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# Incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez leads in WA’s 3rd District
- URL: https://www.cascadepbs.org/news/2024/11/incumbent-marie-gluesenkamp-perez-leads-was-3rd-district/
- Published: 2024-11-06T01:55:51.000Z
- Updated: 2025-06-19T11:54:15.000Z
- Description: The Democrat leads Republican challenger Joe Kent by 52% to 48% in the hotly contested race to keep her southwestern Washington Congressional seat.
- Author: Brandon Block
- Tags: News, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-04-14 08:10, #Import 2025-05-09 12:34, #article

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](https://wwu.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/minimalist/index.html?appid=015c7b795c50419d81298673128cb39d&ref=cascadepbs.org) in 2020 has been[ viewed as a test of whether Democrats can compete](https://www.cascadepbs.org/politics/2024/08/gluesenkamp-perez-faces-maga-rematch-us-house-rural-wa) 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](https://www.fec.gov/data/candidate/H2WA03217/?ref=cascadepbs.org) in fundraising this year, pulling in about $10.7 million [plus about another](https://www.fec.gov/data/candidate/H2WA03217/?tab=other-spending&ref=cascadepbs.org) $325,000 from independent committees. [Kent has raised](https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00771394/?tab=about-committee&ref=cascadepbs.org) $2.3 million, but [an independent committee](https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00797043/?ref=cascadepbs.org) 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.