Rebecca Cooke, the Democratic nominee for a US House seat in Wisconsin, has built her campaign around a working-class identity — waitress, small business owner, nonprofit leader, and dairy farm native from Richland County. But financial disclosures and earlier reporting are drawing attention to paid work she performed for groups tied to billionaire donor George Soros, along with a long career in Democratic political consulting.
A personal financial disclosure released two days after Wisconsin’s Aug. 13 primary showed Cooke received more than $5,000 apiece for work with Third Way and the Pipeline Fund, according to Fox News reporting from Aug. 29. Both organizations have financial ties to Soros’ Open Society network. Fox reported that the Open Society network gave $1 million to Third Way’s nonprofit research arm between 2023 and 2024, while the Pipeline Fund received $1.4 million directly from the Open Society Action Fund in 2024.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in April that Cooke spent about half of 2025 working with Third Way as a fellow, for which she was paid roughly $30,000. That work, the paper said, mainly involved talking to rural working-class voters about issues affecting them and compiling reports for the organization based on those conversations.
A campaign spokesperson addressed the arrangement in a statement to the Journal Sentinel: “During her part-time work for Third Way, Rebecca maintained her waitressing job, taking shifts almost every weekend at $8 an hour plus tips. Like many people in western Wisconsin, she knows what it’s like to wear many hats to pay the bills.”
The Journal Sentinel’s reporting also detailed Cooke’s history in political fundraising. As far back as 2012, she served as finance director for four congressional races in Minnesota, Michigan, Colorado and California, raising $3.7 million in one of those contests. In 2015, she registered Cooke Strategy LLC, a Democratic political and fundraising consulting firm. Federal Election Commission records show the firm advised eight state and federal campaigns between 2015 and 2021.
Cooke ran unsuccessfully for the House in 2024 while presenting a similar biographical narrative. In a 2023 radio interview, before that campaign, she said of fundraising: “I mean it’s unfortunately a part of our political process and our political system. It’s like who raises the most dollars is the most viable, right?”
A March 2024 article in the Wisconsin Examiner, published by States Newsroom, quoted Cooke describing a conversation with a Republican voter at the Richland County fair. She said the man told her he had voted for Donald Trump and that she “didn’t seem like a politician.” Cooke responded, according to the article: “And that’s because I’m not one and I think that that’s what people in this district are really looking for, is someone that has shared a lot of those lived experiences, is also pragmatic in the types of policies that they’re putting forward.”
Cooke defeated her Democratic primary rivals on Aug. 13 to become the party’s nominee for the House seat.
