CENTRALIA, Wash. — Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez gave Democrats a rare win last fall when she defeated a MAGA diehard in a Republican district in southwestern Washington state.
Hailed by some as a model for winning back blue-collar voters who abandoned the Democratic Party in last year’s elections, the auto repair shop owner shunned partisanship, refused to engage in culture wars, and concentrated on helping people in her district — preserving VA clinics, for example, or backing funding for vocational shop classes.
Whether the second-term congresswoman’s strategy succeeds will be decided by voters in next year’s midterm elections. But for some progressives in her district, it is proving inadequate to counter the authoritarian tilt of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.
At two town halls she hosted recently, crowds shouted questions or chanted, “Vote her out!” Many vowed to support a more liberal primary challenger.
“It’s a really bad time to be a centrist,” said Liz Oxford, a 39-year-old stay-at-home mom from Centralia. “She just keeps on coming down as one of the few Democrats to side with Republicans, and that is a really hard thing to accept right now. It’s like, look, you ran as a Democrat, and right now Democrats have to draw a hard line.”
Hundreds of people showed up at her town halls last month. Many were furious over her recent votes to censure Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green for disrupting Trump’s speech to Congress and for a measure that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.
How well Gluesenkamp Perez, 36, navigates the criticism could help determine whether Democrats can retake the House next year. But in a largely rural, red district, some say a bashing from leftist voters might actually help her.
“In a district like Washington 3, you win or lose by being able to get independents and moderate Republicans to cross over the vast chasm that has opened up between the parties and vote for you,” said Sandeep Kaushik, a Seattle-based political consultant who worked on Gluesenkamp Perez’s first campaign in 2022. “And Marie has been almost uniquely successful in doing that in her first two campaigns.”
Gluesenkamp Perez is the only Democrat running for federal or statewide office to carry the district in at least a decade, Kaushik noted. Even Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, former Gov. Jay Inslee and newly elected Gov. Bob Ferguson failed there despite winning big statewide.
Gluesenkamp Perez’s predecessor, six-term Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler, did not make it out of the 2022 primary. Right-wing constituents angry about her vote to impeach Trump cast their lot with Joe Kent, a former U.S. Army special operations soldier who promoted Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen and touted conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by his supporters.
In the general election that year, Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent by less than a percentage point, flipping the seat for Democrats.
Heading into a rematch with Kent last fall, she was considered one of the most vulnerable members of Congress — but won by nearly 4 points and outperformed both Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
So far, one Democrat, Brent Hennrich, has announced a primary challenge. On his website, the former movie theater operations manager who filed to run this week dismissed Gluesenkamp Perez’s moderation as the wrong approach for the moment.
“With our nation in crisis, Democrats in Congress must do everything in their power to block the radical Trump agenda, but our incumbent has been far too willing to compromise on bills that threaten our rights, our prosperity, and our health,” Hennrich wrote.
Analysts across the country have pointed to the congresswoman’s nuts-and-bolts approach to governing — what she describes as a “positive policy agenda” — as a remedy for Democratic woes. For her, that’s meant securing money for shop programs at vocational colleges, pressing the VA to reopen a clinic in Chehalis so veterans don’t have to drive to Olympia, and pushing to allow loggers to thin forests to create jobs and reduce wildfire risks.
“Political polarization has been really destructive to our democracy,” Gluesenkamp Perez told The Associated Press in an interview. “If you’re trying to build a policy agenda that is popular, if you’re trying to build a bigger sense of democracy, it’s not, in my view, prudent to start excluding people. It’s about building a bigger team, just being more useful to more people.”
Constituents across the political spectrum have praised her work on local issues. But at her recent town halls, anger over some of her votes was obvious.
Those include a vote for the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship for anyone registering to vote. Critics call it a voter-suppression tool meant to hype the notion that illegal immigrants vote in U.S. elections — an exceptionally rare occurrence. The bill could make it harder for women who have taken their husband’s last name or transgender people whose names don’t match their birth certificates to vote.
Gluesenkamp Perez called the bill flawed but said making sure only citizens vote is a popular idea in her district. She also said she knew it wouldn’t pass in the Senate.
That enraged Carol Brock, the former chairwoman of the Lewis County Democrats.
“I’m all for working across the aisle. I live in Lewis County — there’s more Republicans here than there is grass,” Brock said after the town hall in Centralia. “It doesn’t mean I give up my values. If you don’t believe in it, why did you vote for it?”
Tina Podlodowski, the former three-term chair of the state Democratic Party, posted on Facebook after the SAVE Act vote, “Democrats can and must do better in WA3 than Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.”
This week, Pacific County Democrats began considering whether to call on the state party to refrain from endorsing Gluesenkamp Perez as long as another Democrat is challenging her.
Gluesenkamp Perez said she has spoken up against Republicans when their actions have real effects on people in her district: cutting funding for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buoys relied on by fishermen, cutting support to wildland firefighters, gutting hunger relief programs, or proposing Medicaid cuts that she said “are going to kill people.”
“There’s a lot of consternation and anger and rage about things that don’t have the force of law,” she said. “It’s really important that we’re not torching social capital on things that will not be experienced by most people — or any people.”
Perhaps no one has enjoyed the mounting criticism of Gluesenkamp Perez more than Republicans, who say she is being “abandoned” by Democrats.
“Vulnerable Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is getting primaried and no one’s shocked,” the National Republican Congressional Committee said in a statement. “She’s too weak for the far left, too radical for Washington’s families, she doesn’t belong anywhere.”
Some of her supporters say Gluesenkamp Perez must pick her battles — and Democrats in her district should, too.
“We are cutting our nose off to spite our face, to make statements about throwing her out of office,” said Bob Guenther, a Lewis County labor activist. “We’ve got to be thoughtful. We’ve got to flip the Congress or we’re in trouble.”
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