#i'm not claiming to understand politics in florida alabama or georgia

[takeonmetakemeon]

The close margins in the US House have finally brought national attention to Vancouver, Washington and the areas surrounding it. Though much of that attention is poorly informed.

The rematch between moderate Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and far right Republican Joe Kent is expected to help determine which party controls the House next year. It is on everyone's top 5 list.

The race that was largely ignored by outsiders and seen as an easy Republican win in 2022 has attracted millions of campaign dollars from the parties this year.

The incorrect assumptions of faraway political analysts transformed Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez's almost predictable victory into the largest upset of the 2022 election.

There are a few things political analysts get wrong about the region. First, it is not Democrat but it is also not Republican. Second, the vote is a little more elastic than it is in areas with similar demographics. Third, the region rewards pragmatism and moderation. And most importantly, the population has been represented by women more often than men in the past 70 years. Yes, *70* years.

Pundits could not imagine that Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Hispanic woman, could have outperformed a typical Republican in the district. It was difficult to compare her to other Republicans since she was the only person who had represented it since it was reduced in size and lost liberal-leaning Olympia in 2012. So, unable to imagine that she could be individually popular, they took her numbers as the district baseline.

Jaime Herrera Beutler was moderate and pragmatic. That sells in the district. She was also originally from Clark County. That matters to long-term residents of the area who aren't necessarily thrilled with the flood of Portland and California housing refugees that has transformed the entire region.

She graduated from what was one of the largest high schools in the county at the time, one that straddled the rapidly urbanizing unincorporated areas outside Vancouver and more traditionally-minded, still-rural areas of Clark County. Middle-aged voters (or nearly middle-aged) could and did say online "I went to high school with her" or "I went to school with her brother." As a politician she lived in Camas, a formerly rural mill town that now encompasses firmly middle class neighborhoods filled with Portland's population overflow, a white working class central core and a rural fringe. Its most famous resident for something like 30 years now is Tonya Harding.

In 2020, WSU-Vancouver political science professor Carolyn Long, moved to the district from Oregon specifically to run in the race. As did Joe Kent before he ran in 2022.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez *also* moved to the district from Oregon a few years before running for the seat, though she plays up her mother's roots in the state. She's what J.D. Vance would be if he had moved to eastern Kentucky and shared the economic struggles and cultural outlook of the people he claims to represent and defended them instead of lecturing them.

Jaime Herrera Beutler was a talented politician who understood her district instinctively by way of living her entire life in its cultural midpoint. Her only mistake, politically speaking, was misjudging how primary voters would react to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 and her subsequent vote to impeach Donald Trump. It could be decades before any politician matches her results. They were not the baseline.

So pundits universally overestimated the partisan makeup of the district. Then they could not imagine that a different but unknown Hispanic woman could compete against an inexperienced white man with a mystery income source who looked good on TV and sounds like he spends all his time on the internet.

She could and she did. A far right Republican (a label Joe Kent did not dispute in 2022 even as he claimed his repeated interactions with the Nick Fuentes crowd were coincidental and wholly unintentional) does not have a natural advantage against a moderate Democrat.

In this district a man also does not have an advantage against a woman. That was becoming true when my mother voted for the first time, though it took a highly qualified, unusually thick-skinned woman to win then. Repeatedly. But it is definitely true in an era when all her grandchildren can vote. What kind of expectations do you imagine her granddaughters have? In a one-time ship-building district that includes the great-granddaughters of a multitude of Rosie the Riveters?

It is not surprising that a centrist small business owner living in rural, heavily-forested Skamania County could perform better than a political science professor who moved to the district *after* declaring interest in the office, as center-left Democrat Carolyn Long did in 2020.

Nor is it surprising that this district would replace a popular moderate Republican who belonged to the Problem Solvers Caucus with a moderate Blue Dog Democrat whose policy positions are barely distinguishable from hers. General election voters liked Jaime Herrera Beutler so much they almost cloned her.

I wouldn't make any predictions about the outcome of the race, though. The great majority of voters are voting to decide which party will control the House, making individual candidates irrelevant to them. I considered it a toss-up in 2022 and consider it one again, though I think Gluesenkamp Perez has slightly higher chances this time around.

If Joe Kent can add all of the votes for the other Republican in the primary to his 39.3% share, he would win the general election with 51.5% of the vote. But he is not the automatic heir of every vote that went to the more reasonable Republican, Camas City Council member and retired attorney Leslie Lewallen (i.e. a reasonable person with actual qualifications).

That's not how the district works. It's probably not how any district works.

Note that despite Gluesenkamp Perez's decidedly un-liberal voting record, not a single Democrat ran against her in the primary. Her only non-Republican opponent was an independent who ran against the genocide in Gaza and received 2.55% of the vote. All but the most die-hard liberals voted for a Democrat who is currently conspicuously absent at the national convention.

Local Democrats rallied around her in 2022 (her liberal Democratic opponent withdrew from the primary and supported her campaign instead) and they did it again in 2024, just as they and Democrats across the nation have rallied around Vice President Harris.

In today's partisan times, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is not guaranteed victory, but she has the advantage. Washington's top-two primary system means there will be no third candidate on the general election ballot. There will be no one for liberals to vote for in protest. All they can do is decline to vote at all in a race where the only other candidate is a far right conservative. Some may do that, which is one reason the race is unpredictable.

At the same time, moderate Republicans can see her as someone who will represent them on multiple issues but won't join with the establishment-hating, democracy-undermining, party-destroying Republican fringe. As some did in 2022.

Given the candidates in the race, House Speaker Mike Johnson's recent embrace of Joe Kent is embarrassing. Not only is he unqualified, he's an extremist who would get along well with Reps. Matt Gaetz and Lorena Boebert. Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez was certainly more supportive of him than Kent would have been had he represented the district during Republicans' internecine political wars.

He is, it seems, more concerned with reaching out to the Republicans who fought him than the Democrats who supported him. In the process, he may have stabbed himself in the back.

And oh yeah, I also wouldn't bet on Trump winning in the district a third time. Not that anyone really cares.