Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, defeated Donald Trump-endorsed Republican Joe Kent on Saturday in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District with about 50.5 percent of the vote. Saturday’s ballot count in Clark County put Gluesenkamp Perez’s lead over Kent, an Army Special Forces veteran, at more than 4,600 votes, with an estimated 15,000 or fewer votes remaining. He had been ahead since election night, but Kent narrowed the gap in later counts. The Seattle Times projects Gluesenkamp Perez as the winner, as an analysis shows Kent would need 73% of the remaining votes to catch up. NBC News, The Associated Press, CNN and The New York Times also called the race for the Democrat. Gluesenkamp Perez’s victory sends a Democrat to Congress in a district that has voted Republican for more than a decade, and means eight of Washington’s 10 House members will now be Democrats, along with the state’s two U.S. senators. It also boosts Democrats’ chances of holding onto their majority in the House, with several races close in states like California, Oregon and Arizona. Republicans are still favored to win the advantage to wrest control of the House. Kent had appeared confident of victory after the August primary, declaring the district to be “deep red MAGA country”. Gluesenkamp Perez said the final result shows that most voters in the 3rd District reject that ideology and Kent’s agenda, which centered on unrelenting partisan warfare. “We are modest and we are people who work for a living. We are people who pay our taxes and we want good schools and we want a functioning society. We’re tired of politicking and we’re tired of extremists and we just want to know that our children will have the same or better goal for a good life as we do,” she said in an interview on Saturday. She credited her victory to a coalition that included Republicans and independents who favored her focus on local issues and rebuilding the rural economy, rather than national party struggles. “I am not an ideologue. I’m not a show pony. I am here to work and live as the region does,” he said. Kent’s defeat was another disappointing defeat for a Trump-endorsed candidate in the midterm elections and provided Democrats with a surprise recapture of House seats in a year in which the party has mostly played defense. Before the election, the political news site FiveThirtyEight gave Kent a 98% chance of winning, but there were few polls in the race. Kent did not concede on Saturday, tweeting “this is not over.” He said supporters are working to “curate” 6,000 rejected ballots to be counted. This represents the total number of ballots that were not counted due to signatures or other problems, and probably includes Democratic voters in addition to Republicans. Kent had become a star in the conservative media, appearing frequently on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and almost daily at times on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast. As of Saturday, the margin in the race appeared to be outside the range that would trigger an automatic recount under state law. First instance referral The road to Gluesenkamp Perez’s improbable victory began when six-term Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler voted last year to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, violent attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters seeking to stop certifying Joe Biden’s victory. Trump got revenge by endorsing Kent, who managed to oust Herrera Beutler in the August primary but lost what was considered a safe Republican seat. Gluesenkamp Perez, the only serious Democrat in the contest, took first in the primary, and Kent squeaked past Herrera Beutler in a heavily Republican field for second place. Herrera Beutler never endorsed either candidate and did not respond when asked who she voted for. Gluesenkamp Perez, 34, will be among the youngest members of Congress next year. She grew up in Texas, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant father who met her mother on a visit to Washington. He graduated from Reed College in Portland with a degree in economics. She and her husband live in Skamania County in a home they built and co-own an auto body shop in Portland with eight employees. He has dabbled in politics as a member of the Democratic National Committee, and unsuccessfully ran for Skamania County Board of Directors in 2016. During her campaign for Congress, Gluesenkamp Perez positioned herself as a supporter of both abortion rights and Second Amendment rights, and emphasized support for small businesses, job training, and local concerns such as industry timber. She ran ads showing her rural home, in the province of Skamania, on which a tree fell with a chainsaw. Kent, 42, won the former Trump’s endorsement early in the primary cycle and embraced the former president’s lies about the 2020 election and downplayed the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill. Kent repeatedly called those arrested in the Jan. 6 attack “political prisoners” and said he wanted to investigate the FBI, looking for evidence that the agency covertly instigated the attack. He has embraced a pro-Trump “America First” agenda, vowing to seek Biden’s immediate impeachment, opposing U.S. military aid to Ukraine and calling for a near-total shutdown of immigration. Kent’s alignment with Trump and more conservative House Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, opened the door for Gluesenkamp Perez. He demanded that all weapons available to the military, including machine guns, be made available to the public. He supported a national ban on abortion, with no exceptions, and called for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be charged with murder. A handful of notable Southwest Washington Republicans who had supported Herrera Beutler in the primary have crossed party lines to publicly endorse Gluesenkamp Perez. The general election results show that a significant number of voters quietly followed suit. Kent’s totals in the 3rd District ran about 5 percentage points behind GOP Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley. Gluesenkamp Perez was getting about 4 percent more votes in the district than Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray — evidence that a sliver of Smiley voters split their tickets and refused to support Kent.
