“I’m about as straightforward as you can get,” Derrick Van Orden said at a family farm in Fall Creek. “I’m a retired Navy SEAL senior chief,” he continued. “I’m a father, I’m a Christian, I’m husband, I am a grandfather.”

At an office in Eau Claire, Rebecca Cooke shared her story.

“I have a background that people connect with and resonate with,” she said. “I grew up on the north side of town on a dairy farm. I run a small business here in downtown Eau Claire. I’m a waitress at a local restaurant up the street.”

Both candidates running in 2026 to represent Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District say they share the same values as their neighbors: hard-working, farm-loving and family focused.

But how that translates into partisan politics for Republican incumbent Van Orden and Democratic challenger Cooke is what voters are set to decide on Nov 3.

“I’m running for Congress because I want to address some of the biggest issues in our communities,” Cooke said.”Lowering costs, combating corruption, bolstering agriculture, supporting small business and rebuilding an American dream that we can actually grasp.”

Van Orden says he’s running for re-election to finish what he’s started in Congress under President Donald Trump.

“We’ve got the Farm Bill – that’s critically important,” he said. “That’s just got to get through the Senate. And then I continue to work on a series of veterans initiatives.”

Van Orden wants more time.

“We need an extra two years here to get most of the things accomplished that the president ran on and the things that I ran on,” he said.

Both candidates say Trump and his policies factor heavily into the race.

Cooke says voters want change.

“Things have gotten worse under this administration,” she said. “Look at this war in Iran, a war of choice that nobody voted for. Trump and Derrick Van Orden campaign on an ‘America First’ agenda. This war is not ‘America First.’ It’s increased diesel prices. It’s increased fertilizer prices for our farmers. But it’s also increased prices across the board when it takes more to ship goods to the grocery store, right? Everyone’s seeing their costs go up.”

Van Orden raises the issue of energy costs as well.

“Right now, diesel’s too high. That’s flat out, it is absolutely too high, and it’s much more nuanced than the conflict in Iran,” he said. “Is it politically convenient right now that we’re involved in this conflict with Iran? The answer is absolutely no.”

But Van Orden added he’d rather fight this war now instead of later.

“I don’t want my grandchildren involved in a conflict with Iran, and with this current group of folks in there, they will be unless something’s done,” he said.

Cooke says healthcare and trade policies under Trump have also hurt Americans.

“I see healthcare costs as the top of the pyramid of the things that people, especially in this district, are struggling with. We’ve seen two major hospitals close,” she said. “You look at the impact reciprocal tariffs have had on our soybean farmers and our cranberry producers.”

Cooke again emphasized the Trump agenda.

“Who caused those big issues? A lot of that leads back to him and to Derrick Van Orden,” she said.

Still, Van Orden stands behind Trump on policy.

“The border is closed,” he said.

Van Orden pointed to policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“We’ve got no tax on tips,” he said. ‘”Seniors living on Social Security paid no federal income tax on Social Security this year.”

Van Orden emphasized Trump himself.

“The policies that he has done for America are benefiting Americans,” the incumbent Republican said.

He also saluted the president’s patriotism.

“That man got shot in the head. Donald Trump literally got shot in the head for America,” Van Orden said.

When it comes to issues important to the 3rd Congressional District, some of the candidates’ rhetoric is in alignment.

One is a high-voltage transmission line, referred to as Line 765.

“It is absolutely inappropriate,” Van Orden said.

“I do not support Line 765,” Cooke said.

Data centers are another example.

“I don’t want a data center next to me either. I live here on purpose. You can’t cover black dirt. That’s farmland,” Van Orden said.

“I called for a federal data center moratorium. These issues are sort of aligned, like people from the outside shouldn’t be deciding what gets built in our backyards,” Cooke said.

David Helpap, a political science professor at UW-Green Bay, is watching the race very closely.

“The people that are very enthusiastic about the president, they’re going to turn out,” Helpap said.

But with inflation, high gas prices and other concerns — those very enthusiastic supporters do not include all Republicans these days, especially for a lower-turnout midterm election.

“It’s the individual that sort of sits maybe on the fringes of support for the party that are going to be harder to convince and harder to turn out,” Helpap explained.

The stakes are high for the race because it has the potential to be incredibly close — and due to that uncertainty, it’s pivotal in determining which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives in its next term.

“The composition of the House of Representatives right now is such that having a district go, one or two districts go your way, could make or break your chances of controlling that institution,” explained Helpap.

This closeness puts the race between Cooke and Van Orden in the spotlight.

“At the national level, I would say the 3rd Congressional District is probably the biggest bellwether right now. It’s the most competitive,” Helpap said.

According to election analysts, the race will likely be as close as the last one was.

In 2024, Van Orden faced Cooke in an election for the same seat. Van Orden won that race by less than three points.

In their 2026 rematch, both candidates are pushing hard for the rural vote.

“Especially for Democratic voters, there’s been a lot of focus on some of the urban areas like Eau Claire, Stevens Point, La Crosse, and I think that it can be easy to forget some of our small town communities, 500 or less. And I think those voices are just as important as the voices in our bigger communities,” Cooke said.

“We are not a blue or a purple state. We’re a state full of conservatives that don’t vote,” Van Orden said. “Our elections are settled by what, 25,000 votes? If every person in the state of Wisconsin that considered themselves a conservative voted regularly, this state’s as red as an apple.”

With control of the U.S. House hanging on races like Wisconsin’s 3rd, both candidates agree on what the midterm elections will decide.

“The future of our democracy,” Cooke said.

“The future of the country,” Van Orden said.