Two years ago, one of the country's biggest political upheavals took place here, amid the radiant greenery of the Pacific Northwest. A 34-year-old new mother and auto repair shop owner ran for Congress without help from national Democrats, winning a seat that Republicans had held for more than a decade.
Now that seat is central in the fight for control of the House.
The incumbent, Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez, is among the least likely Democrats you will find in Congress.
She trashes the Biden administration's record on immigration and will not endorse Kamala Harris for president. She lives down a gravel road in a house she and her husband built. He exalts those who work with their hands (plumbers, mechanics, electricians) and belittles the intellectuals who populate Washington, speaking the despised language of people ignored or disdained for where they live or how they work.
“I get goosebumps,” he said at a small gathering at a mall bar and grill, “when I hear a politician come up and say, 'My dad was just a janitor. I'm the first person in my family to go to university.'” How does that sound to everyone else in the room who didn't go to college?
(His degree in economics from Portland's prestigious Reed College is not mentioned.)
Columnist Mark Z. Barabak joins candidates for various offices as they hit the campaign trail in this momentous election year.
Still, Gluesenkamp Pérez's willingness to buck his party and his fluency in grievance politics are why he has a chance in this southwest corner of Washington state, in a district that voted twice for Donald Trump and he will surely do it again on November 5. one of the few rural Democrats left in Congress and one of five House Democrats seeking re-election in pro-Trump districts. They are all endangered species.
His Republican opponent, whom Gluesenkamp Pérez barely defeated two years ago, is an unreconstructed MAGA warrior, who hangs out with the Proud Boys and white nationalists and parrots Trump's nonsense about a stolen 2020 election and the martyrs of January 6. He moved to the district less than a year before launching his candidacy.
But given the district's Republican leaning, the rematch appears to be a toss-up at a time when control of the House may shrink to just a handful of seats.
“A group of people who didn't vote in 2022 midterm will vote this time,” said Mark Stephan, a political science professor at Washington State University in Vancouver, with a population of about 200,000, which is the closest thing that the district has. to a big city. “Enough that it can go in any direction.”
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With the campaign nearing the home stretch, Gluesenkamp Pérez recently embarked on an RV tour of the 3rd Congressional District, traveling winding two-lane roads, passing farmland and forests painted red, yellow and orange . Her husband, Dean, the couple's 3-year-old son, Ciro, and the family's German shepherd, Uma Furman, accompanied them.
Six days, 20 stops, many of them in large areas with only a few thousand residents. It is in those rural confines where the campaign will be decided.
At the end of the first day, after visiting two small taverns for the “Pintas con Pérez” events, it was time to have fun with the family. So the RV headed straight to a chainsaw museum in Amboy, where the couple spent nearly an hour exploring the floor-to-ceiling exhibit, eyes wide with delight.
“This is great,” rejoices Dean, an auto mechanic who does repair work in the family shop.
“Yes, this is amazing,” the congresswoman agreed.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and her husband, Dean, at a chainsaw museum.
(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)
Gluesenkamp Perez was born and raised in Texas, but his family has deep roots in Washington state, going back generations on his mother's side. (Gluesenkamp Pérez's great-great-grandfather helped quarry the stone used to build the state Capitol.) He spent his childhood summers with his family in Bellingham, playing in the woods and developing a lifelong love of nature.
There are no political reds or blues in the woods, he tells the audience.
Gluesenkamp Pérez's father, an immigrant from Mexico, pastored an evangelical church in Houston. When Perez stopped attending services, his parents stopped paying for college, so he worked three jobs to pay for his studies at Reed. One was in a factory that made iPhone cases.
As he aspires to re-election, Gluesenkamp Pérez's main selling point is his working-class personality.
Someone who appreciates hard work and gets excited when seeing heavy machinery. Whoever managed to build her house and start a small business struggled to make payroll and was forced to deal with clueless bureaucrats. In short, someone who shares his constituents' skepticism toward big government and antipathy for distant Washington, DC.
Recounting an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill, Gluesenkamp Pérez describes watching the witnesses with their old-fashioned manners and elegant pedigrees and wondering if any had ever turned a wrench.
“It's crazy to me to see these fellow DC staffers in bow ties making decisions,” he said, calling for a national codification of abortion rights to overturn the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. “They don't know what the fuck.” His voice trailed off and the crowd in another room stopped bursting into laughter at his unseemly F-bomb.
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Gluesenkamp Pérez's Republican opponent, Joe Kent, is trying to nationalize the race, turning the race into an endorsement of Trump, his bellicose personality and belligerent policies. He is trying to overcome partisan labels, even as national Democrats and their allies pour millions into his campaign, and focus almost entirely on the whys of the 3rd District.
The congressional seat can't be given to “a political scoundrel,” he told a few at a roadside steakhouse in Amboy, decked out in cobwebs and skeletons for Halloween. “We have to have a seat that is based on local issues…not something that is imported from a think tank or a political action committee, but here. Us. “We are the solution.”
Gluesenkamp Pérez, holding his son Ciro, answers questions after a “Pintas con Pérez” event in Amboy, Washington.
(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)
Their platform is pure practicality: making agricultural loans more accessible; mobile homes with better insulation to save energy; giving people the right to choose where to repair broken appliances and the like, rather than having to send them back to the manufacturer.
Why did you ask if tax-deferred 529 savings accounts should only pay for college tuition, books, and so on? “We need a tax code that respects the trades,” he said, allowing write-offs for the types of equipment used by loggers, plumbers and electricians.
In Washington, Gluesenkamp Pérez has had no qualms about separating from his party. A voting study by CQ Roll Call found her the second most likely House Democrat to break ranks.
She backed a resolution rebuking Harris for her role in the administration's border policy and was one of four Democrats to support a defense bill that would have limited access to abortion, transgender care and diversity training. for military personnel. She opposes a ban on assault weapons (although Gluesenkamp Pérez would raise the age to purchase one from 18 to 21) and was one of only two House Democrats to oppose a debt relief plan. student proposed by the Biden administration.
The latter sparked an avalanche of scathing reviews of the family's auto repair shop (“Worst auto care I've ever been to,” one Yelp reviewer wrote online) in a determined campaign of left-wing retaliation. Much of the trolling came from outside the district.
At home, Democrats like Howard Marshack are more understanding.
The candidate at a “Pintas con Pérez” event in Woodland, Washington.
(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)
“She's not as liberal as I am,” said Marshack, who was seeing his congressman in person for the first time at a Rotary Club luncheon in Vancouver. As he spoke, a steady rain pounded the boardwalk in front of Portland, just across the Columbia River.
“I can't help but think that a significant number of his positions are genuine and possibly some of them are because he needs to represent his district,” said Marshack, 75, a retired family law attorney. “It's okay, given the options I have. ..I can’t stand his opponent.”
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The words “Trump” and “Harris” never leave Gluesenkamp Pérez's lips, if they can.
But in this fiercely inflamed political season, discussion about the fight for the White House is inevitable. Drawn in, Gluesenkamp Pérez seems unsure, pausing and choosing her words carefully, as if verbally making her way through a political minefield, which she is.
In Longview, the district's second-largest city (with a population less than 40,000), he spoke to a friendly audience of about 50 residents gathered in a curtained-off section of another bar and grill. Several wanted to know his opinion on the two presidential antagonists.
One woman asked what she should say to neighbors who support Trump and who, she suggested, don't realize how he will hurt their interests if he is elected. Gluesenkamp Pérez's indirect response (about respecting people who do manual labor and building community) trailed off with a small sigh. “It's a wild political climate,” he said.
One man wondered what the congresswoman thought of Harris' proposal for a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers. Another long, winding answer followed (on affordability, regulations, building your own home, the virtues of the business class) before Gluesenkamp Pérez finally expressed concern that the proposal could simply end up increasing housing costs.
The refusal to embrace Harris in a district the Democrat appears destined to lose is not surprising. “What I say is not going to change anyone's vote in my community,” he said as he left the Shamrock Grill and prepared to head to his next stop.
At least not in the presidential race. But it could make a big difference in his re-election race.
Gluesenkamp Pérez may be a rookie member of Congress, and it's also unlikely. But she is no political naive.
