Joe Kent cuts into Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s lead, but may be running out of runway

The close con­test for Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict got clos­er today as late bal­lots more favor­able to ultra MAGA Repub­li­can Joe Kent were tab­u­lat­ed in South­west Wash­ing­ton coun­ties like Clark and Cowlitz, but Kent could be run­ning out of run­way to mount anoth­er come from behind vic­to­ry like he had in August.

The small­er coun­ties where Kent is see­ing his best per­for­mance are pret­ty much out of bal­lots to process, while the more pop­u­lous Clark Coun­ty — where Marie Glue­senkamp Perez is ahead — still has 45,000 left to count. If Glue­senkamp Perez can stay com­pet­i­tive in the next two or three drops, she ought to be able to eke out a win over Kent and pick up a con­gres­sion­al seat for Democrats.

Kent, one of the most extreme Repub­li­cans on the bal­lot any­where in the coun­try this year, end­ed up on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot due to Repub­li­can vot­ers’ dis­sat­is­fac­tion with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler, who wise­ly vot­ed to impeach Don­ald Trump over the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion and was then aban­doned by Repub­li­cans for her patri­o­tism. Glue­senkamp Perez entered the con­test on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side in Feb­ru­ary in response to Ken­t’s candidacy.

Glue­senkamp Perez’s lead over Kent was 10,273 votes yes­ter­day; today, it’s 5,882.

“As expect­ed the mar­gin in this race has tight­ened, but we remain very opti­mistic that when all the bal­lots are count­ed the vot­ers of South­west Wash­ing­ton will reject hyper-par­ti­san­ship and extrem­ism by elect­ing Marie Glue­senkamp Perez the next mem­ber of Con­gress from Washington’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict,” said Sandeep Kaushik, one of Glue­senkamp Perez’s advi­sors, in a statement.

“In today’s bal­lot count, Joe Kent did not make the gains he need­ed in order to have more than an out­side chance of flip­ping the out­come of this race. His result was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ing for him in pop­u­lous Clark County.”

“Going for­ward, the vast major­i­ty of the votes remain­ing to be count­ed are in Clark Coun­ty, where Marie’s cam­paign has run strongest, and if cur­rent vote count­ing trends hold Marie will win. While there are still too many out­stand­ing bal­lots remain­ing to declare vic­to­ry, our con­fi­dence that Marie will ulti­mate­ly defy expec­ta­tions and pre­vail is grow­ing by the day.”

Despite los­ing ground to Kent across the dis­trict as a whole, Glue­senkamp Perez held her own in Clark Coun­ty. Her advan­tage over Kent dimin­ished only slight­ly in the third count, going from 22,106 votes yes­ter­day to 21,980 today.

Lewis Coun­ty, one of Ken­t’s strong­holds, is down to just 380 out­stand­ing bal­lots and won’t report again until next week. Cowlitz has 6,500 bal­lots await­ing pro­cess­ing (down from 12,000) and will report tomor­row along with Clark.

The late Cowlitz bal­lots have been favor­able to Kent.

He had a 909 vote lead on Elec­tion Night in the coun­ty, dou­bled the lead to 1,970 yes­ter­day, and then tacked on. He now has a 3,203 vote advan­tage in Cowlitz.

The oth­er coun­ties in the dis­trict also do not plan to report tomorrow.

Thurston will do a Sat­ur­day count, Pacif­ic will do its next count on the 14th, Ska­ma­nia will do its next count on the 15th, and tiny Wahki­akum Coun­ty does­n’t plan to do anoth­er tal­ly until cer­ti­fi­ca­tion day on Novem­ber 28th.

Democ­rats have not won a con­gres­sion­al race in Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict since 2008, a wave year for Democ­rats that bol­stered Bri­an Baird.