Endorsed by former President Donald Trump, former Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden defeated Democrat Brad Pfaff in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District.
With 93 percent of the votes counted, Van Orden received 52 percent of the votes while Pfaff recorded 48 percent, according to Decision Desk HQ.
Van Orden and Pfaff sought a seat held by longtime Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), who narrowly defeated Van Orden in 2020.
Kind was first elected in 1997 and announced in 2021 that he would not seek another term.
“The truth is I’ve run out of gas,” Kind said during a news conference after announcing his retirement.
Politics, he added, should not be “a constant combat sport” with the goal of destroying the other side.
Kind defeated Van Orden by less than 3 percentage points in 2020 in a district that Trump won by 5 percentage points the same year.
Van Orden wrote the 2015 book, “A Book of Man: A Navy SEAL’s Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood.” He enlisted in the Navy when he was 18, and served for 26 years, including multiple combat tours to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Trump endorsed Van Orden in August after backing him in 2020.
Van Orden ran unopposed in the Republican primary earlier this year.
He was in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, but denied taking part in breaching the U.S. Capitol.
Van Orden said he was in Washington for political meetings and attended Trump’s rally before the events at the U.S. Capitol.
A state senator and former cabinet secretary for Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, Pfaff claimed that his opponent’s presence near the Capitol that day demonstrates that he lacks the character and judgment to effectively serve in Congress.
Pfaff was also critical of Van Orden for saying in October that “leftists” cannot be Christians.
“There are many God-fearing Christians who are Democrats, there’s not a single God-fearing Christian that is a leftist, because those two things are incompatible,” Van Orden said at a prayer breakfast.
He called for a return to the Judeo-Christian values he believes “this country was based on.”
At the breakfast, Van Orden said that he is a member of the Bible Baptist Church, which includes homosexuality, bestiality, and incest as “sinful perversions.”
Van Orden followed up with a statement that said his comments referenced communism, which “abolishes all religion, and all morality.”
“As a God-fearing, practicing Lutheran, I am really really disappointed. I’m outraged by comments like that,” Pfaff told reporters.
The 3rd District stretches from Menomonie south along the Mississippi River to Platteville in western Wisconsin. The mostly rural district also includes the Democratic-leaning cities of Eau Claire and La Crosse.
