U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, from left, debates the issues with challenger Joe Kent at KATU studios in Portland on Monday night, Oct. 7, 2024.
Amanda Cowan / The Columbian
Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican Joe Kent’s contrasting personalities and policies came into sharper focus during a debate on Oct. 7 as a new poll showed their race to represent southwest Washington in Congress in a dead heat.
In a televised debate, the two candidates clashed on immigration, the war in Ukraine, and a new Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River while attempting to depict the other as out of step with residents of the 3rd Congressional District. They faced off in the studio of a Portland television station days after sharing a stage in front of hundreds of people in Longview.
Gluesenkamp Perez, a moderate Democrat seeking re-election in the Republican-leaning district, touted her willingness to break with her party and vote with the GOP as indicative of a pragmatic rather than partisan approach.
She said Kent, who she narrowly defeated in 2022, could not be entrusted to defend the “independent values” of constituents.
“I’m proud of doing exactly what I said I would do two years ago as a small business owner, as a mom, as somebody who works in the trades, lives on a gravel road,” she said in closing comments. “You know the reality is that Joe wants to diminish the work that I’ve done. He wants to make it seem small.”
“But I don’t think rural transportation for rural veterans is small. I don’t think infrastructure is small. I don’t think a level playing field for our businesses is small,” she continued. “Joe thinks they’re small because he’s not listening to us. He wants us to think that he knows more than us, that he knows better than us, but Joe doesn’t even know us.”
Kent, the more poised debater, argued for new leadership and laid out an array of policies, each woven with threads of nativism and an “America first” philosophy.
“Our first duty and responsibility is to make sure American citizens are taken care of and to make sure that our country is sovereign and secure,” he said in a discussion about immigration.
In opposing continued aid to Ukraine – which the incumbent congresswoman supports – Kent said, “American missiles are now being shot into Russia. We’re closer to World War III than we’ve ever been. Our number one goal needs to be to put Americans first. Stop sending our money overseas. Take care of our people, secure our border, get this conflict in Ukraine and Russia to an end as fast as we can.”
He dismissed Gluesenkamp Perez’s record of bipartisanship, insisting that when it mattered most she cast her votes in “lockstep” with her party and President Joe Biden.
Gluesenkamp Perez and Kent are dueling in the 3rd District, which spans Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, Wahkiakum, and Skamania counties and a touch of Thurston County.
Polling shows a tight race
Two years ago, Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair shop owner, beat Kent by 2,629 votes in one of the year’s biggest electoral upsets. Kent, an Army Special Forces veteran, advanced from the primary by defeating six-term Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who paid a political price for voting to impeach President Donald Trump after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The poll released early Monday, shows it could be as close again.
Kent and Gluesenkamp Perez each garnered 46% in the survey of 624 likely voters conducted by Public Policy Polling for the Northwest Progressive Institute, a pro-Democratic Party nonprofit advocacy organization. Eight percent said they were unsure. The survey, done Oct. 1 and 2, has a margin of error of +/- 3.9 percentage points.
In the same poll, looking just at the 3rd District, former president Donald Trump led Vice President Kamala Harris 50% to 45% and Republican Raul Garcia had a three-point edge on Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.
Andrew Villeneuve, Northwest Progressive Institute founder and executive director, said in a news release that Trump’s advantage shows Gluesenkamp Perez will again need to win the votes of Republicans to keep her seat.
“She was able to secure that support in 2022 when many prognosticators wrote her off or ignored her,” he said. “No one should doubt that she’s capable of winning this rematch.”
Immigration and border security consumed several questions in the debate.
“My top priority is to secure that border,” Kent declared. “We build the wall, we get more law enforcement down there. We get the military down there if we need to” in order to stop individuals entering the country illegally and the movement of illicit fentanyl.
He opposed a pathway to citizenship for those in the country without permanent legal status. “Your first act as someone who wants to be an American cannot be to violate our laws,” he said.
Gluesenkamp Perez said she voted to boost hiring of border patrol agents and to require asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their requests are processed. She too called strongly for securing the border and halting the flow of fentanyl into this country.
She said she wants a “predictable and fair” immigration policy while Kent has endorsed a 20-year ban on all immigration “to re-establish a white majority. He wants a white majority. I want a secure border.”
Kent responded: “The nonsense that she’s saying about white majorities is because she doesn’t want to talk about her actual voting record.” The bipartisan border bill that she supported, he said, “codified this current invasion into law allowing millions of illegals to come into our country.”
The two candidates are also in separate lanes on replacing the Interstate 5 bridge linking Washington and Oregon.
Kent said he opposes the multi-billion dollar project in its current form because it will not ease congestion. He said the existing bridge should be retrofitted for continued use and a new bridge constructed to give drivers additional options.
And he opposes the project’s inclusion of light rail, which he said “dumps downtown Portland’s problems into downtown Vancouver” and tolling that will “disproportionately target Washingtonians.”
Gluesenkamp Perez backed the undertaking, for which she helped secure several billion dollars of federal aid, though she recently asked program administrators to do what they can to hold down construction costs and limit the need for tolling.
“We’ve got to replace this bridge with southwest Washington labor and American made steel,” she said. “Joe’s been talking about building a third bridge that drops out somewhere in Battleground. He is literally trying to sell us a bridge on this one. That’s not reality.”