A group of congressmen and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson descended on Chehalis Wednesday with a message that is likely familiar to voters: This is the most important election of your lifetime.
“I've been going to rallies since the 80s, and every rally, some guy like me stood up and said, ‘This is the most important election of your lifetime,’” said Congressman Richard Hudson, a Republican from North Carolina. “Well, I'm sorry, but I'm going to stand in front of you and tell you this is the most important election of your lifetime because the direction of this country hangs in the balance.”
Washington state Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, was joined by a collection of U.S. congressmen, political pundits, local officials and the guest of honor, Johnson, for the rally at Braun Northwest headquarters.
More than 500 people attended the event, rolling in from all over Washington’s Third Congressional District as Braun seeks to unseat U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania.
The rally and its collection of national-level dignitaries represent a final push in the district, which Johnson described as a “top three district in America,” referring to its importance in Republican efforts to hold their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
With 218 House seats currently occupied by Republicans and 214 in the hands of Democrats, losing just two seats to the minority would mean deadlock for the GOP. Any additional gains by Democrats would flip control of the House entirely.
Johnson said his party is “bullish” on the district while also recognizing that it has been nearly a century since the majority party’s president has gained seats in the midterms after being elected.
“When a president wins the White House, the other team's upset about it, and they send out all their grassroots and they go steal seats from him in the House two years later,” Johnson said. “That is not going to happen this time. It can't.”
Johnson was the keynote speaker of the evening. But a lineup of other speakers preceded him, including an opening prayer from Lewis County Prosecutor Jonathan Meyer followed by state Rep. Peter Abbarno, R-Chehalis, who led the Pledge of Allegiance before handing the microphone off to political podcaster Brandi Kruse.
Kruse was followed by a roster of lawmakers that included two freshman congressmen from Texas, U.S. Reps. Craig Goldman and Brandon Gill. Former White House Political Director and Georgia Rep. Brian Jack spoke next, followed by Rep. Hudson, who is also chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The speakers drew applause from the crowd with a range of talking points that included the benefits of H.R. 1, perhaps better known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as well transgender athletes in youth sports and Marxism while hammering Braun’s opponent, Gluesenkamp Perez, and, even more so, her political party.
Finally, they turned the floor over to Braun, who was the second to last speaker to take the floor before Johnson made his own appearance.
Braun returned the conversation to local and state issues while also criticizing his opponent’s voting record and her performance in Congress more directly.
He revisited a recent talking point from his campaign, pointing out that Gluesenkamp Perez has managed to push through only one bill in her time in Congress, legislation that officially renamed the Bucoda Post Office after the late Mayor and Assistant Fire Chief Robert Gordon.
“Now that's a great post office. Don't get me wrong. It's a great name. But it didn't make your life better,” Braun said. “So I'm going to ask you a simple question: Has Marie done a single thing for you or your family, a single tangible thing to make your life better?”
Braun and Gluesenkamp Perez have been trading barbs through pervasive political advertisements as the election edges closer, with even Braun’s family business — the site of the Wednesday rally — becoming a flashpoint as Gluesenkamp Perez criticized the safety record of Braun Northwest. Most recently, that has included an advertisement featuring the son of a man who was killed in a workplace accident at the business in 2024.
Answering questions after the rally, Braun referred to the advertisements from his opponent as “ruthless” and said the attacks did not stop his campaign from holding the event at a location well suited to host attendees.
“We're not going to let that cower us into not running the race, not showing who we are, and we had it here because this was a good location given the number of people we had,” Braun said.
As was mentioned throughout the rally, Braun also stressed the importance of getting out the vote throughout the district.
The Third Congressional District has been a point of frustration for Republicans, as President Donald Trump has carried it in past elections while Gluesenkamp Perez twice defeated former Republican candidate Joe Kent.
“I've been doing events in almost every single city in the district, and it's just work. You’ve got to go meet them where they are, listen to them and win their trust," Braun said.
Johnson provided a rosy picture for Braun’s chances of taking back the district that has voted in favor of Trump three times and yet remains a tossup in recent polls. He shared an equally positive outlook on Republicans’ chances to hold majorities in the House and the Senate.
“President Trump won the district three times,” Johnson said. “We can win this seat, and we should, because the current occupant of the seat does not represent the values of the people in this district.”
A poll published by Portland based DHM Research at the beginning of the month and commissioned by Oregon Public Broadcasting has the race in a dead heat, with Braun taking a slim lead of 46% of likely voters favoring him over 44% for Gluesenkamp Perez. The poll also found that Braun took 48% to Gluesenkamp Perez’s 47% when unsure voters were included and asked which way they were leaning.
All of those statistics are well within the pollsters' predicted margin of error of 4.3%. However, it wasn’t polls that fueled Johnson’s positivity, but rather his conviction that “polling can be totally disregarded.”
Johnson asserted that political polls have undersampled Republican voters. He predicted political polls have been tilted in the Democrats’ favor by four points or more. But his outlook became even more optimistic as he looked ahead to the 2030 Census and predicted a future where Republicans were in a position to grow a legislative majority to more than 20 seats.
Johnson also celebrated Braun’s qualifications for the job, citing his Navy career and more than a decade of service in the state Senate in Olympia, joking that he has “so many jobs for him to do when he gets to Congress.” He even included a brief impression of President Donald Trump.
“As the president would say, this guy is straight out of central casting,” Johnson said as he imitated the president's recognizable voice and cadence.
