Republican U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler grew up on 2.5 acres in Southwest Washington, which her father — a lithographer and evangelical Christian — sought out as a more tranquil setting for home-schooling than the family’s previous residence in Los Angeles County.
Her 3rd District challenger, Democrat Carolyn Long, spent much of her youth in the Oregon coastal town of Brookings. There she and her four siblings lived in a double-wide trailer, and at one point dropped out of school for six weeks to help run the family produce stand.
These two women with working-class roots in rural Pacific Northwest communities tout their ability to bridge the political divide as their campaigns unfold across a stunningly diverse swath of the state. The 3rd District stretches from the fishing, timber and tourism towns of Pacific County through the urban, fast-growing Vancouver metropolis and east to the arid lands around Goldendale where wheat, cattle and — more recently — wind turbines and drone manufacturing boost the economy.
This election season, the 3rd District ranks as one of the Pacific Northwest’s most contested congressional races, gaining national attention as Democrats work to topple enough vulnerable Republicans to regain control of the House of Representatives.
Long made a strong showing in the primary, tallying 35 percent of the vote, while Herrera Beutler claimed 42 percent. Long has received support from national Democratic groups such as EMILY’s List, which backs women candidates, and she gained the endorsement of former President Barack Obama and The Columbian.
Long, 51, is a political-science professor at Washington State University’s campus in Clark County, where she moved last year after more than two decades of commuting from Oregon. Since 2014, she has taught “Public Discourse in a Time of Incivility,” which includes training students to organize Southwest Washington “listening sessions” on access to education and affordable housing. The goal has been to replace “rigid partisanship with listening and conversation,” and she has had to practice those course skills within her own family. Her husband, a pharmaceutical salesman, voted for Donald Trump during the presidential election.
“We disagree a lot, actually,” Long said. “He thinks that Trump has been good for the economy. So I’m like, ‘Let’s both agree that we want a good economy and family-wage jobs — how do we get there?'”
Herrera-Beutler, 38, who lives in Camas and has held the seat since 2011, had a swift rise to political power, serving as an aide to U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, and then in the state Legislature before her first run for the House in the 2010 election.
She talks a lot now about how she has reached across the aisle to work with Democrats on issues ranging from a bill that would enable the killing of more sea lions that dine on threatened salmon to a bill that aims to reduce maternal mortality. Though she repeatedly joined Republicans in voting to upend the Affordable Care Act when Obama was still in office, she bucked Trump and other Republicans in a 2017 push to repeal the legislation.
“Our promise was that people are going to be better off, and that bill didn’t keep that promise, in my mind,” Herrera Beutler said. “I told the president as much … and he did not put a hard sell on me.”
