Letter: One candidate authentic, the other not so much

Published 2:00 pm Monday, October 17, 2022

Thanks to the Chinook Observer for clarifying some of the differences between Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and her opponent, Joe Kent.

Regardless of how you feel about the issues of the day, there are long-term reasons why all of us should vote for Perez.

I’m pretty sure my great-grandchildren’s generation will be able to sort out their issues pretty well — but only under one condition. We have to give our distant heirs a functioning democracy, one that works at least as well as the democracy our ancestors gave us.

Democracies adapt to change more effectively than dictatorships — especially when democracies are supported by fact-based journalism and every citizen can participate on an equal basis.

That’s why I’m supporting the candidate who has never attacked our election system, or supported the people who did!

Since the two-person debates started, Kent has backpedaled on his pre-primary stances. Instead of a “more extreme than Trump” election denier, similar to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, Kent now talks as if he’d be a “pragmatic” congressperson.

I have no way of knowing which Joe Kent is authentic. The change was quick, and it was timed for electoral advantage. Whether he’s really the election-denying extremist he first claimed to be, or whether he’s the sort-of-traditional conservative he now says he is, Kent isn’t being consistent. He isn’t showing integrity. And he’s keeping us guessing about whether he even supports democracy — here or abroad.

I now have a pretty good sense of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who appears to be the same person she was from the start of this campaign. She is a working Washingtonian, with a great education, who knows the struggles of working families and small-business owners like herself. She intends to support American working people however she can. And she supports democracy under threat, both here and in Ukraine.

Perez is authentic. When she gets to Washington, D.C., I’m confident she will “keep it real” and she will work for all of us to the best of her ability.

That’s why I’m eager to vote for her. That’s not just a vote for policies I prefer today — it’s also a vote for the future of America, and for the honest elections my great-grandchildren will need!

DAVE CUNDIFF

Ilwaco