Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican challenger Joe Kent will advance to the general election for a highly anticipated rematch in the 3rd Congressional District, according to initial results in Tuesday’s primary election.
Perez, a Skamania resident and the freshman incumbent, received 56,634 votes, or 46.87 percent across the district. Kent, a Yacolt resident, received 46,302 votes, or 38.32 percent.
Republican Leslie Lewallen, a Camas city councilor and former King County prosecutor, had 15,023 votes, or 12.43 percent, as of Tuesday night. John Saulie-Rohman, a long-shot independent candidate from Camas, received 2,770 votes, or 2.29 percent.
The race has garnered national attention because the seat could decide control of the U.S. House, where Republicans currently hold a slim 219-213 majority. The 3rd Congressional District is one of five competitive Pacific Northwest races that could tip the scales in one party’s favor.
A rematch between Perez and Kent has long been expected.
“Southwest Washington rejected the divisive, extreme politics of Joe Kent two years ago,” Perez said. “We rejected them again tonight, we will reject them in November, and we will stop Joe Kent from using our seat in Congress to promote his online attention-seeking behavior and his angry, hateful, dangerous worldview.”
In 2022, Kent, a Green Beret veteran and ex-CIA officer, bested Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler in a hard-fought primary, ending her 12-year tenure. His campaign began in part as a rebuke of Herrera Beutler’s vote to impeach then-President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. The political newcomer earned Trump’s endorsement soon after.
Kent’s rise galvanized Perez, and she eked out one of the nation’s biggest upsets for Democrats, defeating Kent by just 2,629 votes. At the time, she was a relatively unknown, auto-repair shop owner with a campaign that emphasized working-class needs and access to women’s reproductive care.
Now, the two are primed for a rematch, but Kent argues that the playing field has changed.
“This race could not be more different today than it was two years ago when we emerged from the primary not just broke but in debt,” he said. “We had suffered over $13 million in attack ads during a brutal intra-party battle from which we advanced with the support of just a third of Republican voters.”
This time, Kent’s campaign is flush with campaign cash.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is expected to defend Perez, and big-money Republican groups are also poised to spend in the race.
“Staff from the National Republican Committee are already on the ground here, embedding with our campaign,” Kent said.
Perez has led in fundraising. She had raked in $6.7 million as of July 17, according to Federal Election Commission filings. A committee linked to her campaign has raised an additional $268,000.
Kent raised $1.4 million directly in the same period, and a committee linked to his campaign has raised an additional $2.4 million, according to the commission. He has again received Trump’s endorsement.
The Clark County Republican Party provided Kent with an early endorsement to unify support heading into 2024.
Lewallen, the other Republican in the race, thought that was a bad idea. She tried to convince GOP voters that she had a better chance at unseating Perez than Kent, arguing that rematches rarely result in a flipped outcome.
She billed herself as a more moderate “America-first” candidate well-suited to champion Trump’s agenda. She racked up endorsements from conservatives looking to move the seat back into more moderate Republican hands and raised about $820,000, filings show.
But Kent’s base of support will likely propel him to the general election.
“I support Joe Kent in his campaign to defeat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez,” Lewallen said. “We need to get this country back on track because Southwest Washington deserves better.”
Kent thanked Lewallen for her “spirited campaign.”
“We avoided any bloodshed in our primary and have the support of the state party and every county party,” he said.
His campaign is committed to winning over Lewallen’s supporters, he added.
“Me and the supporters of Leslie Lewallen, we agree on probably 99.9 percent of all issues,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to reaching out to them and keeping the Republican party unified. We know what happened last time. We had a divided Republican party, and the Democrats capitalized on that. I think we’ve learned our lesson.”
On the campaign trail, Perez has been touting her accomplishments during her first year and a half in Congress, namely her progress on bipartisan legislation and her constituent service work for Southwest Washington. She was ranked by the Lugar Center and the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy as having one of the most bipartisan voting records in the U.S. House.
“This election is about Southwest Washington coming together to stop Joe Kent and his angry, dangerous, divisive, extreme politics,” she said.
Kent maintained a ferocious schedule during the primary, holding town halls across the district on a near daily basis. On the stump, he argues that inflation, immigration, transgender issues and parental rights are the biggest issues facing Southwest Washington and the nation, and he believes that the Democrats’ foreign policy could provoke another world war.
“Over the next 90 days, my campaign is going into overdrive to reach independents and disaffected Democrats to win them over to our cause,” he said. “Perez has failed to stand up for the people of our district, but I will.”
