After Tuesday’s election, Rep. Drunken Van Orden has seen the writing on the tavern wall and feels that his days in office are numbered:
After Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice-elect Susan Crawford’s decisive win in her race against former state Attorney General Brad Schimel, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) believes he may lose his job.
Van Orden said he believes he and Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI) could lose their House races if the state Supreme Court, which maintained its liberal majority, decides to redraw the state’s congressional maps. He also admitted that he has made peace with that.
“Being a member of Congress is not my identity,” Van Orden said in an interview with Politico after Crawford’s win. “So if through all these crazy machinations I don’t get reelected because far-leftists on the court decide to redistrict and make it nearly impossible for me to get reelected, I can accept that without any malice or bitterness.”
For someone who claims that being a Congressman is not his identity, he sure likes to throw it around when he is drunkraging at teenaged pages.
If it’s any consolation to DVO, he doesn’t necessarily have to worry about whether the congressional maps get redrawn, since his district had made a strong shift to the left on Tuesday:
Eau Claire County, home to the largest city in Van Orden’s district, Eau Claire, shifted 15 points to the left from the 2024 presidential election. Richland County, which voted for Van Orden 53.8% to 46.2% in his 2024 reelection bid, shifted 17 points to the left relative to Trump’s 56%-43% margin of victory there, the second-largest shift from the presidential vote.
To add to DVO’s angst, Rebecca Cooke, whom DVO barely eked by last year, has already announced her candidacy for 2026. Furthermore, Cooke has already gotten a couple of big endorsements, as well as raised over one million dollars.
The next 18 months are going to be an eternity and a living hell for DVO. I, for one, will savor every second of it.