Lessons from the biggest House upset in the country: The victory of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington’s 3rd District

From the 7,880-foot sum­mit of Old Snowy, in the Goat Rocks Wilder­ness, you can gaze out over the expanse of South­west Wash­ing­ton, once a reli­ably Demo­c­ra­t­ic region but late­ly a “red” cor­ner of an increas­ing­ly “blue” state.

Marie Glue­senkamp Perez has put a dif­fer­ent hue on the 3rd Dis­trict, scor­ing the most sur­pris­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic upset of any U.S. House race in the coun­try.

She did it with min­i­mal help from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, as the FiveThir­tyEight mod­el was giv­ing ultra MAGA Repub­li­can Joe Kent a nine­ty-sev­en per­cent chance of winning.

The only inde­pen­dent, pub­licly-released poll show­ing promise was a North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute sur­vey con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling.

It put Kent ahead by a three-point per­cent mar­gin but showed a sub­stan­tial num­ber of 3rd Dis­trict vot­ers had devel­oped a neg­a­tive opin­ion of him.

It can hap­pen when you speak to a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., ral­ly in sup­port of defen­dants on tri­al for the Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021 insurrection.

Glue­senkamp Perez, an auto shop co-own­er from Ska­ma­nia Coun­ty, won it in the precincts while Kent was tak­ing to the air on the Tuck­er Carl­son Show and Steve Bannon’s pod­cast. Glue­senkamp Perez stressed that she would attend to the needs of a needy district.

She talked about local issues rather than cul­tur­al wars, won big in the pop­u­la­tion cen­ter of Clark Coun­ty, refused to give up rur­al areas, and gained back­ing from long­time sup­port­ers of six-term Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jamie Her­rera Beut­ler, oust­ed by Kent in the primary.

She ran far ahead of oth­er Democ­rats on the bal­lot. Glue­senkamp Perez took 45% of the vote in Cowlitz Coun­ty, com­pared with 39.77% for Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Murray.

She topped 55% in Clark Coun­ty while Mur­ray squeezed out a 51.13% major­i­ty. She car­ried Pacif­ic Coun­ty, where Mur­ray nar­row­ly lost.

The Democ­rats are com­ing up short in the 17th and 18th Leg­isla­tive Dis­tricts, despite field­ing promis­ing can­di­dates and invest­ing resources.

Was Glue­senkamp Perez’s vic­to­ry a reac­tion to Kemp’s extrem­ism? In part, yes. Vot­ers in the 3rd Dis­trict couldn’t stom­ach a can­di­date who want­ed to charge Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci with mur­der. Or who par­rot­ed a pro-Putin line on the war in Ukraine. Or import­ed show horse Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Matt Gaetz as a surrogate.

Don­ald Trump nar­row­ly car­ried the 3rd Dis­trict in 2020 but has not car­ried him­self well, obsessed with car­ry­ing on a purge of any Repub­li­can law­mak­er who showed an iota of inde­pen­dence. Her­rera Beut­ler was one of ten House Repub­li­can votes to impeach the 45th pres­i­dent after the Jan­u­ary 6th attack on the Capitol.

She also “out­ed” a mid-insur­rec­tion con­ver­sa­tion in which Trump dressed down supine House Minor­i­ty Leader Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kevin McCarthy.

The 3rd Dis­trict used to have a tra­di­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic House mem­bers who deliv­ered. “Julia will get it for you,” became then mantra when Julia But­ler Hansen, the “lit­tle old lady in logger’s boots” from Cath­lamet, rep­re­sent­ed the dis­trict. She was a House Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee power.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Don Bonker became a trade expert and shep­herd­ed fed­er­al resources into the dis­trict after erup­tion of Mt. St. Helens.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bri­an Baird host­ed mul­ti­ple town meet­ings hear­ing the needs of con­ser­v­a­tive rur­al cor­ners of the district.

The state’s resource econ­o­my has, how­ev­er, fall­en on hard times.

The result is high unem­ploy­ment, human hurt due to the opi­oid cri­sis, and vot­ers vent­ing anger. They have elect­ed loud, anti-gov­ern­ment politi­cians (e.g. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Walsh of Aberdeen) who rarely embrace means where gov­ern­ment can bol­ster local eco­nom­ic development.

The state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic nabobs haven’t helped.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee first embraced, but then – dur­ing a brief run for pres­i­dent – opposed a $2 bil­lion gas-to-methanol plant planned for Kalama.

The Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy denied per­mits to a coal export ter­mi­nal pro­posed at the site of an old alu­minum smelter in Longview.

The Democ­rats used to cham­pi­on resource development.

The old Longview smelter dis­played a pic­ture of Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt grin­ning and wav­ing as he was dri­ven through the plant.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bonker was a stead­fast oppo­nent of log exports, argu­ing that the cut from Wash­ing­ton forests should go through the mill rather than onto ships.

The gov­er­nor has rarely put boots on the ground to offer alter­na­tives to the big tick­et projects he has vetoed. He goes else­where to tout the state’s green ener­gy econ­o­my. As with Mur­ray this year, Inslee has tak­en less than forty per­cent of the Cowlitz Coun­ty vote in his last two reelec­tion runs.

Marie Glue­senkamp Perez shows promise of restor­ing the hands-on tra­di­tion of her Demo­c­ra­t­ic predecessors.

She has also roused con­stituen­cies, from youth­ful vol­un­teers to Port­land-area res­i­dents who’ve relo­cat­ed across the Colum­bia Riv­er. She’s done it with­out the par­ty resources which backed the unsuc­cess­ful 2018 and 2020 cam­paigns in which WSU-Van­cou­ver pro­fes­sor Car­olyn Long chal­lenged Her­rera Beutler.

Using Glue­senkamp Perez’s upset win, it’s time for the Democ­rats to recon­nect. After all, they held the 3rd Dis­trict from 1960 to 1994, and the 19th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict for decades until it swung to the Repub­li­cans in 2016 and 2020.

Gov­er­nor Inslee has decamped to Sharm el Sheikh this week for a Unit­ed Nations-spon­sored glob­al cli­mate con­fer­ence. He has pre­vi­ous­ly shown up for cli­mate sum­mits in Glas­gow, Copen­hagen and Bonn.

He did good in Bonn, chal­leng­ing a Trump regime spokesman who was tout­ing “clean” coal and nuclear energy.

He did well on a fundrais­ing stop enroute home from Glasgow.

A mod­est pro­pos­al: The gov­er­nor needs to spend qual­i­ty time down in the 3rd Dis­trict. Our state’s gov­ern­ing Democ­rats ought to deliv­er for vot­ers who reject­ed the ultra MAGA extrem­ism of Joe Kent and opt­ed for a rea­son­able, work­horse House mem­ber in Marie Glue­senkamp Perez.

She will be a ser­vant of South­west Wash­ing­ton but is a nation­al mod­el for Democ­rats recon­nect­ing with blue col­lar work­ers and rur­al America.