She's in another dogfight, but Marie G-P deserves a second term in Congress

She's ruffled feathers in her own party on immigration and the Gaza War, but liberal Dems must ask themselves: Would they rather elect MAGA extremist Joe Kent?

After pulling off a stunning but extremely narrow 2022 victory, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has earned a second two-year term representing Southwest Washington in Congress.

But she is in another dogfight, a rematch with Clark County Republican Joe Kent in a campaign that both parties are pouring millions into because it could decide who controls the House of Representatives.

The two have in effect been campaigning against one another since 2021. And the waning days of this year’s race have been charged here and across the nation by Democratic suspicions — fed by Donald Trump’s recent statements that he and House Speaker Mike Johnson have a “secret” — that the GOP may try to force the presidential election into the House of Representatives. Control of that chamber, now in Republican hands, has thus become even more of an obsession.

In our corner of the world, voters in Southwest Washington’s 3rd Congressional District have a clear choice and should return Gluesenkamp Perez to Congress.

She has been recognized for independence and bipartisanship. She is a member of the so-called Blue Dog caucus, a group of moderate Democrats that advocates fiscal conservatism and bipartisan approaches to legislation.

The independent Lugar Center at Georgetown University ranked her as the fifth-most bipartisan Democrat in the U.S. House, based on her sponsorship of bills with members of the opposite party.

Her politics are a mix of liberal and conservative thinking that are a good match for this “purple” district: For example, she’s a liberal champion of abortion rights but a conservative defender of the Second Amendment.

Her independence has been controversial within her own party.

MGP joined six other House Democrats to condemn Vice President Kamala Harris for the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border. She was an early voice to call for President Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign.

She was one of only five Democrats to vote for a bill to require individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections.

MGP has rankled the liberal wing of her party for her unwavering support of Israel in the Gaza War. Her position even led to a ruckus of sorts at the Democratic “Give Em Hell Harry” dinner in Cowlitz County this past summer.

(Liberals disappointed by her stand on this should still support her, lest they indirectly lend a hand to Kent. Politics is a game to win, not to make “statements.”)

While these conflicts have received the most attention, MGP has focused much of her energies on the pragmatic needs and economic livelihood of the region.

She has crossed and recrossed the 3rd District, visiting schools, farms, ports, industrial plants and police agencies and other institutions in efforts to understand the concerns of her constituents.

She has helped secure $2 billion to replace the Interstate Bridge across the Columbia River. Just this week, she announced that she and Washington Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell have secured a $26 million grant to expand rail capacity at the TEMCO grain terminal at the Port of Kalama.

She has made job training and creating blue collar career opportunities a priority in a rural district that needs all the economic help it can get.

She’s fiercely loyal to that cause. She even opposed the Biden Administration student loan forgiveness plans unless they included a dollar-for-dollar match for investments in career and technical education. The severe shortage of trades workers needs to be seen and treated as a national priority, she says.

She favors revamping the tax system so that the rich and “price gouging” companies such as oil producers pay more.

She favors further U.S. military aid to Ukraine to prevent Russia from threatening other parts of Eastern Europe.

She has voted to curb unfair trade practices and economic spying by China. (A list of MGP’s major votes can be found at justfacts.votesmart.org/bill.) She has made the battle against fentanyl one of her priorities.

MGP is an unconventional politician, right down to the salty language she’s become known for in political circles. (Profanity, though, has unfortunately become part of routine political parlance these days, as was on full display recently during Trump’s rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden.)

MGP approaches her job as an earnest advocate for the middle class and for blue-collar communities, a genuine appreciation born of her rural roots and the Portland auto repair business she co-owns with her husband.

Her outlook and advocacy are reflected in her wide array of endorsements by labor and teacher unions, police and firefighter groups and even the conservative Washington Farm Bureau.

Asserting that special interests have corrupted Congress, MGP vowed not to accept corporate PAC campaign contributions. End Citizens United, a group that advocates campaign finance reform, has defended her against Republican claims that she reneged on the pledge.

Her challenger is Trump-backed Kent, who lost the 2022 congressional election to MGP by 2,629 votes out of 334,000 ballots cast.

Kent, of Battle Ground, has mixed with the Proud Boys and white supremacists and blown off those contacts when confronted about them.

He has defended the January 6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block results of the 2020 presidential election, which he still does not accept.

Kent seems little interested in the domestic concerns of the 3rd District. I know for a fact, for example, that he has not responded to multiple invitations by the Cowlitz County commissioners to be briefed about Mount St. Helens issues. People in this part of the world expect their congressional representative to address local issues and not be distracted by the culture wars or rot-gut politics.

The Republican challenger echoes former President Trump’s calls for imposing large tariffs on foreign imports, particularly on China, a move that many economists say would be highly inflationary and cost consumers thousands more a year for goods and services.

Kent has criticized the numerous federal and state prosecutions of Trump, saying they are evidence of “banana republic” justice. He should know that ignoring these alleged crimes and actual convictions of the former president would truly be evidence of “banana republic” justice.

Kent has flip-flopped on abortion, which he used to advocate banning. But now he says he will leave battles over reproductive rights to the states. This smacks of political expediency, not a genuine change of heart.

A former Green Beret and military advisor to Trump, Kent opposes further U.S. spending on the war in Ukraine, fearing it will lead to nuclear war. So he should tell us, then, where the West should stop kowtowing to Putin’s nuclear blackmail. When he’s finished invading Poland? Finland? Moldova?

He wants to secure the border. Fine, but a reminder here that he and Trump opposed bipartisan legislation to beef up border security. They’d rather fight about a problem than solve it. And he seems to forget that the U.S. economy is short of workers and relies on immigrant and migrant labor to perform a lot of farm and blue collar work. Imagine where food prices would go without them.

If Kent had his way, the Interstate Bridge replacement project would be set back years because he advocates retrofitting the existing two spans and building a third Portland-area Columbia River crossing at another location. The two spans already are a major bottleneck for commerce. The twin steel cantilevered spans are a century old and need replacing, not refurbishing.

Kent also opposes adding light rail to the bridge, contending it would be a conduit for drugs into Southwest Washington. How ludicrous. Drugs already are getting here. Do dealers not have cars and trucks? If they can get fentanyl from Mexico to Portland, traffickers certainly have means to get it into Cowlitz County.

Kent is too glib, too extreme and too detached from reality to serve us in Congress.

This region needs a congressional representative that is attentive to its needs, understands its people and is pragmatic and bipartisan. That’s why it should elect Marie Gluesenkamp Perez to another term.