Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto shop owner who was a virtual unknown before August’s primary election, pulled off perhaps the most stunning political upset in the country this year, winning a congressional seat in Southwest Washington that few saw as competitive.
Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, defeated Donald Trump-endorsed Republican Joe Kent in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, with roughly 51% of the vote Saturday.
The latest ballot count Saturday in Clark County put Gluesenkamp Perez’s lead over Kent, an Army Special Forces veteran, at more than 4,600 votes, with an estimated 15,000 or fewer votes remaining. She had led since election night, but Kent narrowed the gap greatly in later counts.
The Seattle Times projects Gluesenkamp Perez as the winner, as an analysis shows Kent would need 73% of the remaining votes to catch up.
Gluesenkamp Perez’s victory sends a Democrat to Congress in a district that has voted Republican for more than a decade, and means eight of Washington’s 10 House members will now be Democrats, along with the state’s two U.S. senators.
It also bolsters Democrats’ chances of possibly hanging onto their House majority, with several races too close to call in states including California, Oregon and Arizona. Republicans remain favored to win a narrow majority.
Kent had appeared confident of victory after the August primary, declaring the district to be “deep red MAGA country.”
Gluesenkamp Perez said the result showed most voters in the 3rd District reject that ideology.
“We are moderate and we are people that work for a living. We are people that pay our taxes and want good schools and want a functioning society. We are tired of politicking and we are tired of extremists, and we just want to know that our kids are going to have a same or better shot at a good life as we did,” she said in an interview prior to the new vote totals Friday.
Kent’s loss was another stinging defeat for a Trump-endorsed candidate in the midterm elections and provided Democrats with a surprise House seat pickup in a year in which the party was mostly playing defense.
Before the election, the political news site FiveThirtyEight had predicted Kent had a 98% chance of winning, but there had been little polling in the race.
Kent’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
As of Saturday, the margin in the race appeared to be outside the range that would trigger an automatic recount under state law.
Gluesenkamp Perez, the lone serious Democrat in the contest, placed first in the primary, and Kent squeaked past Herrera Beutler in a crowded field of Republicans for second place.
Herrera Beutler never endorsed either candidate and did not respond when asked who she voted for.
Gluesenkamp Perez, 34, who will be among the youngest members of Congress, was able to out fundraise Kent down the stretch, drawing support from moderates and liberals concerned with Kent’s extremism.
She pitched herself as a supporter of both abortion rights and Second Amendment rights and emphasized support for small businesses, job training and local concerns, like the timber industry.
She ran ads that showcased her rural, Skamania County home, in which she fells a tree with a chainsaw.
Kent, 42, won former Trump’s endorsement early in the primary cycle and has embraced the former president’s lies about the 2020 election and downplayed the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Kent repeatedly called those arrested for the Jan. 6 attack “political prisoners” and said he wanted to investigate the FBI, searching for evidence the agency secretly instigated the attack.
He ran on a pro-Trump “America First” agenda, vowing to seek immediate impeachment of President Joe Biden, opposing U.S. miltary aid to Ukraine, and calling for a near total shutdown on immigration to the country.
Kent’s alignment with Trump and the most conservative House Republicans, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, opened the door for Gluesenkamp Perez in a district that hasn’t voted for a Democrat in more than a decade. He called for all weapons available to the military, including machine guns, to be available to the public. He supported a national abortion ban, with no exceptions, and called for Dr. Anthony Fauci to be charged with murder.
A handful of notable Republicans in Southwest Washington who’d backed Herrera Beutler in the primary crossed party lines to publicly endorse Gluesenkamp Perez.
The general election results indicate a significant number of voters quietly followed suit.
Kent’s totals in the 3rd District were running about 5% below the GOP Senate candidate, Tiffany Smiley. Gluesenkamp Perez was getting about 4% more votes in the district than Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray — evidence that a slice of Smiley voters split their tickets and declined to back Kent.
