A year after taking office, Southwest Washington Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez said she is “lonely” because “I don’t feel like there are a whole lot of people in D.C. who share my values and who I really respect deeply.”

Members of Congress are disconnected from the concerns of average Americans — and that disconnect is one of the root causes of the nation’s political divisions, the Skamania County Democrat said in Kelso during the congressional Christmas recess.

Representatives become “very out of touch with reality” and are too concerned with getting re-elected, satisfying lobbyists and enjoying the perks of congressional membership.

“Their families have everything they need… . They have access to childcare. Their kids are going into whatever school and career they want.… They don’t share the sense of urgency that the American Dream is escaping us. People start to just like the power and the attention, and I think that’s really, really dangerous.”

Too many members, she added, “just lose touch with what really is keeping people up at night. …. What’s happening with the waitlist for daycare? Can I afford to have another kid? … Can I change jobs? Those things that are really what impact people day to day.”

Perez, who is running for a second two-year term in the 3rd Congressional District, talked about the state of Congress, her legislative success and priorities, the Israel-Hamas war, immigration and other subjects during an hour-long interview.

Perez, 35, only briefly mentioned her two most prominent opponents, Trump-backed Joe Kent and Camas City Councilwoman Leslie Lewallen. The August “top-two” primary election will determine which of those two Clark County Republicans faces Perez in the November general election.

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‘Democracies collapse when people don’t have hope. They turn to authoritarianism.’

The race will again be the focus of keen — and expensive — national attention because the balance of power in the House of Representatives is so close and the 3rd District is independent “purple” territory.

Perez beat Kent by less than a single percentage point to flip the seat to the Democrats in 2022. She has had a commanding lead in fundraising, and Kent recently made a Facebook appeal to supporters telling them that campaign contributions are running short of goals.

Unorthodox

Perez is a hybrid politician. She does not fit neatly into either party’s orthodoxy. She supports both abortion and gun rights and has a decided distaste for culture wars. Call her a Democratic populist, emphasizing the need to protect middle and blue-collar jobs and opportunity.

As a freshman lawmaker, “finding common ground is the only way to make progress on the issues that matter most to Southwest Washington in a divided Congress,” she said in an email explaining why she joined the 60-member bipartisan “Problem Solvers” caucus.

“Ultimately, I didn’t come to Congress to be a cheerleader for either party, so I’ve sought to build relationships across the aisle whenever I can.”

Earlier this month she co-sponsored a budget reform bill with Utah Republican Blake Moore, a fellow member of the Problem Solvers caucus and vice chair of the House Republican Conference. She also joined Rep. Young Kim, a California Republican and Problem Solvers member, in introducing a bill to reauthorize a grant program to help local law enforcement hire new officers — a major challenge in small rural cities in her district — and increase community policing and training.

She again is emphasizing the themes that helped her win in 2022 and which make some pundits believe that she is a model for Democrats to reconnect with rural voters: Moderate politics, support for small business and labor, preservation and expansion of American jobs through career and technical training, and support for better childcare and healthcare.

She earned an economics degree from liberal Reed College and has deep family and blue-collar ties to rural Southwest Washington, including the timber industry. Her great-great-grandfather Bert Gilmore was a quarry foreman who helped build the State Capitol Building in Olympia.

She and her husband own a Portland auto repair business, and she showed up for the interview in blue jeans, a blue cable-knit sweater and an olive green flannel cap. She is an unpolished speaker, often pausing to search for the right words, often interjecting “like” and changing direction mid-sentence.

Frustrated

Too many congressional representatives “forget what it means to work for a living,” she said during the interview. “They are not wrenching in a shop.”

She said she’s frustrated that congressional committee hearings typically feature businessmen, academics and experts but not common citizens affected by legislation. It would be instructive, for example, if hearings on her “Right to Repair” legislation would include a washing machine repairman, she said.

“I was like, ‘You guys are all talking about, you know, washing machines, at least, do any of you fix washing machines for a living? Do you respect people who work enough to invite them in and put them at the table?’ … They’re listening to [campaign] donors” instead of everyday people.

Her “Right to Repair” bill is one of her pet efforts. She sees it as a way to save American jobs and prevent landfills from filling up with consumer products.

“I think it is really important. Are Americans going to be able to keep fixing their own stuff? Or are we going to have to just buy new stuff every five years — like people want disposable cars and disposable washing machines?”

In part to highlight the concerns of small farmers, Perez invited Maureen Harkcom, president of the Lewis County Farm Bureau, to attend the Congressional Christmas party.

“She’s someone that’s doing the real work of keeping family farms and Americans fed,” Perez said. “We’re importing approximately 40% of the fresh fruits and vegetables we eat. Like, that’s what the committee hearings should be on, not on impeaching such and such. … You know, get to work. It’s turned into partisan football.”

Bipartisan votes

Kent’s supporters have tried to puncture her effort to project a moderate image, often referring to her as “Marxist Marie” and trying to tie her to President Joe Biden.

“My voting record does not support that,” the congresswoman said, noting, for example, that she angered Democrats by opposing Biden’s student loan forgiveness program.

She also voted with Republicans on the Gas Stoves Protection and Freedom Act, which would prohibit use of federal money to regulate gas stoves as a hazardous product and perhaps eventually ban them from home use.

Through June, Perez had voted with Democrats 75% of the time on party-line votes, according Bloomberg Government. That “party unity” mark was the third-lowest among Democrats. “The pressure to vote in line with your party is just immense in D.C.,” she told Bloomberg.

“You have both parties [going] further and further into their corner and less and less willing to (work) on bipartisan bills and actually do the challenging work fixing things.”

In a press release summarizing her first year in office, Perez said she helped secure nearly $1.7 billion in federal funds for the region. This includes $600 million for Interstate-5 Bridge replacement; $24 million for the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe; $24 million for rural broadband expansion in Lewis County; and $1 billion for green hydrogen production, some of which will to go to Centralia College.

According to Perez, she introduced 30 bipartisan bills, including one that passed the House to help pregnant and new mothers with substance abuse. Her bill to support veterans’ access to VA-certified specialists and examiners in rural communities has passed both the House and the Senate.

Only 27 bills passed both chambers of Congress last year, and two were hers, Perez said.

“I think I’ve been extremely effective,” she said.

Underestimated

Her gender, background as a blue collar business owner, newness to Congress and rural roots tend to make people underestimate her, she said.

“I’m good at being underestimated. It’s actually an asset …. to not be taken seriously, because then you can ask the question” others may not be aware of, Perez said.

In one of her few swipes at Kent, who lived in Portland before deciding to run for Congress here in 2021, Perez said, “I did not move here to get elected. I am from here. And I really liked my life before getting elected” and will go back to running the auto shop if she loses the next election.

Her independence sometimes alienates her and makes it difficult to find co-sponsors for her legislation, she said, because incumbents are so wary of crossing party lines.

“All these folks are just concerned with not getting primaried [primary election opposition] by their own party. And so you have both parties [going] further and further into their corner and less and less willing to [work] on bipartisan bills and actually do the challenging work fixing things.”

Showing up

On the day of the interview, she visited the Mark Morris High School career and technical education program, Lower Columbia Head Start and USNR, a Woodland lumber mill machine manufacturer. She’s pursued legislation to boost forestry career training and help small businesses hire trade school grads.

Such visits are frequent. Her predecessor, 12-year incumbent U.S. Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler, got criticized for declining to hold in-person town hall meetings, hosting them by phone instead. Perez reports holding 11 in-person town halls in the district — nearly one a month — in addition to 454 meetings with constituents from Southwest Washington. She’s willing to listen to angry voters, she said.

“I think you engender a lot more rage when you don’t show up. You have to show up and let people yell at you … and take them seriously.”

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‘You have to show up and let people yell at you … and take them seriously.’

She said her own party is not taking the allegations against Hunter Biden seriously enough, and that kind of dismissiveness fuels a public sense that justice and opportunity are no longer equal, she said.

“I think our democracy really is under threat,” she said.

Still, she puts most of the blame for the nation’s turmoil on economic struggles that rob people of hope. She noted the high suicide rate among young men, the scope of fentanyl addiction and financial struggles that “have squeezed the middle class out of being able to volunteer for Little League coaching and (serving on) PTAs.”

“Democracies collapse when people don’t have hope. They turn to authoritarianism,” she said.

We discussed immigration, the Hamas War and other issues, and what she said will appear in a follow-up article. Clearly, though, she is more focused on economic opportunities close to home. That’s why she ran for Congress, she said.

“Can the mom-and-pop businesses survive? Can a 17-year-old today in shop class in Cowlitz County go out and start a real business and be successful and make a path for themselves? … We’ve got to get our house in order.”

Foreign policy

There’s an old saying in American politics: “Politics stops at the water’s edge,” meaning that leaders should unite when there are threats from abroad.

That has not been the case in recent congressional history.

Congressional Republicans have conditioned further aid to Ukraine on better southern border enforcement and domestic spending cuts. They’ve tried to make aid to Israel contingent on cuts to the Internal Revenue Service.

Perez says it is a dangerous and reputation-ruining strategy for the U.S.

“Once you start that — ‘Oh, give us this party favor or we won’t fund our allies’ — you have detonated your geopolitical allies and reputation. …That is a terrible strategy. You fund it or don’t want to fund it on its merits. Don’t condition funding on (the demands of) a political party.”

In an hour-long interview in Kelso during the Congressional holiday-season recess, the first-term Democrat said border security does need improvement. She also expressed concern that the Hamas war against Israel is a plot by Russian President Vladimir Putin to bleed Western support for Ukraine.

Politics of border security

“We’ve got to have a secure border. Like, we have to know who’s coming in and who’s coming out. And we have to have a [visa] system that works,” she said, noting the flow of fentanyl from Mexico, where the highly potent opioid is made from China-supplied ingredients.

However, she said, the situation defies easy answers.

She said Kent has suggested banning all immigration for 20 years (Kent denies saying that). The problem is too complex for such an approach, because farmers, forestry contractors and others depend on migrant labor, Perez noted.

However, the length, complexity and unpredictability of the visa process to bring in guest workers encourages illegal crossings through “coyotes” and other means, she said. Only big corporate farms have the time and expertise to import guest workers legally, Perez said.

“We need predictability. We need flexibility,” but there’s too much politicking and unwillingness to solve the problem, she said.

“I mean, it feels like people are just trying to fundraise off this issue all the time and get people scared. And it’s like, if you solve the problem, you can’t fundraise off of it anymore.”

She’s not a fan of Trump’s border wall, calling it “crude,” a “Band-Aid” and ineffectual because “people are still [climbing] over it.” It does nothing to address the root cause of illegal crossings: poverty, violence and corruption in Latin America, she said.

Putin’s dirty work?

Like many Americans, the congresswoman is highly conflicted over the Hamas-Israeli war, which she suspects has a dark link to Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

“I think that one of the best Christmas presents to Putin was the attack from Hamas on Israel … It’s hard for me to believe that it was just a happy coincidence [for Putin]. Russia’s interests were very heavily advanced by Hamas” because it is distracting and undercutting Western support for Ukraine.

She appeared nearly to tear up while discussing the impact the war in Gaza has had on civilians on both sides.

“The loss of civilian life in Palestine makes me sick.”

She defends Israel’s right to defend itself. She is angry with those pressing Israel to accept a ceasefire in Gaza, ignoring killings, rapes and other atrocities committed by Hamas when it invaded on Oct. 7.

“I don’t think that a nation that’s just been the victim of a heinous terrorist attack [should be told] to accept a ceasefire.”

She didn’t offer any answers, daunted, perhaps, by the ancient Arab-Jewish grudge that has defied resolution for centuries.

“I am just gonna be like very candid. I did not run for office to resolve peace in the Middle East. I have an obligation to reflect the values and the interests of my district to fix the things that I can make progress on. I am not an expert in the Middle East. And the experts, you know, don’t agree [on the solution].”