Republican Derrick Van Orden, left, is going up against Democrat Sen. Brad Pfaff for the congressional seat held by Ron Kind for more than two decades.
On election night it would be natural for Wisconsinites to watch the hotly contested governor’s and U.S. Senate races. But I’m going to be paying close attention to the fight for Wisconsin’s open 3rd Congressional District in and around La Crosse and covering a big chunk of the southwest part of the state.
That battle is for a seat held down by moderate Democrat Ron Kind for more than two decades. Kind decided to retire this year rather than face a stiff challenge in a district that has been trending away from his party. Democrats had a spirited primary to fill Kind’s shoes and they eventually nominated state Sen. Brad Pfaff. He’s going up against Republican Derrick Van Orden, who narrowly lost to Kind two years ago.
Pfaff would appear to be just the right kind of Democrat for the district. His family has owned a farm and has been politically active in the area for generations. Pfaff served as state agriculture secretary under Gov. Tony Evers until Republicans fired him because he had the audacity to criticize them for short-changing a program to help stressed farmers deal with the mental health challenges of their business. Then Pfaff turned around and got himself elected to a state Senate seat, joining the very body that fired him from the secretary’s job by rejecting his nomination.
He is also blessed with an extreme opponent. Van Orden is an election denier who was present in Washington for the Jan. 6 riots. He claims not to have participated in the violence, entered the Capitol or to have even been present in restricted areas. However, social media posts suggest that he was in some areas on the Capitol grounds that were officially off limits.
Pfaff has tried to make the insurrection and Van Orden’s role in undermining confidence in our democracy central to his campaign. It’s not at all clear that that’s working. It looks from here like Pfaff is swimming against the tide running against his party, no matter how good a candidate he might be for his district and no matter how seriously flawed his opponent might be.
The 3rd Congressional District is so important because it’s one of only two competitive districts in the state. (The other is the 1st Congressional District that runs from southeast Wisconsin along the Illinois border to Janesville, but that is held down by Republican incumbent Bryan Steil and the contest there is not expected to be close this year.) The 3rd has been a swing district, going for Barack Obama but then for Donald Trump. It voted for Trump twice in elections that also returned Democrat Kind to Congress. Just by the numbers, it’s a purple district that’s trending reddish.
So, as results come in on Election Night I’ll be scouring the county clerks’ websites in the 3rd District for results because I think it will be a good indication of how the rest of the state, and perhaps the nation, will go. Here are my rules of thumb.
If Pfaff is losing by more than, say, five points, look for a red wave. Not only will Mandela Barnes go down to Ron Johnson, but Tony Evers may lose to Tim Michels as well. And if Evers goes down it’s likely that Attorney General Josh Kaul will go with him. Secretary of State Doug La Follette might survive because, well, Doug always survives. Nationally, look for Democrats to lose more than two dozen seats in the House and give up control of the Senate.
If Pfaff is losing by less than five points, the red wave might turn out to be a ripple. Barnes probably still loses, but Evers and the other Democratic statewide office holders might hang on. Nationally, the Dems will still lose the House, but by a smaller margin and they might hold the Senate by the same slim margin they have now.
If Pfaff squeaks out a victory, pop the champagne. Now Evers, et al., almost surely win and maybe Barnes even pulls off a surprise against RoJo. The Democrats probably still lose the House (I can’t imagine any scenario under which they don’t), but they add to their majority in the Senate.
My awful track record has led me to swear off making predictions, but I think those are the likely options. That’s because the 3rd CD is a microcosm of the kinds of communities that have been trending away from Democrats — rural areas and small towns — punctuated by places that have grown more deeply blue — college towns like La Crosse and Platteville. If Pfaff can run up big numbers in the college towns and soften the blow he’ll take in the rest of the district, he might win or at least not lose too badly. And there’s every reason to think that that could mirror the battles everywhere else.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. Both his reporting and his opinion writing have been recognized by the Milwaukee Press Club. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos. He’s the author of Light Blue: How center-left moderates can build an enduring Democratic majority.
