U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and state Sen. John Braun faced off in their first debate Wednesday evening in the race for Southwest Washington's 3rd Congressional District.
At times, they stretched the truth about their opponent or the issues.
The 3rd District, bordering the Pacific Ocean, Oregon and the Cascade Mountains, is among the tightest House races in the nation. It flipped blue four years ago, when Gluesenkamp Perez defeated a far-right challenger in a surprise win.
Now, Gluesenkamp Perez is vying for a third term, framing herself as an independent-minded Democrat, while Braun argues a Republican-controlled Congress would be more effective. The hourlong debate remained even-tempered as candidates reiterated many of the same arguments against their opponents that have defined their campaigns so far.
But key statements by both candidates require clarification. The Seattle Times fact-checked both congressional candidates.
Claim: Gluesenkamp Perez said Braun was one of just a few people in the state Legislature to vote against a bill that would have prohibited technology companies from providing sexually explicit material for children in an AI bill.”
Braun rebutted this: "Marie just made an outrageous claim about a vote that never happened," he said. "She claimed a bill about AI and children that, frankly, doesn't exist."
Gluesenkamp Perez is referring to House Bill 2225, which the Washington Legislature passed in March, regulating artificial intelligence chatbots. Among other guardrails, it required that if an operator is aware that a user is a minor, it must implement “reasonable measures to prevent its AI companion chatbot from generating or producing sexually explicit content or suggestive dialogue with minors” and measures to hinder the development of an emotional relationship.
Braun was one of five state senators who voted against this bill.
Braun's campaign on Thursday walked back his Wednesday rebuttal.
"On this specific bill, there were constitutional concerns, and concerns from legitimate businesses and educational institutions that they would be unintentionally caught up in its provisions," Max Lavey, Braun's campaign manager, said in a statement. "John voted no to cause sponsors to make sure the bill served its intended purpose of protecting kids."
"John supports protecting kids from sexually explicit material online, and to claim otherwise is ludicrous," Lavey added, pointing to other legislation that Braun has supported, including a bipartisan state bill warding against explicit fabricated depictions of minors.
Claim: Gluesenkamp Perez said Braun “authored the largest property tax increase in state history.”
Gluesenkamp Perez pointed to an education funding deal the state Legislature passed in 2017 following the McCleary decision, in which the state Supreme Court found Washington violated its constitutional duty to fully fund K-12 schools and ordered the state to rectify this.
After years of debate, lawmakers approved a multifaceted property tax plan to increase state property taxes for schools while reducing local levies. The outcome was that Seattle-area property owners would continue to pay higher taxes and some rural areas would eventually see a property tax cut. (The following year, lawmakers approved a one-time property tax cut to take effect in 2019.)
Braun supported the 2017 property tax deal, which had bipartisan support and was signed by then-Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat. State Democrats later labeled the 2017 deal "the Republican Property Tax of 2017" — despite it receiving significant Democratic support — and described it as the largest property tax increase in state history.
Claim: Braun said the "One Big Beautiful Bill" does not cut Medicare and Medicaid.
"Let's talk about what's really in HR 1 with regards to Medicare. First of all, it's not a cut; it's actually just a reduction in growth,” he said, adding that the nation’s debt is unsustainable. “So what they did is they put some commonsense reforms in to try to reduce the growth of Medicaid."
It is a cut.
The federal budget bill last summer cut Medicaid spending by about $1 trillion over the next decade, largely by pushing millions of Americans, including hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians, off their existing health coverage.
HR 1 will introduce new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults who currently rely on Medicaid, or Apple Health in Washington. The reporting mandates are expected to nudge more than 600,000 Washington residents off Apple Health by the end of 2027. At the beginning of October, the bill also made over 10,000 lawfully present immigrants ineligible for Apple Health, cutting their coverage overnight. In King County alone, about 4,000 immigrants and 215,000 other Apple Health members are expected to lose coverage.
Claim: Braun said that in Gluesenkamp Perez's two terms, she has passed one bill in total, which renamed a post office.
Gluesenkamp Perez in 2024 passed a bill to rename the Bucoda Post Office in honor of the Southwest Washington town’s late mayor, and it is one of the few stand-alone bills that Gluesenkamp Perez has sponsored or co-sponsored that have passed into law. However, this is not uncommon: The same criticism could be made of many members.
Lawmakers frequently push smaller bills into larger legislative packages and influence legislation through their committees, which makes it hard to quantify how much policy a lawmaker is responsible for.
This year, for example, Gluesenkamp Perez co-sponsored the Build Now Act, targeting zoning and permitting rules for housing construction, which was included in a broader housing package that became law this summer.
She also secured language in a House spending bill directing the study of pain management strategies for miscarriage and secured the inclusion of her "banana bill in the sweeping Farm Bill. After the Longview catastrophe, she worked with members of the House Appropriations Committee to ensure the federal investigator's budget was not slashed. All three of the larger packages that include these statutes remain at a standstill; Congress doesn't pass many bills at all.
Claim: Both candidates lobbed criticisms at each other for millions in spending — by the president or special interests — that buoys their campaigns.
A PAC, backed by the president, has reserved $1.7 million in ad time in the 3rd District. Another PAC, funded by labor groups and liberal donors, has so far spent about $110,000 backing Gluesenkamp Perez, and much of the roughly $6 million that she has raised comes from out of state. Both campaigns are benefiting from major donors and significant outside spending.
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