Washington Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez won reelection to a second term Tuesday, denying Republicans a key seat they hoped to flip to expand their narrow majority.
Ms. Gluesenkamp Pérez won Washington’s 3rd District in a rematch against Republican Joe Kent, who served as a foreign policy adviser to former President Donald Trump after time in the Special Forces and as a CIA field operative.
Republicans hoped that Mr. Trump’s presence on the ballot this year would help Mr. Kent win in the southwestern Washington district, which the former president carried by 4 points in 2020.
In another setback to the House GOP, one of the most vulnerable congressional Democrats survived into a second-round tabulation of the ranked choice vote in Maine.
The votes will be redistributed in the contest between Democratic Rep. Jared Golden and Republican state Rep. Austin Theriault, who both had just shy of 49% of the vote. When no candidate gets 50%, the votes are redistributed minus the candidate with the fewest votes.
Mr. Golden and Mr. Theriault were the only candidates on the ballot, but anti-Gaza war candidate Diana Merenda ran an organized write-in candidacy and garnered several hundred votes. The second choice of any voters who left their first choice blank will also be counted.
The results of Maine’s second round tabulation are expected this week.
House Republicans are now just five seats away from keeping the majority, but several key races remain extremely tight as the vote counting drags on.
In Washington, Ms. Gluesenkamp Pérez eked out her 2022 win against Mr. Kent by less than a percentage point, but she was on track to exceed that margin this year when The Associated Press called the race with her leading by 4 points.
The 3rd District includes Vancouver and other communities along the Columbia River that serve as Washington’s border with Oregon, as well as more rural areas to the north.
Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, who ran well ahead of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, told The New York Times that she refused to let her race become nationalized.
“It’s not about the message. It’s about my loyalty to my community,” she said. “The messenger is the message in a lot of ways. My awareness of my community has been durable, and it’s reflective in my vote record. That is a huge asset.”
Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez accused some Democratic elected officials of being too “calloused” and disrespecting ordinary people. She told a story about meeting Ms. Harris at her Naval Observatory Christmas party and commenting on the plastic decorations, telling the vice president that farmers in her district grow Christmas trees.
“She just walked away from me. There was kind of an eye roll, maybe,” the Washington Democrat said. “My thinking was, it does matter to people where I live. It’s the respect, the cultural regard for farmers. I didn’t feel like she understood what I was trying to say.”
Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez said fixing the Democratic Party will “take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.”
• Alex Miller contributed to this report.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.