Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Joe Kent spar in vigorous, heated WA-03 debate

Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gres­sion­al hope­ful Marie Glue­senkamp Perez and her ultra MAGA Repub­li­can rival Joe Kent kicked off the final phase of a hard-fought midterm elec­tion cycle this evening, spar­ring for about nine­ty min­utes over immi­gra­tion, cost of liv­ing, eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty, health­care, envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, for­eign pol­i­cy, and fit­ness for office at a livestreamed debate host­ed by RV INN Style Resorts.

Seat­ed behind long tables on a stage with a bright­ly illu­mi­nat­ed floor, the can­di­dates dis­cussed their own lived expe­ri­ences and pitched their ideas for the coun­try when they weren’t harsh­ly crit­i­ciz­ing each other.

The debate was well mod­er­at­ed, with short and sim­ple ques­tions, rebut­tal time pru­dent­ly pre-allot­ted for every exchange, and time lim­its con­sis­tent­ly enforced.

Glue­senkamp Perez, a small busi­ness own­er, skill­ful­ly and effec­tive­ly used her expe­ri­ence as the own­er of an auto repair shop through­out the debate to relate to peo­ple in the audi­ence and invite them to relate to her, while Kent leaned hard into right wing pop­ulist rhetoric in an attempt to make his mil­i­tant, dan­ger­ous ultra MAGA beliefs sound as appeal­ing and main­stream as possible.

Ken­t’s extrem­ism and embrace of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries was on full dis­play dur­ing the seg­ment of the debate focus­ing on the Amer­i­ca’s response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. That was when he false­ly char­ac­ter­ized the COVID-19 vac­cines as “exper­i­men­tal gene ther­a­py” (the vac­cines are not a form of gene ther­a­py).

Kent did­n’t stop there.

“Antho­ny Fau­ci [the direc­tor of the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases and the Chief Med­ical Advi­sor to the Pres­i­dent] and a lot of his under­lings were run­ning amok as unelect­ed bureau­crats, fund­ing gain-of-func­tion research under the nose of our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” Kent fumed.

“They were fund­ing the very same peo­ple who cooked up the COVID-19 virus in the Wuhan Insti­tute and Fau­ci must be held account­able for that.”

“Does any­one else feel like they just spent a month on YouTube?” Glue­senkamp Perez retort­ed when it was her turn to speak. “And that’s what we’re sign­ing up for with Joe Kent. He thinks he can raise a lot of mon­ey say­ing stuff like this.”

“And maybe he can, but he’s doing noth­ing to heal our country.”

Glue­senkamp Perez neat­ly bal­anced rejoin­ders like that with sto­ries of try­ing to apply for a loan with the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion, try­ing to find health­care for her employ­ees, and replac­ing repeat­ed­ly bro­ken win­dows as she artic­u­lat­ed her pri­or­i­ties for the coun­try’s future and vision for South­west Washington.

Lat­er on in the debate, hav­ing seem­ing­ly grown exas­per­at­ed with debat­ing an oppo­nent who owns a small busi­ness and lives in a rur­al com­mu­ni­ty in the dis­trict, Kent incor­rect­ly described Glue­senkamp Perez’s busi­ness as an auto body shop. She slipped a delight­ful rejoin­der into her rebut­tal time, explain­ing she co-owns an “auto shop, not a body shop… we fix things, we don’t make ’em pretty.”

Even after being cor­rect­ed, Kent per­sist­ed in call­ing her busi­ness a body shop.

Kent repeat­ed­ly reached for Trump’s great­est hits play­book when asked for his own posi­tions on the issues. He engaged in round after round of hyper­bol­ic Biden and Pelosi bash­ing, declared Democ­rats to be in league with Wall Street (even though Repub­li­cans, dur­ing Don­ald Trump’s regime, were respon­si­ble for the big tax give­away to Wall Street and the ultra­wealthy five years ago), and tried to project his own extrem­ism onto Glue­senkamp Perez and her supporters.

Glue­senkamp Perez, mean­while, made sure to bring up Ken­t’s fright­en­ing posi­tion on repro­duc­tive rights even though the debate orga­niz­ers did not allo­cate time to dis­cuss the top­ic. In one of her strongest moments, she told the audience:

“Joe Kent sup­ports a nation­al ban on abor­tion with­out an excep­tion for rape, incest, [or] the life of the moth­er, despite the fact that peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton State have been very, very clear that we sup­port the right of women to choose… He has said he’s going to over­ride the will of the states and impose fed­er­al pol­i­cy on us — and women will die because of it. It is not your place, Joe, to tell women to car­ry a baby to term. It is a slap in the face. You are not in charge.”

She was also ready to respond after Kent fired off his we need law and order  bom­bast in response to a ques­tion about pub­lic safety.

“Joe Kent wants to defund the FBI,” Glue­senkamp Perez point­ed out.

“He wants to excuse away vio­lent peo­ple at the Capi­tol who attacked the Capi­tol and attacked the police who were defend­ing the Capi­tol. He does­n’t think they should be pros­e­cut­ed. He calls them polit­i­cal prisoners.”

“She thinks I’m an extrem­ist,” Kent observed a few min­utes later.

In an attempt to make anoth­er of his extrem­ist posi­tions defen­si­ble, Kent offered a curi­ous ratio­nale for reject­ing any and all gun safe­ty laws, warning:

“You need to have that check on any kind of crazy author­i­tar­i­an, which is what you guys [Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers, Glue­senkamp Perez sup­port­ers] think we [the ultra MAGA fac­tion] are. Any kind of author­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies that we have, we have to have the abil­i­ty to have our gov­ern­ment have a healthy fear of us, or we’re gonna end up like the Cana­di­ans or like the Australians.”

Cana­da and Aus­tralia, of course, are advanced, pros­per­ous democ­ra­cies with far few­er gun deaths than the Unit­ed States. Mass shoot­ings are com­mon here but not there, because they have sen­si­ble gun safe­ty laws and we don’t.

In anoth­er mem­o­rable moment, Kent spoke favor­ably of U.S. Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders of Ver­mont and expressed a desire to see the pop­ulist left grow stronger.

“There used to be some bipar­ti­san con­sen­sus with the pop­ulist left that we did­n’t need to be in end­less for­eign inter­ven­tions, that we need­ed to bring back our man­u­fac­tur­ing lines, that we need­ed to have a tight labor mar­ket,” Kent said, reply­ing to a ques­tion about work­ing across the aisle.

“Bernie Sanders used to talk about this stuff all the time,” Kent continued.

“The prob­lem is the pop­ulist left was con­sumed by Wall Street Democ­rats who now con­trol their entire par­ty. So I would love to rekin­dle the pop­ulist left so we could have some con­sen­sus on not get­ting involved in end­less for­eign wars, secur­ing our bor­ders and bring­ing back our manufacturing.”

Sen­a­tor Sanders, of course, is one of the most con­sis­tent and prin­ci­pled mem­bers of Con­gress. As any­one who fol­lows his work is aware, Sanders has not stopped talk­ing about the themes that he ran on in either 2016 or 2020. And the move­ment that orga­nized around his can­di­da­cy is hard­ly inac­tive. Peo­ple in pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics are work­ing every day to defend Amer­i­can democracy.

Oth­er well known Democ­rats, mean­while, are among the most dis­liked mem­bers of Con­gress on Wall Street, espe­cial­ly Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren, whose 2020 cam­paign for Pres­i­dent spooked many Streeters. Their active lead­er­ship in Con­gress belies the false notion that Wall Street con­trols the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

The War­ren wing’s influ­ence can be seen in the par­ty’s recent leg­isla­tive and pol­i­cy wins. For exam­ple, the recent­ly enact­ed Infla­tion Reduc­tion Act — which Kent assailed as bad pol­i­cy dur­ing the debate — raised tax­es on the coun­try’s biggest cor­po­ra­tions, not some­thing Wall Street want­ed and not some­thing that any Repub­li­can Con­gress going back decades has been will­ing to do.

The Biden-Har­ris admin­is­tra­tion’s empow­er­ing stu­dent debt relief plan, which will help mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, would not have hap­pened with­out the pas­sion­ate advo­ca­cy of Sen­a­tor War­ren and the War­ren wing either.

And, with respect to avoid­ing end­less for­eign wars, it must be not­ed that a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent made the deci­sion to with­draw from Afghanistan and take the heat for the inevitable fall­out. When talk­ing about Afghanistan, Kent likes to blast Biden for how the with­draw­al was imple­ment­ed with­out giv­ing Biden any cred­it what­so­ev­er for hav­ing got­ten it done, some­thing his idol Don­ald Trump did not man­age to do dur­ing his time in the Oval Office.

The debate end­ed with two very dif­fer­ent clos­ing statements.

Glue­senkamp Perez told those watch­ing she wants to be a prob­lem solver, reject­ing extrem­ism and divi­sive­ness. “We do not have enough peo­ple in Con­gress who believe in fix­ing things, who believe in work­ing across the aisle,” she said.

“I am not your typ­i­cal can­di­date for Con­gress. I am def­i­nite­ly not a typ­i­cal Demo­c­ra­t­ic [can­di­date], and I am so grate­ful to have the sup­port of so many inde­pen­dents and Repub­li­cans who are putting patri­o­tism above par­ti­san­ship because that is the only way we are gonna get out of this mess.”

“We can’t have two more years of just anoth­er vote for Nan­cy Pelosi and for Joe Biden,” Kent said when it was his turn. (He name checked Pelosi and Biden more than once.) “I’m going there to pro­vide a check and a bal­ance on that agenda.”

The duel­ing can­di­dates briefly greet­ed each oth­er onstage before going their sep­a­rate ways. They are slat­ed to debate again next month.