April 1, 2025 in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
WASHINGTON – There was once a brief time when Derrick Van Orden and Mark Pocan left open the door for bipartisan cooperation.
That moment, however, is long gone.
What began as a campaign trail spat during the 2022 midterms has evolved into a near-constant exchange of online attacks between two members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation that has featured pointed public name-calling, accusations of alcoholism and, recently, the amplification of a dubious years-old rape claim that authorities have dismissed as unsubstantiated.
The relationship between Van Orden, a Republican, and Pocan, a Democrat, is the most bitter within the state’s Capitol Hill delegation in recent history. It’s something those observing the conflict say is no good for constituents in either House district.
And it’s likely one of the most toxic intra-delegation relationships in Congress.
“It’s kind of taken to a whole second degree here where there’s name-calling back and forth,” said former Wisconsin Republican Rep. Reid Ribble, who noted he is a friend of both men. “It’s gotten pretty nasty.”
The back-and-forth between the two congressmen exists mainly on the social media platform X. It is a more than three-year-old fight that began when Van Orden in 2021 launched his second campaign for the then Democratic-held 3rd Congressional District in western Wisconsin.
The fight intensified as Democrats chided the former Navy SEAL over his presence outside the U.S. Capitol as supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Pocan at the time called Van Orden an “insurrectionist” and “human poultry” — saying he was too “chicken” to debate his Democratic opponent. Van Orden, in response, referred to Pocan as “one of the most radical Anti-American leftist (sic) in congress.”
When Van Orden arrived on Capitol Hill in January 2023, both men claimed they would consider working together.
Now, however, the rhetoric has only intensified.
On any given day, it is not unusual to see a flurry of tweets from both men loaded with insults. Just in the last couple of months, Van Orden has referred to Pocan in public posts as a “vile wretch,” a “vile creature” and a “lying sack of shit.” He’s posted photos to X of random shirtless men in overalls, saying they are Pocan in an apparent effort to make fun of the Madison Democrat.
One day in late February, Van Orden accused Pocan, who is gay, of making “advances” toward him, writing in a tweet that he is “happily married.”
“Alcoholism is a disease,” Pocan tweeted late last month in response to more recent posts from Van Orden. “Get help. Don’t just be a lying ass. People see the difference.”
Derrick Van Orden resurfaces old, unsubstantiated claims against Mark Pocan
Things escalated significantly last month when Van Orden began amplifying a decades-old, unsupported accusation of rape against Pocan, just as Pocan started to hold town halls in and around Van Orden’s district.
Van Orden repeatedly posted to his more than 70,000 X followers that there were “very credible allegations” that Pocan traveled “to Central America to rape children and then brag about it.”
The allegations stem solely from a former Madison man named Glen Barry, who published a blog post in July 2012 alleging he heard Pocan brag about the reported acts at a bar in the early 2000s.
A spokeswoman for the Madison Police Department told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the allegations are “unsubstantiated,” and no charges have ever been filed against Pocan, who denied the claims. The FBI, to which Barry said he also reported the allegations, declined to comment.
But a report from police following an interview with Barry not long after his blog post raises serious questions about the story.
In an interview with Madison police in October 2012, Barry told officers he knew a “second person who has stepped forward to confirm” his allegations against Pocan, according to the report. Barry named Kyle Wood, a volunteer for Pocan’s first congressional opponent. Around the same time, Wood had claimed he was attacked by an unidentified man in his home because he was gay and did not support Pocan.
Wood later admitted to making up the story of the attack — which included fabricated text messages he initially said came from Pocan’s husband — and inflicting the injuries on himself using a guitar string and a rock shoved inside a sock. Wood was sentenced to jail time over the episode, and a judge at the time called Wood’s lie “quite simply bizarre and outrageous.”
Barry in the October 2012 report also told police he “understood that one might not take him as a ‘credible person’” — referring to himself — but later said he was a “credible source,” citing a doctorate degree. He said he wanted to contact police “to build a ‘paper trail’ that may be needed in the future.”
Van Orden told the Journal Sentinel last week that he had no evidence to support his claims against Pocan outside of Barry’s blog post. He said he did not read the Madison police reports from 2012 and, when asked if he reached out to law enforcement about his concerns, said only that he tagged the agencies in posts on X.
Asked why he found Barry’s allegations credible, Van Orden noted Barry’s resume says he has a doctorate degree, and he pointed to Barry’s claims in the blog post that he was a member of Pocan’s “inner circle.” Van Orden said he’s never spoken with Barry.
“I take people at their word,” Van Orden said. He called Pocan a “known liar and a manufacturer of untruths” and said the FBI should look into the allegations.
“Until Mr. Barry retracts anything, I’m taking him at his word,” he said.
Pocan hints at legal action against Van Orden
Pocan on Monday threatened legal action against Van Orden following a flurry of late-night tweets from the Republican repeating the accusations. Van Orden posted 11 tweets on the topic between 11:46 p.m. and 12:04 a.m. Central Time the night before.
“So there is no legal confusion for @derrickvanorden, you are telling a homophobic trope about me. It is false. I’m guessing you already know that,” Pocan wrote on X. “But by telling you it’s false directly, repeating it will have legal consequences.”
“Most elected officials have neither the emotional or intellectual defects that he has,” Pocan added in the X post. “Hence, he says reprehensible lies in response to visiting his district to do town halls. Awful human? Absolutely. Good public servant? Not on a good day. But he’s crossed a line even for him.”
In a recent email exchange with the Journal Sentinel, Barry, who lives in New York and whose LinkedIn page lists a PhD in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, indicated he stood by his accusations. He told the Journal Sentinel his blog post “contains my full statement” and said he has never spoken to Van Orden.
Today’s relationship stray far from the Obey-Sensenbrenner Rule
The vitriol between Pocan and Van Orden is the starkest example to date of the deteriorating relationships between Democrats and Republicans within Wisconsin’s congressional delegation.
It’s a marked change from the days when former Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Bill Proxmire would hold monthly bipartisan delegation meetings in which members could discuss issues impacting Wisconsin. Oftentimes, former staffers and members told the Journal Sentinel, the meetings wouldn’t have a set agenda but rather served as a time to come together.
The nastiness is also an example of a departure from more recent delegation decorum. For years, members abided by what is known as the Obey-Sensenbrenner Rule — an informal agreement named after former Wisconsin Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican, and Dave Obey, a Democrat, which held that members would not go into other districts to campaign against incumbent members.
That unwritten rule, current and former lawmakers said, was broken during Van Orden’s first run for Congress against former Democratic Rep. Ron Kind in 2020. Several Wisconsin Republicans at the time threw their support behind Van Orden. But Pocan in 2017 also endorsed against former Speaker Paul Ryan, though Ryan ended up retiring before the election.
Now, it is not unusual for Wisconsin’s members to get involved in races against others in the delegation. Pocan in 2022 frequently campaigned with Van Orden’s opponent, and he was a vocal supporter of Van Orden’s challenger last year.
“All it did was irritate folks, and we decided that personal irritation was not worth giving up the opportunity to work together,” Sensenbrenner, who retired in 2020 after 42 years in Congress, said of the bygone rule. Asked about the change in delegation relations since, Sensenbrenner quipped: “The no-bad-mouthing police ended up retiring.”
Ribble, the former Wisconsin House Republican, said members always tried to “maintain a certain level of comity between the members because there were times where you need to all work together.”
Ribble said he got along with Pocan and said Pocan was “always open to hear me out” even though the two often disagreed on policy. “It was always extraordinarily professional,” he said of working with Pocan.
He suggested the fight between Pocan and Van Orden could hinder future delegation cooperation.
“I just don’t think it’s good for Wisconsin,” Ribble said of the public conflict. “I don’t think it’s good for the institution and, quite frankly, I don’t think it’s good for those two men to have that type of working relationship.”
Pocan, for his part, has said his interactions with Van Orden are an anomaly and noted he has positive working relationships with other Wisconsin Republicans, such as Reps. Scott Fitzgerald and Glenn Grothman.
Grothman, approached outside a committee hearing one day in late February, told the Journal Sentinel: “I get along with my Democrat colleagues. I’m looking to track down Mark Pocan right now for a project we can work on together.”
In interviews with the Journal Sentinel, Pocan suggested he has not engaged in the personal attacks to the level that Van Orden has, rather saying he is simply highlighting policy positions and pointing out that Van Orden isn’t holding in-person town halls.
He said Van Orden is “emboldened” following Republicans’ election victories this past November.
“He clearly has issues,” Pocan said. “It’s not useful to the state to have a fight back and forth. But at the same time, I’m not going to sit back and let him be Derrick.”
Van Orden, meanwhile, said the animosity between the two men escalated in 2023, when they were seated next to each other on a flight between Washington and Wisconsin. Van Orden said he asked Pocan during the flight if he knew what was going on with Van Orden’s daughter, who passed away from cancer that year at age 37, and claimed Pocan responded: “Yes, I know, but we really want your seat.”
“My daughter was dying from cancer,” Van Orden said. “And Mark Pocan and I — he was writing the most filthy, disgusting lies about me on social media.”
Asked about the incident, Pocan told the Journal Sentinel the pair did indeed sit next to each other on a flight that year. Pocan said Van Orden early on in the flight noted he would not work to unseat Pocan, and Pocan responded by saying he was going to do “everything I can to make sure you’re not elected.” It was later in the trip, Pocan said, that Van Orden mentioned his daughter. Pocan said he then told Van Orden that he had sent him a note of condolences about his daughter and hoped he had received it.
“I’m gonna let Derrick deal directly between he and his doctor and his meds rather than me trying to have a back and forth on that issue,” Pocan said when asked about Van Orden’s claims.
“Derrick is not a stable individual, right? He wasn’t stable when he attended the insurrection on Jan. 6. He hasn’t been stable since he’s been in Congress,” Pocan said in a later interview. He referenced incidents in which Van Orden reportedly yelled at Biden administration officials during a briefing and teenage Senate pages in the Capitol. “Wisconsin deserves someone you can disagree with but respect, and I don’t think we have that with Derrick Van Orden.”
“He lost his human card,” Van Orden said, referencing the airplane interaction and the allegations from Barry.
Van Orden in an interview denied that the conflict and inability to work with Pocan would impact constituents. He said there are not many areas where the pair would work together, anyway — other than the most basic tasks like renaming buildings.
“If Mark Pocan wants me to sign off on a post office, I’ll do it. A VA center? I’ll do it,” Van Orden said. “Other than that, what else am I going to do with him?”
Lawrence Andrea 