Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez enjoyed a comfortable lead over Republican state Sen. John Braun on Tuesday, as she pursues a third term and her party seeks the House majority.
Gluesenkamp Perez led Braun by a margin of 55% to 44.1%, a sign she had not lost support of progressive Democrats who shunned her in the August primary. Her performance comes amid a cascade of Democrat wins nationwide that secured the House majority for her party heading into next year.
“It’s clear we’re going to win this race,” she said in a statement. “Thank you to everybody who knocked on doors in wet socks, who made the calls, wrote the postcards, and had the difficult conversations with their neighbors.”
Meanwhile, Republican Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney was handily beating Democrat John Duresky in central Washington’s 4th Congressional District. McKinney garnered 54.1% of votes counted Tuesday and appeared on her way to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside.
The match-up between Gluesenkamp Perez and Braun in southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District drew national attention as an electoral battleground that would help decide which party controls the U.S. House.
The district encompasses Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, Wahkiakum, and Skamania counties and a small part of Thurston County.
President Donald Trump won it in all three of his presidential runs. But Republicans lost the congressional seat in 2022 when Gluesenkamp Perez, co-owner of an auto repair and machine shop, beat Republican Joe Kent, a former Army Special Forces soldier who Trump backed.
Her win thinned the ranks of Republicans in Washington’s 12-member congressional delegation from three to two. She defeated Kent in their rematch in 2024.
Gluesenkamp Perez is a co-chair of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition and has been successful in part by positioning herself as a moderate, touting her willingness to work across party lines, at times angering those in her party.
Some of that frustration emerged in the August primary when Brett Hennrich, a more progressive Democrat, ran to her left and garnered 16.7% of the vote. He later said he wouldn’t vote for the congresswoman on Tuesday. However, given Tuesday’s results, many of those who sided with Henrich, cast their lot with the congresswoman Tuesday.
Braun, of Centralia, isn’t cut from the same GOP cloth as Kent. In his four Senate terms, he’s worked with Democrats writing budgets and funding special education. He has legislative experience and electoral know-how, and hoped his brand of Republicanism would win over Republican moderates and independent voters turned off by Kent.
He is president of Braun Northwest, a family-owned company specializing in building emergency vehicles at a facility in Chehalis. He campaigned as a pro-business, anti-tax, social conservative and cast Gluesenkam Perez as an ineffective member of Congress who only managed to pass one bill in four years.
But Braun couldn’t escape Trump’s shadow, which hung over midterm contests nationwide. This in spite of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana campaigning with Braun three times.
Gluesenkamp Perez repeatedly sought to tie him to Trump’s agenda, including the president’s ‘Big Beautiful’ tax and spending reform bill and the war in Iran. In the final weeks, she also targeted the safety record of Braun’s business and his relationship with the family of a man killed in a workplace accident in 2024.
Gluesenkamp Perez garnered 61% of votes cast in Clark County, which is home to the largest bloc of Democratic voters. She also led in Skamania and Pacific counties. Braun was leading in the other four counties.
Collective spending by the candidates, their party’s campaign operations and independent political committees eclipsed $30 million.
Gluesenkamp Perez had spent nearly $9.3 million to Braun’s $2.6 million as of mid-October, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC dedicated exclusively to electing Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives, and No Going Back, a political action committee aligned with Trump’s MAGA Inc., had combined to spend in excess of $10 million million opposing the incumbent entering the last weeks of the campaign.
Braun has been the target of $8 million in spending by the House Majority PAC, the super PAC focused on electing Democrats to the House. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Gluesenkamp Perez campaign have jointly spent several million dollars in opposition ads.
“They wanted this seat back. They thought they could buy it, but they don’t understand how we work here,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “This seat is not for sale. Everyday people doing the quiet, necessary work to build community: that’s how we push back against powerful people who think a seat in Congress is something you can buy.”
4th District
Nine of the state’s 10 members in the U.S. House sought reelection this year. The one vacancy is in the 4th District, where Newhouse is exiting after six terms.
McKinney, a county commissioner since 2019, had endorsements from Trump and Speaker Johnson.
Duresky, of West Richland, is a retired Air Force officer who also worked at the Hanford nuclear cleanup site. He is trying to become the first Democrat to win the House seat since former Gov. Jay Inslee did so in 1992. Inslee lost reelection after one term to Doc Hastings, a Republican, who held the seat until retiring in 2015.
