Billed as the “person the media goes to to figure out how Democrats talk to the working class again,” U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, discussed how her party can best serve their constituents at the “No Labels” national conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
“She’s actually managed to win over working-class voters in her district,” No Labels Chief Strategist Ryan Clancy, who moderated the discussion, said of the congresswomen.
During the conference, Gluesenkamp Perez discussed the challenges of representing her constituents while getting bombarded by lobbyists.
“When I’m holding constituent meetings, or when I’m holding meetings in my office, I ask myself, ‘Was this person paid to talk to me?’ Because if you had to get a babysitter or call in a favor to come talk to me, I weigh the input proportionally to reflect my community,” Gluesenkamp Perez said.
The organization’s conference Thursday included discussions by moderate members of both parties, including Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virgina, and Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana. The appearance by Gluesenkamp Perez comes a little more than a month after she defeated Republican Joe Kent for the second time.
While No Labels has flirted with running a "unity ticket” in presidential elections, with a Democrat and Republican slotting in as president and vice president, the plan has not come to fruition. On their website, No Labels says the organization is a “nationwide movement of commonsense Americans from both parties and no party who reject extremism, embrace commonsense and believe America only works when we work together.”
The daughter of an evangelical pastor, Gluesenkamp Perez said she’s the sole Democrat and woman who goes to the House Republican Bible study, a group that allows her to find bipartisan support for her ideas.
“And I have real admiration for those men,” she said. “There are some people who have just been a good friend helping me navigate having a young child here, and the commute back and forth, and just good people that will pray with me. So I talk to them and take counsel from them.”
While in Congress, Gluesenkamp Perez has repeatedly sought to distance herself from her party and work across the aisle, arguing for stricter border control measures and declining to say who she voted for in the 2024 presidential election.
Ahead of the event, an agenda for the conference said Glusenkamp Perez would speak on “how the most courageous members overcome” the pressure to vote in line with their party's desired outcome, a process known as “whipping.”
“I’ll work with anybody,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “I don’t need an ideological purity test to serve my community.”
With Republicans set to hold a governing trifecta, Gluesenkamp Perez said her priorities in the upcoming Congress include permitting reform, capital access, increasing access to shop class and building up domestic production.
“My district still does have a lot of small and medium-sized family farms. We still do a lot of non-commodity farming,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “So thinking about ways that we can build something worth having in this country, not just cheap crap that breaks. Right to repair was one of the big reasons I ran in the first place.”
In May, Gluesenkamp Perez introduced legislation that would require original equipment manufacturers to make diagnostic and repair information, parts and tools available to third-party repairers and owners “in a timely manner.”
The proposal, the lawmakers said, would help consumers and repair shops avoid delays while reducing waste. According to Gluesenkamp Perez, the proposal could reduce household spending on electronics by 22% and result in roughly $40 billion in savings per year nationwide.
“It’s recognized in tort law going back to like the 1400s,” Gluesnkemap Perez said. “You bought it, you own it, you have the right to fix it.”
The decision to run for Congress, Gluesenkamp Perez said, also came after Kent challenged Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler following her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump.
“I knew who should be putting up Jaime’s yard signs, and I saw them start getting replaced with this guy Joe Kent, and I was like ‘who the hell is that?’” she said, adding that she began to do additional research into Kent’s views. “I had seen the way the Democrats had kind of come off that they were doing me a favor by showing up in my community. And I really believe that the antidote to that level of partisanship is to be a normal person.”
As she described her Southwest Washington district to the conference, Gluesenkamp Perez noted its reliance on both timber and shellfish, referring to the area as a “really natural resource-based economy.”
The disconnect between Southwest Washington and Washington, D.C., Gluesenkamp Perez said, is apparent in a proposed rule from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that would require SawStop technology on both home and industrial table saws within three years.
The technology is exclusively installed on SawStop blades, which are both more expensive to purchase and maintain, according to an April news release from the congresswoman.
Following the proposed ruling, Gluesenkamp Perez said several friends in the trades “started flipping out and texting me.”
“We all know that if you mandate a $900 additional cost to a table saw, people are just going to use a circ saw on a sheet of plywood and … you’re going to have a lot worse workshop accidents,” Gluesenkamp Perez said.
In late April, Gluesenkamp Perez introduced the Preserving Woodworking Traditions and Blocking Government-Mandated Monopolies Act, which is cosponsored by Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-South Carolina.
“So we were able to kill it in the appropriations process,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “Until they open up the patents, we can’t mandate a monopoly like that.”
Bucking the base of her party has resulted in a backlash toward Gluesenkamp Perez, which the congresswomen noted occurred after she decided to vote against a proposed student debt relief plan. The proposal, she said, was a “really regressive tax proposal,” with her district only carrying 3% of the federally issued student loans.
“So you’re telling me that we, who are not advanced by a traditional academic path, should pay the bill for your degree?” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “Like, that doesn’t make sense to us.”
The vote, she said, sparked immediate protests toward her Portland repair shop and a series of one-star reviews online.
“It’s the disconnect between an understanding of who your constituency is,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “If you support a progressive tax policy, support a progressive tax policy. We are not looking for party favors here. We are trying to figure out why tuition has increased by 481% since I was born. That’s the real question.”
