Ex-soldier turned politician holds rally on peninsula

Published 9:53 am Monday, July 8, 2024

OCEAN PARK — Joe Kent, one of two Republicans vying to unseat Washington 3rd Congressional District incumbent Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, held a July 5 rally in Ocean Park. It was attended by about three dozen people, including Washington State 19th District Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Aberdeen) and Sen. Jeff Wilson (R-Longview).

This is Kent’s second attempt at winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, following a narrow loss to Perez in the 2022 general election.

Kent beat then-incumbent Jamie Herrera-Butler in the 2022 GOP primary after she broke with with twice-impeached President Donald Trump, but Kent did not build momentum going into the general election.

“Unfortunately, bloody, nasty primaries like that present a wide opening for the Democrats to capitalize on our division,” Kent said. “There is a huge lesson to be learned there; sometimes we have to do primaries, and we have to primary people, and we have to hold them accountable.

“At the end of it, we have to have Republican unity. Unfortunately, because we have such a short time between the end of the primary and the beginning of the general election season, we really didn’t have time to [consolidate support within] our Republican Party,” Kent added.

Kent’s Republican primary election opponent this time is Leslie Lewallen, a Camas city councilor. Lewallen previously served as a deputy prosecutor for King County and was a judicial clerk for former Chief Justice Gerry Alexander at the Washington State Supreme Court.

Accusations

During this go-around, Kent vows to “take down” Perez, who he asserts is a “lumberjack one day and a mechanic the next day.” He chalks up these images to Perez being an actor who adapts herself to environments.

“It made good TV ads and all that,” Kent said. “This time, she is trying to do the same thing, but she’s got two years’ worth of a voting record that we are going to hold her accountable for.”

Kent recommended that voters take time to visit his website. The website has a link in a yellow box that says “The Truth About Marie,” which provides a rundown of votes the Kent campaign portrays as out of the mainstream.

“Go on there — you don’t have to take my word for it — we have links by topic to every single vote she has taken and that she is currently lying about. Do me a favor and send that out to all your friends here in the district that might be on the fence,” Kent added.

Perez is relatively popular in Pacific County, thanks in part to her push for federal funding for several projects, including the South Bend Boat Yard and tsunami mitigation.

In contrast to Kent’s assertions, in May the Lugar Center and the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University rated Perez as among the best for working across party lines in the current Congress. She is in the top 3% on the Bipartisan Index and 5th among members of her party, the Lugar Center found.

“Her score is the most bipartisan ever recorded for Washington’s Third District since the index was launched in 2014,” according to her office. The Bipartisan Index measures how often a member of Congress introduces bills that attract co-sponsors from the other party, and how often they in turn co-sponsor a bill introduced from across the aisle.

She narrowly beat Kent in the county vote in 2022, winning 50.9% compared to Kent’s 48.75%. She won the overall election with 50.1% compared to Kent, who took in 49.3%, separated by only 2,629 votes. Pacific and Clark counties favored Perez, while majorities of voters in the remaining counties in the congressional district went for Kent.

Votes characterized

According to Kent’s website, Perez has voted to offer illegal immigrants legal representation, voted to bring unvetted Palestinian refugees to Washington state, voted against several farm bills, and voted against protecting women’s sports.

According to Kent, the most controversial votes Perez has made involve favoring gender-neutral bathrooms, government-funded gender reassignment surgeries, voting against post-abortion survivors’ medical care — and against protecting the southern U.S. border.

“She has the audacity to say, ‘Well, no one stays awake at night worrying about the southern border,’” Kent said. “As we have people overdosing and dying from fentanyl. So now she is playing this big switch game, now saying, ‘I am standing up to Biden.’”

“The question is, standing up to Biden for what? The exact same policies that you voted for and does the exact same thing with inflation. They are all trying to distance themselves from Bidenomics after voting for Bidenomics,” Kent added.

In total, Kent asserts Perez has voted for around $4 trillion in spending, contributing to the largest national deficit in U.S. history.

“The vast majority of that new spending is going towards special-interest groups,” Kent said. “It’s going to the military-industrial complex. It is not going to fix your roads. It’s not going to fix our bridges. It’s not going to benefit the American people.”

“It is benefiting Marie Perez and the Democrat apparatus’ donors. That’s all these people care about, and now they think they can just come back to the district and lie about it,” Kent added.

Kent’s nearly nine-minute speech at the rally centered heavily on picking at Perez, who was portrayed as a betrayer of the people.

“She has voted against working class Americans with every vote she has taken in Congress. She wants Washington D.C. bureaucrats in charge of our fishing season,” Kent said. “In charge of our waterways, in charge of our forests — completely voting against the people of this district.

Kent’s controversies

Campaigning for Kent has not been without issues. In 2022 and now 2024, he has faced investigations into what he does for a living and a business that reportedly did not exist in official records, where Kent reportedly had an annual income of $120,000.

Last year, Kent was also embroiled in a tense standoff with the Chronicle newspaper in Centralia after two reporters caught a hot-mik incident. Kent was heard on audio agreeing with a white nationalist stance that immigration should be halted for 20 years. Kent’s legal team pushed back against the report.

Kent has gained national attention, including an endorsement by Tulsi Gabbard, a former House representative for the 2nd District of Hawaii who split from the Democratic Party. Kent has also appeared on Fox News, the Jocko Podcast, the Black Rifle Coffee Podcast, and the Mike Force Podcast, among others.

The appearances are regularly connected to Kent’s 20 years in the Army, much of which was spent as an Army Ranger and Green Beret — in total, Kent did 11 service tours.

Perez has characterized Kent as a far-right extremist in their campaigns against each other for his stances on issues like wanting to defund the FBI, as well as denying the results of the 2020 election.