National Democrats find they have a lot they can learn from Marie Gluesenkamp Perez

She has held office few­er than three months, but the 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­tric­t’s Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marie Glue­senkamp-Perez (MGP), D‑Washington, is emerg­ing as a role mod­el and media mag­net in the Democ­rats’ Class of 2022.

She’s drawn recog­ni­tion for mak­ing the lengthy jour­ney from co-own­ing a Port­land auto repair shop to the Long­worth House Office Building.

The basics: MGP upset extrem­ist ultra MAGA Repub­li­can Joe Kent in Repub­li­can-lean­ing dis­trict twice car­ried by Don­ald Trump.

She did it despite receiv­ing no sup­port from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee. She out­ran Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, par­tic­u­lar­ly among rur­al and blue-col­lar vot­ers who had drift­ed away from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

“A New Voice for Win­ning Back Demo­c­ra­t­ic Votes” head­lined New York Times opin­ion piece, while a Politi­co arti­cle enti­tled “She Fix­es Cars: Can She Fix Con­gress’ Elit­ism Prob­lem” spoke to her “brac­ing cri­tique of her party’s deeply out-of-touch approach to the mid­dle class.”

South­west Wash­ing­ton has been a poster region for shifts in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. Once home to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Julia But­ler Hansen, the “lit­tle old lady in log­gers’ boots,” its econ­o­my has fall­en on hard times and many of its vot­ers have turned to the hard right.

In the 1972 pres­i­den­tial race, only two coun­ties in Wash­ing­ton, Grays Har­bor and Pacif­ic, gave majori­ties to George McGovern.

Both went for Repub­li­can Tiffany Smi­ley in the 2022 Sen­ate race.

Once-Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cowlitz Coun­ty has giv­en Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee less than forty per­cent of its vote in the 2016 and 2020 guber­na­to­r­i­al races.

The 19th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict has switched from an all-Demo­c­ra­t­ic del­e­ga­tion in the state­house to an all-Repub­li­can one in the past three elections.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party’s base has shift­ed to upper mid­dle class, col­lege-edu­cat­ed vot­ers in places like Seattle’s 43rd and 46th Dis­tricts – where Repub­li­can lumi­nar­ies Dan Evans and Slade Gor­ton had their start – and the 41st and 48th Dis­tricts in the east side of Lake Wash­ing­ton. Pro-lib­er­ty Demo­c­ra­t­ic women hold State Sen­ate seats in what was once a Repub­li­can heartland.

The same trend holds true nation­al­ly. The cen­ter of America’s “rust belt”, the upper Ohio Riv­er val­ley, used to be Demo­c­ra­t­ic turf, its House mem­bers under the thumb of a tough-mind­ed Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee pow­er­house Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Murtha, D‑Pennsylvania. The Repub­li­cans have cap­tured the region, in par­tic­u­lar turn­ing Ohio and West Vir­ginia into red states.

Glue­senkamp-Perez, already nick­named MGP, has bucked the trend.

She car­ried Pacif­ic Coun­ty, cut loss­es in heav­i­ly Repub­li­can Lewis Coun­ty, cap­tur­ing just enough rur­al and blue-col­lar sup­port while run­ning up a major­i­ty in pop­u­lous Clark Coun­ty, just as NPI’s research indi­cat­ed that she could.

She is already on Repub­li­cans’ tar­get list for 2024.

A sig­na­ture MGP TV spot cre­at­ed by Dan Kul­ly showed her slid­ing out from beneath an auto body. In the ador­ing Politi­co pro­file, MGP spoke of “recon­nect­ing Amer­i­cans with our lost abil­i­ty to fix your own shit” and said with pride, “I replaced hun­dreds of cat­alyt­ic con­vert­ers last year.” She and her hus­band live in semi-rur­al Ska­ma­nia Coun­ty, a Tea Par­ty strong­hold in its time.

Dri­ving south on Inter­state 5, through Lewis Coun­ty, motorists have for decades been treat­ed to right-wing mes­sages just south of Chehalis on the Hamil­ton Farms’ Uncle Sam bill­board. It has denounced gun safe­ty bills, mocked Hillary Clin­ton and relent­less­ly jabbed at then-Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jolene Unsoeld.

MGP is court­ing Lewis Coun­ty. She has a seat on the House Agri­cul­ture Com­mit­tee, and recent­ly held a “farm bill lis­ten­ing ses­sion” in Centralia.

An arti­cle in the Chron­i­cle, the very con­ser­v­a­tive local paper, pub­li­cized her spon­sor­ship of the bipar­ti­san “Small Busi­ness and Tech­ni­cal Edu­ca­tion Act.”

The leg­is­la­tion directs the Small Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion to assist small busi­ness own­ers in hir­ing grad­u­ates of career and tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion pro­grams. It is cospon­sored with Sen­a­tor Roger Mar­shall, R‑Kansas.

It mir­rors an ini­tia­tive by Pennsylvania’s new­ly elect­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Josh Shapiro to no longer to require a col­lege degree in state hiring.

Glue­senkamp-Perez is also cospon­sor­ing leg­is­la­tion to involve tribes and coun­ties in for­est restora­tion. “Keep­ing the woods work­ing for future gen­er­a­tions is cen­tral to who we are as rur­al Amer­i­cans,” MGP said in announc­ing the legislation.

A cospon­sor is arch­con­ser­v­a­tive Sen­a­tor Jim Risch, R‑Idaho, known for rais­ing a stink when a wilder­ness area in his state was named after a con­ser­va­tion cham­pi­on, the late Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov­er­nor Cecil Andrus.

MGP is also part of a bipar­ti­san appeal, ask­ing the House Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee to main­tain or increase the $390 mil­lion bud­get for the Com­mod­i­ty Sup­ple­men­tal Food Program.

The pro­gram deliv­ers food pack­ages to seniors with annu­al incomes of less than $18,955 per adult. It serves Cowlitz, Pacif­ic, Thurston and Ska­ma­nia Counties.

The MGP agen­da is one of con­nect­ing nation­al pri­or­i­ties to local needs. Glue­senkamp Perez has a coun­ter­part in fel­low first-ter­mer Mary Pel­to­la, D‑Alaska, who has focused on a suf­fer­ing salmon fish­ing indus­try in her home state.

MGP has come up to Puget Sound for fundrais­ers. Pel­to­la has raised mon­ey from Seat­tle envi­ron­men­tal­ists while at the same time cham­pi­oning the Wil­low Project, Cono­coPhillips’ big oil and gas devel­op­ment on Alaska’s North Slope.

Pel­to­la has joined Glue­senkamp-Perez on Repub­li­cans’ tar­get list for 2024.

Joe Kent is off and run­ning – some would say off-but-run­ning — for a 3rd Dis­trict rematch. He’s cer­tain to get air­time from Tuck­er Carl­son on FNC and has already staged a fundrais­er at the Capi­tol Hill Club in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and an event in Lewis County.

The Democ­rats have elect­ed five con­sec­u­tive gov­er­nors in Wash­ing­ton, and held both our U.S. Sen­ate seats since 2000, boost­ed by majori­ties in the Puget Sound basin. Sen­a­tor Mur­ray car­ried King Coun­ty by a 400,000 vote mar­gin, despite a bar­rage of Tiffany Smi­ley TV ads and the com­mand from Sean Han­ni­ty on Fox: “We want that seat.”

It’s time, how­ev­er, from the Cowlitz Riv­er to Ohio’s Mahon­ing Val­ley, for the D’s to reclaim lost ter­ri­to­ry. The Repub­li­cans are seek­ing deep cuts in edu­ca­tion and social pro­grams, notably those that serve an endan­gered mid­dle class. MGP is coun­ter­ing Repub­li­cans’ cul­ture wars by putting focus on needs of her district.

Rur­al and labor Democ­rats used to be a vibrant part of our polit­i­cal culture.

As an aging Baby Boomer, I can remem­ber unions ral­ly­ing in the 1950’s to defeat fire-at-will employ­ment ini­tia­tives. The mea­sures were cham­pi­oned by Boe­ing CEO William Allen. Sen­a­tor War­ren Mag­nu­son deliv­ered on mea­sures rang­ing from putting doc­tors in such rur­al locales as the Methow Val­ley to secur­ing mon­ey for the great third pow­er­house at Grand Coulee Dam.

Marie Glue­senkamp-Perez is a new kid from the Class of 2022 but with lessons to teach. She’s using auto body parts to edu­cate Democ­rats on the body politic.