Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s victory confirmed, recount requested by Joe Kent changes little

A recount request­ed and paid for by los­ing ultra MAGA Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al can­di­date Joe Kent has affirmed that Rep­re­sen­ta­tive-elect Marie Glue­senkamp Perez won the 2022 con­test in Wash­ing­ton’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al District.

The recount, which involved sev­en coun­ties, added five votes to Ken­t’s tal­ly and nine votes to Glue­senkamp Perez’s tal­ly. At cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Demo­c­rat Glue­senkamp Perez led by 2,629 votes out of 319,759 total votes cast in the district.

Kent, an extrem­ist who cam­paigned with the endorse­ment of Don­ald Trump, has refused to con­cede defeat, fol­low­ing in the mold of Loren Culp, the 2020 Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date who base­less­ly ques­tioned the results last cycle and even filed a law­suit against the state to keep his grift going. (The law­suit was prompt­ly with­drawn after AG Bob Fer­gu­son sought sanctions).

Although the con­test in WA-03 end­ed with few­er than three thou­sand votes sep­a­rat­ing the can­di­dates, the mar­gin was not tight enough to auto­mat­i­cal­ly trig­ger a recount. Kent request­ed a recount that was paid for at his cam­paign’s expense, exer­cis­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty that state statutes afford to can­di­dates. Notably, Kent opt­ed for a less expen­sive machine recount instead of a hand recount, which sug­gests that his oper­a­tives did­n’t expect the out­come to change.

With the recount now done, Ken­t’s focus appears to be shift­ing to 2024.

Last Thurs­day, Kent appeared at a far-right wing gath­er­ing in Washou­gal and said he’s just going to keep on cam­paign­ing for Con­gress as the 2024 cycle begins.

“I’m run­ning again in 2024,” Kent told the crowd, in an appear­ance doc­u­ment­ed by Leah Anaya of Clark Coun­ty Today. Anaya wrote that Kent also commented:

“The elec­tion has already been cer­ti­fied,” he said, adding that he will not con­cede until he has “reached the lim­it of all we can do.” How­ev­er, he added that he would have con­ced­ed weeks ago “had we received the results in a time­ly man­ner … but that’s not what happened.”

That is a non­sen­si­cal com­ment. Wash­ing­ton State law has long pro­vid­ed for a three-week vote count­ing win­dow in gen­er­al elec­tions and there was noth­ing untime­ly about the deliv­ery of the WA-03 results this year.

In many con­tests, it is appar­ent who the win­ner will be on Elec­tion Night, but in close races, a pro­jec­tion can­not be made on Elec­tion Night or even in the imme­di­ate days fol­low­ing Elec­tion Night because bal­lots are still com­ing in.

In this con­test, many of Joe Ken­t’s vot­ers turned in their bal­lots at the very end of the vot­ing peri­od, and so it’s their votes that were being opened, scanned, tab­u­lat­ed, and report­ed days after Novem­ber 8th.

Kent tac­it­ly acknowl­edged this dur­ing his remarks when he said (accord­ing to Anaya): “There are three weeks of vot­ing in this state… We need to start on day one of the vot­ing win­dow to make sure we are get­ting bal­lots in front of peo­ple, and that they’re turn­ing them in to be counted.”

It’s actu­al­ly the job of the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice to get bal­lots in front of peo­ple — USPS han­dles the deliv­ery after elec­tions offi­cials put bal­lots in the mail. Cam­paigns, of course, engage in get out the vote efforts. It sounds like Kent is pret­ty dis­sat­is­fied with his cam­paign’s GOTV operation.

In the lead up to Elec­tion Day, Kent spoke con­fi­dent­ly of win­ning. After ear­ly results showed Marie Glue­senkamp Perez ahead, Ken­t’s camp sug­gest­ed that late bal­lots would put them ahead. When that did­n’t hap­pen, Ken­t’s camp shift­ed to argu­ing that some of his vot­ers had been dis­en­fran­chised due to the state’s sig­na­ture val­i­da­tion require­ments, result­ing in his loss, rather than accept­ing that he had alien­at­ed a lot of peo­ple in the 3rd with his mil­i­tant extremism.

Kent isn’t the only van­quished Repub­li­can mak­ing 2024 plans.

Politi­co report­ed last week that Her­rera Beut­ler “is con­sid­er­ing a come­back cam­paign for her seat, accord­ing to peo­ple famil­iar with her thinking.”

If that were to hap­pen, the 2024 race in WA-03 would effec­tive­ly be a reprise of the 2022 race, only with Glue­senkamp Perez as the incum­bent instead of Her­rera Beut­ler. Her­rera Beut­ler would need to be able to get past Kent and any oth­er ultra MAGA Repub­li­cans in the Top Two to be able to appear on the gen­er­al elec­tion bal­lot. Giv­en that she could­n’t pull that off this year with the advan­tage of incum­ben­cy, it seems like it would be a tall order to do it in 2024.

NPI has seen chat­ter (which could just be wish­ful think­ing) in sup­port of a dif­fer­ent come­back idea: run­ning for high­er office. The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty needs a guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date for 2024.

After the dis­as­ter that was Loren Culp’s cam­paign, the par­ty needs a more cred­i­ble can­di­date. Her­rera Beut­ler would def­i­nite­ly be more cred­i­ble, as would Pierce Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Bruce Dammeier, who can’t run for anoth­er term in his cur­rent posi­tion due to term lim­its. How­ev­er, if Her­rera Beut­ler isn’t inter­est­ed, the par­ty will have to look to Dammeier or anoth­er candidate.