Pri­or to the end of vot­ing in the midterms, the nation­al FiveThir­tyEight aggre­ga­tor gave ultra MAGA Repub­li­can Joe Kent a nine­ty-sev­en per­cent chance of win­ning elec­tion as the new House mem­ber from Washington’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al District.

To the sur­prise of the Belt­way, Kent lost in the moth­er of 2022 elec­tion upsets.

The only two polls of the dis­trict includ­ed by FiveThir­tyEight in its index had actu­al­ly found Glue­senkamp Perez very com­pet­i­tive with Kent, yet the aggre­ga­tor’s mod­el ignored them, rely­ing instead on pre­dic­tions from rat­ings outfits.

The afore­men­tioned polls were com­mis­sioned by Glue­senkamp Perez’s cam­paign (in August) and by the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute (in Sep­tem­ber), respec­tive­ly. Each showed the two can­di­dates just a few points apart in the mid-forties.

Seat­tle sup­port­ers joined Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive elect Marie Glue­senkamp-Perez lift­ing cups in cel­e­bra­tion Thurs­day night.

“Peo­ple like me don’t make it to Con­gress often,” the Ska­ma­nia Coun­ty res­i­dent and co-own­er of a Port­land auto repair shop told them.

Look­ing ahead, how­ev­er, Glue­senkamp Perez said of 2024 and Repub­li­cans: “This is their num­ber one pick­up.” She ain’t kid­ding, hav­ing won with 50.14 per­cent of the vote. Joe Kent, a 2020 elec­tion denier, has become a 2022 sore los­er. He paid for a machine recount, using the recount as a vehi­cle to keep rais­ing money.

Glue­senkamp Perez has a short time to do a lot of multitasking.

She needs to staff an office in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and field a top notch con­stituent oper­a­tion back home to meet needs of a needy. She needs to build up exper­tise on both nation­al and South­west Wash­ing­ton-spe­cif­ic issues.

Inter­viewed in the lat­est edi­tion of The Nation, Glue­senkamp Perez is attract­ing atten­tion across the coun­try as a rur­al Demo­c­rat who ran well in small towns and blue col­lar areas. “She is so unlike any­body else, but she is the future for our par­ty,” Suzi LeVine, for­mer Ambas­sador to Switzer­land, told the gathering.

Glue­senkamp Perez car­ried Pacif­ic Coun­ty, which Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray lost. She ran well ahead of Mur­ray in Repub­li­can-trend­ing Cowlitz and Ska­ma­nia Counties.

Glue­senkamp Perez faces an over­ar­ch­ing task. She needs to secure reelec­tion to con­tin­ue rep­re­sent­ing South­west Wash­ing­ton. Upset win­ners have tar­gets on their backs when they seek a sec­ond term. Being proac­tive is the key to survival.

LeVine sug­gests a “por­cu­pine strat­e­gy”: Erect such for­mi­da­ble defens­es and raise such a war chest that “nobody will touch you.” Lat­er, she elab­o­rat­ed: “By rais­ing the nec­es­sary and for­mi­da­ble resources ear­ly and often will enable Marie to spend less time rais­ing mon­ey and more time meet­ing the needs of her con­stituents – the num­ber one fac­tor in keep­ing her seat.”

The press loves to talk about mon­ey, but ser­vice is a big­ger source of sus­te­nance and sur­vival. It’s also much more enjoy­able that walk­ing blocks from House office build­ings to par­ty offices in order to spend hours “dial­ing for dollars.”

After flip­ping a seat held by Repub­li­cans for thir­ty-six years, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schri­er found her­self rep­re­sent­ing a dis­trict that strad­dles the Cas­cades. The Issaquah pedi­a­tri­cian focused on con­cerns of Repub­li­can-lean­ing Chelan and Kit­ti­tas Coun­ties. Schri­er became a cham­pi­on of water enhance­ment in the Yaki­ma Basin, an expert in remov­ing bot­tle necks to the export of hay, a help­mate in pre­vent­ing the cher­ry crop from freezing.

A dia­bet­ic, Schri­er has become a force for cap­ping the cost of insulin. She’s held mul­ti­ple town meet­ings, stud­ied polic­ing from the seat of a patrol car, and boned up on the U.S. 2 cor­ri­dor, added to her dis­trict through redistricting.

Schri­er just won her third term by a mar­gin of 23,000-plus votes, exceed­ing her 2020 per­for­mance against Jesse Jensen despite pre­dic­tions of a bad environment.

“It was because of peo­ple like you” that she won, Glue­se­namp Perez told sup­port­ers. That’s for sure. She received almost no help from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee. The dol­lars and door­bell ringers came large­ly from with­in the dis­trict and state. So did imag­i­na­tive adver­tis­ing, such as a tele­vi­sion spot show­ing MGP slid­ing out from beneath a car under repair.

“All pol­i­tics is local,” the late House Speak­er Tip O’Neil famous­ly said.

We’ve nation­al­ized pol­i­tics of late, with nation­al par­ty PACs churn­ing out nasty, boil­er­plate tele­vi­sion spots. But con­nect­ing with con­stituents remains a big deal in places like the 3rd and 8th Dis­trict of Wash­ing­ton State.

Glue­senkamp Perez has a polit­i­cal moun­tain to climb, and will need Sher­pas to help her out. To that end, she has hired two case­work­ers from the staff of out­go­ing Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jaime Her­rera Beutler.