Republican Derrick Van Orden, a retired Navy SEAL backed by former President Donald Trump, won the GOP nomination for Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District as he ran unopposed in the primary.
The New York Times called the race around 9:00 p.m ET after the poll closed because he was uncontested.
In November, Van Orden will run against whoever makes it out of the Democrat primary. There are four people — Rebecca Cooke, Deb McGrath, Mark Neumann, and Brad Pfaff — vying for the nomination after Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) decided to retire after a slew of bad press surrounded him.
This is not the first time Van Orden has made it this far. He ran and narrowly lost against Kind in 2020 as the Republican nominee.
Kind announced last year that he would retire. Breitbart News at the time had extensively reported on the seedy massage parlor Kind kept as a tenant known as “Asian Sunny Massage” and previously named “Impression Spa.”
Last year, after Kind dropped out of the race, Van Orden told Breitbart News that “Pelosi is going to hand-pick another candidate to run against me, and that person is going to have to carry Nancy Pelosi’s radical leftist water.”
“I’m fighting against an agenda, and the agenda is massive spending,” Van Orden explained. “It has led to uncontrolled inflation, people that want to have open borders, which means, in essence, we don’t have a nation, and people that want to instill socialism into our country, critical race theory into the military, into schools — that’s what I’m fighting against. So that has not stopped.”
As Breitbart News reported, multiple large campaign signs of Van Orden were found vandalized with swastikas. The campaign signs were found last week on Monday afternoon.
In response to the vandalism, Van Orden told Breitbart News, “This is just the latest in a series of attempts by the Left to censor and silence those who think differently than they do.”
The swastikas drawn on the large campaign signs are used in an attempt by the left to compare Republicans to Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany.
Vandalized Derrick Van Orden campaign signs in Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District. (Obtained by Breitbart News)
“Vandalism like this and attempts to silence political speech are unacceptable, regardless of party affiliation,” he added. “I am running to represent everyone in the 3rd District, including those who disagree with me.”
“Congratulations to Derrick Van Orden on his primary victory. Derrick chased longtime incumbent Ron Kind into retirement and will crush whichever Biden-Pelosi rubberstamp Democrats nominate,” National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Tom Emmer said.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.