Washington State Republican Party votes to give Joe Kent an early endorsement in WA-03

Extreme, ultra MAGA Repub­li­can Joe Kent has secured the back­ing of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty for a 2024 rematch with Unit­ed States Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Marie Glue­senkamp Perez in the state’s 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, accord­ing to reporters who are present at the par­ty’s sum­mer meeting.

After some debate, the par­ty’s state cen­tral com­mit­tee vot­ed to embrace Ken­t’s can­di­da­cy, spurn­ing Camas City Coun­cilmem­ber Leslie Lewallen, who is sup­port­ed by Tiffany Smi­ley, the par­ty’s unsuc­cess­ful chal­lenger to Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Murray.

Kent already had the back­ing of the Clark Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty, which vot­ed to endorse him back in May. (Clark Coun­ty is the most pop­u­lous coun­ty in the dis­trict.) The coun­ty com­mit­tee’s chair­man, Matthew Bumala, told Clark Coun­ty Today in a May 25th email that the vote to endorse Kent was overwhelming.

“The gov­ern­ing body of the Clark Coun­ty Repub­li­can Par­ty made a strong state­ment tonight that they sup­port Joe Kent ear­ly on for Con­gress in our 3rd Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict,’’ Bumala said fol­low­ing the vote.

“The choice to endorse Kent this ear­ly was mas­sive­ly sup­port­ed with near­ly 84% of the votes,” Bumala added. “Only two-thirds of the Precinct Com­mit­tee Offi­cers need­ed to vote in approval for this endorse­ment to be passed.’’

Now the state par­ty has fol­lowed suit.

Reporters present at the August 2023 sum­mer meet­ing of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty include Jer­ry Corn­field from The Wash­ing­ton State Stan­dard, Claire With­y­combe from The Seat­tle Times, Jeanie Lind­say from NW News Net­work, and Joe O’Sul­li­van of Cross­cut. O’Sul­li­van tweet­ed a pho­to of Kent stand­ing in the back of a room at the meet­ing.

In 2022, Kent lost a close race to Glue­senkamp Perez, who became the first Demo­c­rat to win in the 3rd since Bri­an Baird’s final reelec­tion cam­paign in 2008. Baird and the late Don Bonker, anoth­er for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the 3rd, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly endorsed Glue­senkamp Perez’s suc­cess­ful campaign.

Ken­t’s extreme beliefs and eager­ness to pro­mote a wide swath of dis­cred­it­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries led a num­ber of Repub­li­can donors, activists, and vot­ers to break with their par­ty and cross over to back Glue­senkamp Perez. MGP out­per­formed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray across the dis­trict, just as our team’s research sug­gest­ed she could, and held onto her lead in late ballots.

Kent at first refused to con­cede defeat, and indi­cat­ed he would not accept the out­come. But even­tu­al­ly, he grudg­ing­ly threw in the tow­el, mak­ing it clear he’d just keep on run­ning and car­ry his cam­paign over to the 2024 cycle.

While oth­er states use pri­maries or nom­i­nat­ing con­ven­tions to deter­mine can­di­date place­ment, Wash­ing­ton uses a Top Two sys­tem to deter­mine what can­di­dates will advance to the gen­er­al elec­tion. So while Kent may have the endorse­ment of the state par­ty and many of its locals, he’ll still need to get more votes than Lewallen or any oth­er Repub­li­can can­di­dates who decide to run to be MGP’s Novem­ber 2024 gen­er­al elec­tion opponent.