The Wackadoodle Wave
In November 2020, the Republican Derrick Van Orden narrowly lost his attempt to unseat Representative Ron Kind in Wisconsin’s Third District, falling just 10,000 votes behind the veteran Democrat out of nearly 400,000 cast.
But Van Orden insisted that voter fraud had tainted the election results. Two months later, the former Navy SEAL was in Washington, D.C., on January 6, “to stand for the integrity of our electoral system.” He later wrote that he was “disturbed” by the violence that day, and never entered the U.S. Capitol grounds. When The Daily Beast uncovered photos showing that wasn’t true, Van Orden said the report was “inaccurate,” but wouldn’t say why. He also spent campaign money while in Washington, an apparent violation of federal election law.
His views on voter fraud are not the only strange things about Van Orden. Last year he entered a library in the town of Prairie du Chien and a 17-year-old library staffer over a gay-pride display, leaving her feeling threatened. (He her account.) His commitment to social conservatism only extends so far, though: In a memoir of his military service, he jocularly tricking two unsuspecting women into looking at a comrade’s that contact tracing is the same as “what the KGB used to do in the Soviet Union and the Stasi used to do in East Germany.” (Van Orden’s campaign did not respond to an interview request.)
