Repub­li­can Joe Kent today con­ced­ed to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive-elect Marie Glue­senkamp Perez in Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, belat­ed­ly acknowl­edg­ing at last that he lost and Glue­senkamp Perez won.

“I promised dur­ing the cam­paign that I would accept the out­come of the elec­tion, now defin­i­tive­ly deter­mined as the recount has con­clud­ed,” Kent said in a state­ment issued today by his cam­paign. “This morn­ing, I called my oppo­nent to con­cede and offer my con­grat­u­la­tions on her victory.”

In the recount, paid for by Ken­t’s cam­paign, Glue­senkamp Perez actu­al­ly gained votes, caus­ing her mar­gin of vic­to­ry to increase ever so slightly.

“I’m glad Joe Kent accept­ed his loss, and I look for­ward to serv­ing as South­west Wash­ing­ton’s inde­pen­dent voice in Con­gress,” Glue­senkamp Perez said fol­low­ing Ken­t’s com­ments. “Democ­ra­cy is alive and well in our cor­ner of the country.”

The bulk of Ken­t’s state­ment was defi­ant rather than accept­ing, how­ev­er. Not con­tent with a sim­ple and grace­ful con­ces­sion, Kent pro­ceed­ed to gripe about the results and vow that he’ll be back for a rematch. Here’s what else he said:

While I’m dis­ap­point­ed that we did not pre­vail, our cam­paign and our sup­port­ers have a lot to be proud of. We defeat­ed a twelve-year incum­bent in the pri­ma­ry and came with­in a sin­gle per­cent­age point of win­ning the gen­er­al despite an unprece­dent­ed $14.2 mil­lion spent against me, includ­ing mil­lions in spe­cial inter­est dark money.

In this loss is an impor­tant les­son. We’ve iden­ti­fied over eighty-one thou­sand Repub­li­cans who did not vote in the Gen­er­al Elec­tion. Democ­rats have tak­en full advan­tage of bal­lot har­vest­ing laws in Wash­ing­ton State, but Repub­li­cans lag far behind.

We can­not con­tin­ue to lose the vot­er turnout bat­tle. Our par­ty must adapt and I look for­ward to help­ing lead this change.

I want to thank our many staffers, vol­un­teers, donors, and vot­ers. I’m also grate­ful to the lead­ers in the state and coun­ty Repub­li­can par­ties who worked hard to ensure this was a legit­i­mate election.

My mes­sage to any­one dis­ap­point­ed in our loss is to hold fast to the ener­gy and opti­mism that I saw at every one of the three hun­dred ral­lies and town­halls we held across the dis­trict because our cam­paign is not at a sad end but a strong beginning.

I will have more to say in ear­ly Jan­u­ary. Rest assured that I’m not done yet.

Ken­t’s com­ments about “bal­lot har­vest­ing” are weird. Per­haps he is not aware that it’s actu­al­ly Repub­li­cans who have a his­to­ry of engag­ing in dubi­ous bal­lot col­lec­tion schemes in Wash­ing­ton State. Like the “vic­to­ry vans” from 2012:

A big con­tro­ver­sy is brew­ing about a new Repub­li­can tac­tic to col­lect bal­lots from King Coun­ty voters.

Democ­rats are cry­ing foul and elec­tion offi­cials are urg­ing peo­ple to use autho­rized drop-off locations.

Repub­li­cans have placed “GOP Vic­to­ry Vans” in shop­ping cen­ter park­ing lots to col­lect ballots.

Elec­tions offi­cials said they’ve heard reports about the new GOP “get-out-the-vote” tac­tic but don’t know how many vot­ers have entrust­ed their bal­lots to the party.

King Coun­ty Repub­li­cans said that they have col­lect­ed about 100 bal­lots so far, and that door-to-door can­vassers are offer­ing to deliv­er vot­ers’ bal­lots to offi­cial drop boxes.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s get-out-the-vote oper­a­tion is for­mi­da­ble — there’s no doubt about that — but the par­ty’s suc­cess at get­ting out the vote isn’t due to “bal­lot har­vest­ing laws” like Kent says. As tough as it is for Kent to admit, he was out-worked and out-orga­nized in this elec­tion. Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd is a solid­ly Repub­li­can dis­trict, but Marie Glue­senkamp Perez was able to win it because she suc­cess­ful­ly appealed to Repub­li­can as well as Demo­c­ra­t­ic and inde­pen­dent vot­ers. In the end, she ran a bet­ter cam­paign that res­onat­ed with more people.