The DCCC endorsed her early. Bernie Sanders and Mark Kelly backed her. “Working class” is the costume that hid all her progressive DC swamp connections.
Candidates trade insults on X every cycle. Cooke answered with the lawyer who spent the Trump years suing states over election rules and drawing checks from the left’s largest dark-money network. Voters in the 3rd District can decide whether an AI clip is fair. They should also notice who she called. A “waitress” in Eau Claire should not have Marc Elias on speed dial, but the real Rebecca Cooke, a DC insider, does.
