Vice President J.D. Vance will be pushing the Trump administration’s economic message in one of the most competitive Congressional districts in the 2026 midterm elections.
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WASHINGTON — Vice President J.D. Vance is venturing into battleground states in western Wisconsin as the White House’s efforts to protect the Republican Party’s tenuous majority in the House of Representatives is in full swing.
On February 26th, Vance will visit Plover, a suburb of Stevens Point, Wisconsin. The district, which will be represented by Republican Derrick Van Orden starting in 2023, is a hotly contested district. Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL, is the first Republican to win the district in 26 years.
The NDP announced this week that it would put more money into its campaign to win the seat that Van Orden won by less than three points in the 2024 election. The district is one of two Republican-controlled districts in Wisconsin that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says it is trying to flip.
The DCCC has announced that it will open up funds for Rebecca Cook in her rematch with Van Orden. Republicans beat Cook in the 2024 election, but fell short of Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump won the Congressional district, which runs along the western edge of the state and includes the cities of La Crosse and Eau Claire, by a seven-point margin. Wisconsin was one of the few Upper Midwest states that helped lead President Trump to victory in 2024, when he won every battleground state in the country and shattered the Democratic Party’s blue wall.
Ten months ago, the president endorsed Van Orden, a vocal supporter of his policies, for the 2026 convention.
Vance will tour Plover’s manufacturing facility to highlight President Trump’s economic message from his annual State of the Union address.
A spokesman for Vance said the vice president would argue that wages are rising, inflation is falling and American workers are better off now than they were under former President Joe Biden.
The visit to Wisconsin is one of Vance’s first domestic trips this year. He visited Toledo, Ohio and Minneapolis in January amid a standoff between state and local officials over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
Mr. Vance, who also serves as the Republican state finance committee chairman, held fundraising events in Naples and Miami Beach, Florida, last month.
It will be Vance’s second trip to the region this election cycle, showing how important Wisconsin’s 3rd District is to maintaining Republicans’ slim majority, with Democrats needing just a net three-seat win to control the House majority. He traveled to La Crosse in August to promote President Trump’s tax and spending legislation. This Congressional district is rated highly by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Van Orden attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, before he was elected to Congress. But he said he did not participate in the storming of the U.S. Capitol and does not support political violence. He came under intense scrutiny in 2023 for abusing senators who were only about high school students during a late-night tour of the building’s rotunda.
Mr. Vance’s visit to Wisconsin is part of a coordinated campaign by the White House to get the president and senior administration officials in front of voters in battleground states and maintain attention on Mr. Trump’s economic policies after his speech to Congress.
The president is scheduled to head to Texas later this week. A senior White House official said the event would center on energy production and the economy.
President Trump’s visit coincides with early voting in Texas ahead of the March 3 Senate Republican primary, where incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn faces a stiff challenge from within his own party. President Trump is expected to visit the Corpus Christi region, where air restrictions are in place related to presidential travel.
The White House is also keeping an eye on the president’s visits to Ohio and Tennessee in the coming weeks, the official said.
Contributors: Laura Schulte, Molly Beck
