In her own telling, Rebecca Cooke is running for Congress in Wisconsin as an outsider who doesn’t “come from a career background in politics.” In a recent campaign video, she emphasized how the public “doesn’t see a lot of people” like her in Washington, D.C., a city the Democrat warned is full of “career politicians and elitists who are out of touch.”
But Cooke, Federal Election Commission records show, has been paid tens of thousands of dollars directly and through an LLC over the last decade from Democratic campaigns for fundraising and political consulting services. And just recently, the House candidate was involved with a massive Washington-based dark money group masquerading as grassroots in the Badger State, according to Cooke’s candidate financial disclosures filed with the House.
Cooke’s ties to the national political space could undermine the candidate’s efforts to frame herself as an outsider ahead of the 2024 elections. She is notably facing scrutiny from Republicans over a conflict of interest with a nonprofit organization she founded that has awarded funds to a restaurant she has worked for. She will face off in November against Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) in a race that is expected to be one of the most competitive this year.
“Wisconsin voters deserve the truth from those who seek to represent them — and Rebecca Crook has spent this campaign lying about who she is: a well-connected, Democrat fundraiser and operative who spent years working for the swamp and used her position to pay off her friends,” Van Orden said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Cooke, whose campaign did not return a request for comment, registered an LLC called Cooke Strategy in Wisconsin in 2015. The firm advised various campaigns between 2015 and 2021, while she personally helped raise millions of dollars beginning in 2012 as the finance director for congressional races in California and other states, campaign finance records show.
Cooke said on a since-defunct campaign website that she helped raise $3.7 million for Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA), whom she worked on behalf of in 2013 and 2014.
In her House candidate financial disclosures, Cooke also reported being paid last year by Flytedesk, a company in Boulder, Colorado. Flytedesk works on behalf of national Democratic campaigns, including in 2022 for the Democratic National Committee, then-candidate and now-Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), according to OpenSecrets.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign paid Flytedesk $14,600 for media advertising in 2019, according to campaign finance records.
Meanwhile, Cooke, during her unsuccessful 2022 run for Congress, disclosed on her candidate report that she was a steering committee member for Opportunity Wisconsin, a “coalition of Wisconsin residents fighting for an economy that works for working people,” according to its website.
“Through our stories, we’re elevating the real consequences of the destructive economic policies that put the wealthy few first and leave the rest of us behind,” Opportunity Wisconsin’s website reads. “Join us in demanding our elected officials focus more on growing the economy for middle-class folks and expanding opportunity for all Wisconsinites.”
But Opportunity Wisconsin, which also did not return a request for comment, does not technically exist on paper.
Rather, it is legally a trade name and project of the North Fund, a shape-shifting nonprofit organization funding left-wing causes from an office in Washington, according to corporate registration records filed there. The records list other trade names of the North Fund as projects such as 51 for 51, a group supporting District of Columbia statehood, and Just Democracy, which has pushed to abolish the Electoral College and expand the Supreme Court, according to the Capital Research Center think tank.
The North Fund is registered under 501(c)(4) of the IRS code, which allows it to shield its donors from the agency. It spent $44.2 million during its last fiscal year and is one of several entities managed by Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm overseeing the largest Democratic-aligned dark money network in the United States.
The North Fund’s Opportunity Wisconsin project is led by Megan Roh, a Democratic operative who previously worked for Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), according to Roh’s LinkedIn profile. Her public relations and consulting firm, Spector Roh Strategies, has been paid over $600,000 from Baldwin’s campaign for “operations and political management” and other services between 2020 and July 2024, according to campaign finance records.
In 2020, then-candidate and now-President Joe Biden‘s campaign paid Spector Roh Strategies almost $70,000 for “strategic consulting,” records show.
To spokesman Mike Marinella of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the records suggest Cooke is “desperately trying to hide her past from voters.”
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Speaking to a local Wisconsin news outlet in March, Cooke said her “background and profile is really suited to connect with swing, moderate, and independent voters.”
“You know, I don’t come from a career background in politics, and I feel like there’s a lot of people in our district that want to have a representative that has lived experiences that they can connect to, I think career politicians make folks a little bit more leery,” Cooke told the outlet.
