Thank goodness for the Wayback Machine. It’s captured the political website that leftist Wisconsin Congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke tried to delete.
It’s the website for her political campaign company, Cooke Strategy. Why would she delete this? Only she can say. However, Cooke has tried to dishonestly paint herself as a humble working-class waitress and small business owner who is an outsider to the political process. Her deleted website demonstrates that she is anything but. Both Republican incumbent Derrick Van Orden and Cooke’s Democrat primary opponent Katrina Shankland have tried to alert voters to what they believe are Cooke’s false representations of her biography. Rather than being a political outsider, she was in fact a political fundraiser for candidates all around the country.
Cooke faces Van Orden – a former Navy SEAL chief with five combat deployments – in November.
There’s been some decent news coverage exposing Cooke’s past already. But now we’ve found the stuff she tried to delete. For one, she called herself a “consultant” just six years ago on her website, according to screenshots preserved by the Wayback Machine. She wrote that she was “seasoned in creating swings to multiple cities” in elections. She worked for candidates from Florida to California. She wrote that she was the founding principal of a “Democratic fundraising consulting firm” who “served as finance director for four nationally targeted races” in four different states.
Her financial disclosure in the congressional race says she made more that year to date from the political consulting firm ($15,000) than she did waitressing or running her small non-profit. The source of the consulting income was listed as “Flytedesk (Boulder, CO, US).” Flytedeck’s website describes it as “the largest campus advertising network in the US.”
Contrast that to her rhetoric now: She calls herself a “working class fighter” on X, and she told the liberal Wisconsin Examiner that she was an “outsider,” saying, “You know, I don’t come from a career background in politics.” The story mentions that she works as a waitress for three days a week but leaves out her extensive work as a political operative, which is about as insider as they come.
In 2018, according to a screen capture by the Wayback Machine, the “our team” page for Cooke’s now deleted website read:
Rebecca Cooke, Principal
Cooke is the founding principal of Cooke Strategy, a Democratic fundraising consulting firm. Prior to starting Cooke Strategy, Rebecca served as finance director for four nationally targeted races in MN, MI, CO, and CA. At her most recent post as finance director with Congressman Raul Ruiz, she raised $3.4 million, helping to cement a 2014 win in one of the toughest cycles for Democrats. Hard work runs through her veins growing up on a dairy farm in Western Wisconsin – she’s a consultant who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty and grind it out when things are tough.
For candidates, she can help to take a campaign from the ground up by building out your team and reaching strong cash-on-hand numbers to start your run off right.
For incumbents, Cooke is seasoned in creating swings to multiple cities in limited timeframes with the demands of District work and the rapidly changing DC voting schedule.
In the 2016 cycle, Cooke worked for the following:
Murphy for US Senate (FL)
Nelson for Congress (WI)
Bangstad for Congress (WI)
Wachs for Assembly (WI)
Rodriguez for Assembly (CA)
In April 2019, the page was zapped.
In 2016, she was involved in organizing a California fundraiser for Rodriguez.
In 2018, she hosted a “progressive campaign finance” training session in Eau Claire. “Are you interested in working on a political campaign? Are you a campaign staffer that wants to jump from field to finance? Learn the foundation to campaign fundraising: lead generation, event building, call time basics, how to create a finance plan + much more. This training is open to campaign staff only – not candidates,” the Eau Claire Democrat Party’s website still reads.
