Democratic small business owner Marie Perez to challenge Jaime Herrera Beutler in WA-03

With a lit­tle more than sev­en months to go until Elec­tion Day, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has anoth­er can­di­date will­ing to take on Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler in Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict: Marie Perez, a small busi­ness own­er and DNC mem­ber from Ska­ma­nia Coun­ty, a part of rur­al Wash­ing­ton locat­ed between Van­cou­ver and Yaki­ma on the north­ern side of the Colum­bia River.

“For too long, res­i­dents of South­west Wash­ing­ton have been ignored by politi­cians in both par­ties who are more inter­est­ed in cater­ing to extremes than help­ing work­ing peo­ple,” said Perez in a state­ment declar­ing her candidacy.

“I know how hard it is to make ends meet right now and that is exact­ly why I’m run­ning for Con­gress — to be a voice for work­ing peo­ple again.”

Perez owns an auto­mo­bile repair shop with her hus­band Dean and says that access to health­care and child­care is a big issue for their fam­i­ly. The cou­ple have a new­born son and can’t afford a health insur­ance pol­i­cy that would cov­er all three of them. Child­care and health­care will be cen­tral themes in Perez’s cam­paign, which will also focus on get­ting big mon­ey out of politics.

Perez sup­ports ban­ning mem­bers of Con­gress from trad­ing stocks.

“In Con­gress, I will fight for an econ­o­my that puts work­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans first, not last, invest in career and tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion and I will fight every day for afford­able health­care and child­care,” Perez said.

Perez is the fifth Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date to declare her can­di­da­cy, fol­low­ing Brent Hen­nrich, a the­ater indus­try vet­er­an from Van­cou­ver, and Christo­pher May­nard, Davy Ray, and Lucy Lauser. May­nard and Ray have not report­ed any con­tri­bu­tions, while Lauser has report­ed just one dona­tion. Hen­nrich has raised $45,366.16.

Incum­bent Repub­li­can Her­rera Beut­ler, forty-three, is also being chal­lenged from the extreme right by a cadre of Trump loy­al­ists, notably Joe Kent, Hei­di St. John, Wash­ing­ton State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Vic­ki Kraft, and Wadi Yakhour.

Kent recent­ly snagged Don­ald Trump’s high­ly cov­et­ed endorse­ment and looks like the strongest of Her­rera Beut­ler’s Trump loy­al­ist opponents.

The Trafal­gar Group, a Repub­li­can-aligned firm, has been polling reg­u­lar­ly in WA-03. Last week, the firm found Her­rera Beut­ler com­ing in third, behind Joe Kent and Demo­c­ra­t­ic chal­lenger Hen­nrich in a sur­vey of 697 like­ly vot­ers. Hen­nrich, the only Demo­c­rat named in the sur­vey, got 32.8%, while Kent got 25.5%, Her­rera Beut­ler got 22.1%, St. John got 11.5%, and Vic­ki Kraft got 4.7%.

Regard­less of whether Trafal­gar Group’s polling is cred­i­ble or not, Her­rera Beut­ler is def­i­nite­ly at risk of being squeezed out in the Top Two election.

Only the top two vote get­ters will advance out of the August Top Two qual­i­fy­ing round, regard­less of par­ty affil­i­a­tion. If the Repub­li­can vote is severe­ly split, and if a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Repub­li­can vot­ers flee from Her­rera Beut­ler, egged on by Don­ald Trump and his entourage, that means that either two Democ­rats could go on to the gen­er­al elec­tion with no Repub­li­cans on the bal­lot, or one of the Democ­rats could get one of the Top Two spots along with one of Her­rera Beut­ler’s oppo­nents (most like­ly Joe Kent, giv­en his back­ing from Trump.)

In 2018, the last midterm cycle, Her­rera Beut­ler did poor­ly in the Top Two, cap­tur­ing just 42% of the vote. Her oppo­nents col­lec­tive­ly got 58% of the vote. How­ev­er, Her­rera Beut­ler did well enough that she was able to van­quish her Repub­li­can chal­lengers, leav­ing her with just Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion in the gen­er­al elec­tion. It looks like it’ll be hard­er to pull off that feat this time around.

In addi­tion to vot­ing to impeach Don­ald Trump, Her­rera Beut­ler vot­ed to cer­ti­fy the results of the 2020 elec­tion and cross­es the aisle to vote with Democ­rats more often than Dan New­house or Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers do. For instance, Her­rera Beut­ler vot­ed to hold Steve Ban­non in con­tempt of Con­gress. That has great­ly angered the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s base in Wash­ing­ton State, which was already not enthu­si­as­tic about Her­rera Beut­ler’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion before the 2020 election.

The new 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict is a Repub­li­can-lean­ing dis­trict, much like its pre­de­ces­sor. A nar­row major­i­ty of the new dis­trict vot­ed for Don­ald Trump in 2020, and 54.5% backed Loren Culp for Gov­er­nor. The new 3rd also has a com­pos­ite 2016–2020 vot­ing score of 51.9% Repub­li­can and 46.4% Democratic.

(That score uti­lizes data from the 2016 and 2020 pres­i­den­tial races, U.S. Sen­ate races in 2016 and 2018, and Gov­er­nor and Attor­ney Gen­er­al in 2020.)

It won’t be easy for a Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date to win WA-03 this year, but the dis­trict is nev­er­the­less in play. If Her­rera Beut­ler ends up get­ting oust­ed in the Top Two, the gen­er­al elec­tion would become a race with open seat dynam­ics rather than a con­test between a long­time incum­bent and a first time candidate.

We’ll be keep­ing an eye on this race through­out the rest of the cycle.