First-term Democratic congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez leads MAGA challenger Joe Kent 52% to 48% in early ballot returns for the hotly contested seat in southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District.
The battleground district is one of just a handful of closely contested races nationally. Holding onto the seat will be critical to Democrats’ hopes of retaking the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans hold a slim majority.
The race for a district that Donald Trump won by four points in 2020 has been viewed as a test of whether Democrats can compete among rural, largely white working-class electorates. Voters here tossed moderate Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera-Beutler in 2022 after she voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Gluesenkamp Perez has more than doubled Kent in fundraising this year, pulling in about $10.7 million plus about another $325,000 from independent committees. Kent has raised $2.3 million, but an independent committee has raised another $3.7 million.
A Special Forces veteran and former CIA contractor, Joe Kent had promised to cut trillions from the federal budget, deport every undocumented immigrant, and abolish the Department of Education. He is a popular pundit on Fox News, but his fondness for conspiracy theories and ties to white supremacists have alienated some mainstream Republicans.
Gluesenkamp Perez, the owner of a Portland auto shop who lives in rural Skamania County, has emphasized her blue-collar bona fides and sought to distance herself from Democratic leadership with votes to block student debt relief and reinstate Trump-era immigration policies limiting the rights of asylum-seekers.
Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent in 2022 by less than 1% of the vote.
