And let me grab my phone. I always record everything that I do.
No problem. Sounds good.
Okay, cool. Thank you.
Just so I have it on my end because I'm not with any staff right now.
Yeah, no, I totally understand.
Okay, cool. I'm ready then when you are.
Okay, cool.
The first thing that we're going to have you do, real easy.
Can you give me your name, how to spell it, your title?
Yeah, Rebecca Cook, R-E-B-E-C-C-A-C-O-K-E candidate for U.S. Congress.
Cool. Thanks.
First question I got you off. This should also be pretty easy for you.
Why are you the best candidate in the Third District?
Yeah, I think what really sets me apart are my lived experiences.
I grew up on a dairy farm here in Eau Claire showing cows in 4-H.
And like a lot of Wisconsin farmers, we had to sell our cows because of the price of milk
and competition with larger dairies, which was tough.
And that's a key reason why I stepped off the sidelines to step up to run,
to really be a voice for rural working families and to work to save small,
mid-sized farms like the one that I grew up on.
I ran a small business in this district for a lot of years,
a nonprofit that sports women entrepreneurs throughout 18 counties.
And additionally, I waitress three nights a week while I run for Congress,
seven days a week.
And I think those types of things, like, you know, I've had to sign the front of a paycheck.
You know, I know what it's like to balance a budget and pay employees.
And I think those types of lived experiences, I think lend themselves well to being a legislator
that really understands what working people are looking for in their representative
and what I can deliver on in Congress.
Yeah. So going right in on that family of farms, working people, I guess the first,
I want to get a stance on a few issues.
I think the first one we want to do then is how can we better protect family farms
and kind of stop this backslide where all of these ag farms are kind of
conglomerating into one and making these CAFOs.
Yeah. So I mean, I think it starts to writing a farm bill that really works to support
and serve small and mid-sized farms.
You see a lot of politicians that, you know, have special interests really in their pockets
and you certainly see that with the agricultural committee and where the subsidies go
and who that's really benefiting.
You know, and so I think it really, it really does start, start there.
And so I would really love to serve on the House A Committee when I'm going around
and talking with people in my district.
I say, wouldn't it be something to have somebody with a background in agriculture
that's serving on the House A Committee and working to write the farm bill?
You know, and people are like, yeah, instead of a lawyer that's maybe never been in a barn
or just elitists that are really out of touch with this kind of way of life.
So on that farm bill, there is a 2024 farm bill that Derek Van Orden is very proud of.
He talks about it in the few interviews that he gives.
Do you have any thoughts on that bill? Is there anything that you would change?
Do you think that it does work for small family farms?
I think there's always improvements that can be made.
I think what you've seen, though, is that the bill hasn't passed.
And that, I think, showcases what, like, hyper-partisanship is happening in the House
and in the Senate, right?
And that's the far right radicalism led by people like Derek Van Orden and his party.
They're not getting things done. They're working on things.
They're not getting things done, right?
One of the things that I'm really interested in is right to repair.
So the right to repair your own stuff.
I'd love to see something like that being incorporated into the farm bill in the future.
Okay, cool. Sorry for the slack messages. I'm sure you can hear those.
Oh, that's okay. I'm not hearing.
Good. So then my next one, how do we better tackle inflation?
How do we better make this economy work for working people?
We just have increased the last four years.
Inflation has eaten up a lot of that progress.
So how do we help working people get ahead?
Yeah, taking on corporations that are really like price gouging consumers
at the gas pump and the grocery store, you know, we've seen record profits
and that means like loss pages, right?
And so corporations are making record profits really off the backs of their workers.
And so I think it's critically important to enforce antitrust laws.
You see a lot of hyper-consolidation, like even in the agricultural industry,
like we were talking about.
And I think that's critically important, but now more than ever.
Moving on to the next one.
How would you address the shortage of health care workers in Western Wisconsin?
I know that that's been a big issue there.
My editor has a dad who hasn't been able to see a doctor in like six months for something that he needs.
How do you address that shortage? How do you make health care better in Western Wisconsin?
Increasing health care access and affordability is really at the top of my platform.
We've seen two large hospitals close here in the region,
which makes access really frustrating.
Like my dad personally is waiting.
It's been waiting two months to try to see a provider.
And so part of it is that we just we've lost hospital systems.
It's not even health care providers, but we've lost like literal hospitals for people to go to.
And so you've got to be building those relationships, I think kind of all the way through
understanding where folks are at, what kind of Medicare reimbursement rates look like for hospitals in order to be staying open and serving.
Critical populations like, for example, we have one hospital that closed that delivered 800 babies last year alone,
which is a pretty staggering number.
And then we have a labor and delivery unit closed in a neighboring community and another neighboring community.
So if you want to start a girl family, you know, we have some real problems here.
Here in the region. And so those are some of the types of things that are important to me. So.
Next one, how do we address the problem with PFAS, especially it hits the lacrosse area, especially hard, but you have some of the central sands to how do we address the PFAS issue in Wisconsin.
Yeah, well, we also have a big PFAS issue here in Eau Claire too. So it's really it's communities large and small and a lot of the larger or the smaller municipalities really lack a lot of the funding to be able to address it.
It's not something that our smaller municipalities or cities can do alone. It's going to take federal funding and federal support.
So that's, you know, that's really important to me is being able to allocate those kinds of resources to address this issue, not just for remediation, but having research at the front end.
And more testing as well, just because it's, it's something that we need to work to prevent before it's even there. Right. So calling for federal funding that calls for more research testing and remediation.
And then finally last issue I got for you. How would you address the issue of abortion at the federal level?
Codifying Roe v. Wade and federal law. So this was obviously an issue that came up when Roe v. Wade was overturned when I was running in 2022 and I think it mobilized a lot of people to get out to vote.
This is an issue that people across the third congressional district really care about and it's, and it's not a partisan issue across his party lines. Right.
There's a young conservative woman that has been in an ad for our campaign talking about this issue and the really difficult choice she had to make for her and her family to travel to Minnesota to have an abortion because her son was going to be worn with a life threatening birth defect.
And that was was what the choice that she had to make but wasn't able to do that within her own community and with the provider that have been working with her with her birth all the way along. And so her story is one of many.
And I think it really starts with codifying that into federal law.
Last line of questioning here.
I heard this a few times at the press conference and stuff press conferences and stuff but I just want to hear a little bit of an expanded answer.
Why doesn't Derek Van Orton have the correct temperament to be the representative for Western Wisconsin.
I think he's really proven time and time again by his outbursts. I mean, and it's a kind of like a laundry list at this point and still lists that I think will continue to increase you know he participated in this off the steel rally which most folks here in Western Wisconsin
do not approve of right we want to uphold our pillars of democracy not threaten them right people are sick of the chaos and division in Washington and in Congress.
So we've got a lot of a lot of people who have been given through TSA regular folks that's not something you're able to do right I mean that's something anybody is able to do right.
He has, you know, lashed out at Senate pages, swore at them in our nation's capital, you know, young people that are spending their time devoting their service to our country.
He's swearing at them in our nation's capital heckle to the President during the State of the Union address I mean outbursts after outbursts.
spoofed on SNL like he's been covered on SNL and people are just plain embarrassed I think by the
actions that he takes and just his inability I think to control his emotions when it comes to
making policy and when it comes to just representing us period in the halls of congress and I think
folks are just really sick of that kind of chaos and division that the people from the far right
have really stoned in d.c. and are ready for just some pragmatic homegrown regular folks
representing them in the halls congress. So last time I got for you here when you asked Eric Van
warden about his temperament he and I think it's you know it's pretty clear that he has this
this history of outbursts but when you talk to him he says don't listen to the noise
look at my voting record and what's interesting is I did look at his voting record and he's very
moderate he if zero is super liberal and 100 is super conservative his voting record his sponsorship
record is about a 55 so how do you square his his outbursts and maybe some of his rhetoric where
he's called for national abortion ban in the past versus his voting record that looks a lot
more moderate on paper. I think there's more to be seen from him he has called for a nationwide
abortion ban he has compared abortion to genocide we haven't seen those votes come yet but like I
can promise you that when push comes to shove a lot of the radical things that he's talking about
consistently on social media consistently in the press are going to be where he's going I think
he's well handled by his team but who he really is I think reflects in his in the way that he
presents himself when no one's watching okay that's all I got for you is there anything else
that we didn't talk about that you think is important to this story to this race no I think
that's great I think he has a lot of great questions okay cool yeah thank you so much I
really appreciate your time wrap this up in 15 minutes which is good oh wow okay great it was
I so initially this story is supposed to air on friday some things got moved around because of
the DNC we got some extra stuff that we didn't expect so it might not run until next friday
now but I will let Alex know when I know which should be this afternoon at some point okay
sounds great thanks so much it was nice to meet you kind of throughout the yeah right
journey the last couple of weeks so yeah yeah I agree it was good to meet you too I'm sure I'm
gonna be doing follow-ups on this too so you'll probably hear from me in the next couple months
again okay sounds great thanks so much Nathan well yeah thank you bye
are we all good do I need to do anything else