Marie Gluesenkamp Perez Is Going From An Auto Repair Shop To Congress

Rep.-elect Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat from southwestern Washington state, had barely slept since catching an early morning flight out of Oregon a few days prior when HuffPost caught up with her by phone. Amid her new member orientation earlier this month in Washington, D.C., she had already rendered a verdict about the nation’s capital.

“I think I like the other Washington better,” she joked.

Gluesenkamp Perez, who owns an auto repair and parts shop with husband Dean Gluesenkamp, is one of the unlikely Democratic success stories of the 2022 election cycle. She received limited support from the national in the same cycle.

Gluesenkamp Perez needed to create a permission structure for independents and moderate Republicans who liked Herrera Beutler — and probably even Trump — to vote for her, because of their distaste for Kent.

One challenge she faced in that task was that she did not receive any support from House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Asked about the decision not to get involved in the race, DCCC Executive Director Tim Persico told The Washington Post in October that the contest was both winnable and a “reach” that his group could not afford due to limited resources. “I wish I had more money,” he said.

Gluesenkamp Perez spoke about the party’s decision-making diplomatically. “We need to do better,” she said, referring to the national Democratic Party. “I think we can do better.”

Terrified of a Kent victory, local Democrats and moderate Republicans in southwest Washington got together to fill the void.

Under the leadership of field director Tim Gowen, a friend of Gluesenkamp Perez’s from Reed College with no experience in politics and only a shoestring budget, about 1,000 volunteers knocked on nearly 40,000 doors on Gluesenkamp Perez’s behalf.

The campaign benefited from the assistance of Harley Augustino, a former Unite Here union organizer living in Portland who rallied some trainees at his organizer training program, Base Building for Power, to volunteer for Gluesenkamp Perez alongside him. They organized a “call squad” with a dozen members — half of them recruited by Augustino — to mobilize and manage hundreds of other volunteers.

In Augustino’s experience, the most persuasive argument with swing voters, many of whom are wary of the activist left, was that Kent was aligned with Trump and was thus the more polarizing figure in the race.

“I would say that Marie represents the district and Joe Kent represents the extremes and being very aligned with Donald Trump,” Augustino said. “If you’re tired of extremes, Marie is your person.”

It helped that Mel Finn-Kamerath, one of Augustino’s most motivated recruits, was a swing voter who had supported Herrera Beutler in the primary. But Kent’s ties to Trump and opposition to abortion rights were disqualifying to Finn-Kamerath, a homemaker from Kalama.

“I can vote Republican, but I can’t vote for that type of Republican,” she said, praising Gluesenkamp Perez’s commitment to “working across the aisle.”

At the same time, Fuse Washington, a progressive group in the state, erected a super PAC to support Gluesenkamp Perez and a handful of other candidates.

The political action committee spent more than $700,000 to air four TV ads — all of them attacks against Kent. Two focused on Kent’s opposition to abortion rights; the other two focused on his false claims about the 2020 election and his related ties to right-wing extremist groups.

One particularly illustrative 30-second spot featured a U.S. Air Force veteran from the district.

“Joe Kent and I swore the same oath,” Alan, a Desert Storm veteran from Washougal, says as patriotic music plays in the background. “But now Joe Kent is aligning himself with conspiracy theorists, election deniers, groups like the Proud Boys.”

House Democrats’ main super PAC, House Majority PAC, also spent nearly $300,000 on TV ads blasting Kent in the final week of the campaign.

Kent’s weaknesses as a candidate were apparently even enough to scare off national Republican groups. House Republicans’ campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, did not spend a dime on Kent’s behalf in the general election, nor did the Congressional Leadership Fund, their main super PAC. (The two groups did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on their reasons for sitting out the race.)

Aaron Ostrom, the executive director of Fuse Washington, believes that while Gluesenkamp Perez succeeded in winning over a critical share of moderate voters who were fearful of Kent, no one should mistake her for a cookie-cutter centrist.

“She doesn’t get her appeal by being a mealy-mouthed moderate,” he said. “She gets her appeal through rural, working-class populism.”