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Q&A: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez Brings Rural Cred to the Democratic Party [1]
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Date: 2025-02-07
Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in Path Finders, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each week, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Like what you see here? You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article and receive more conversations like this in your inbox each week.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is the Representative for Washington State’s third congressional district. She’s a fifth generation Washingtonian, a business owner, and a working mom, many of which came up in our conversation below. She is co-chair of the Democrats’ Blue Dog Coalition, a caucus within the House of Representatives, and prides herself on her rural roots.
I was reporting in Gluesenkamp Perez’s home district in Pacific County, Washington, while they counted votes for her incredibly close re-election win in November 2024. She ran against Trump-endorsed Joe Kent, for the second election in a row, and won by about four percentage points. In Lewis County, the reddest county in her district, she beat Harris by seven percentage points. It was an interesting time to be in rural southwest Washington, especially as split-ticket voting becomes a rarer and rarer phenomenon, and I was excited to talk to Gluesenkamp Perez in early January.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez at Clark College’s welding program in February 2024. (Photo courtesy of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez)
Ilana Newman, The Daily Yonder: So you don’t come from a background in politics. You owned an auto repair shop before running for Congress. Can you just tell me a little about your origin story and what inspired you to enter the national politics world?
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez: Well, I didn’t want to be represented by a crazy person, that was the primary motivation there. My district is formerly represented by a Republican, Jaime Herrera Beutler, who is one of the 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. After she did that, it was knives out – every wingnut in three states moved here to try to run for the seat, or it felt that way at least. And then the wackiest one got Trump’s endorsement. I remember driving around in Skamania County and in the places where I’d always seen Jaime signs, I started seeing Joe Kent signs and I was like, who’s this dude? So I started watching his YouTube and I was like, holy shit, this is so unhinged and removed from what my community’s values are.
I saw the way that Democrats who’d run before – when they would come out to Skamania County – it almost seemed like they felt like they were doing us a favor by coming out, they weren’t eager to be there or curious about our lives and what our priorities are, but more of just “here to explain stuff.” I think any form of condescension is the original sin in politics. You have to be curious and humble and recognize that other people know things you don’t know, and those are things that are worth knowing and it’s fun to find out. It’s fun to see things differently.
I felt like somebody with a law degree or bow tie was not the kind of person that could refute this vision of what I saw Joe Kent presenting to our community. I wanted to say no. I thought, well, even if I can’t win, at least I can challenge the narrative that I see being put out there about Democrats. We’re not just like pencil neck, ivory tower elites. I live on a gravel road. I’ve got grease under my fingernails. I get my water from a well, and I’m proud of that. I don’t necessarily want to be developed into something different. A lot of the issues I really care about, right to repair and timber, those were things that I had not seen discussed by federal candidates before. And so I thought, well, even if I can’t win, I can at least challenge the narrative about who we are, who I am as a Democrat, and I can elevate these issues that I care deeply about.
DY: So you went into it thinking that you might not be able to win. And a lot of the counties in your district voted for Trump in this last election, who endorsed Joe Kent, your opponent. Why do you think that the voters chose you over him?
MGP: This district went for Trump in all three of the last presidential elections. And so yeah, this is not a swing seat. This was drawn to be one of the red seats in Washington state. And I think on some level, people are looking for something different from their presidential candidate than they are from their federal representative.
My opponent was always trying to nationalize issues. I think we are really tired of having our culture replaced with the D.C. culture, or our values being replaced, or our agenda being ignored. We don’t want somebody else to tell us what should be important to us. We already care about a lot of things and we want to fight for those issues with real urgency. And so I think that’s part of it, it’s the respect that is paid and curiosity and the humility of showing up and listening and paying attention to people when they tell you there’s a problem. You should believe them. Don’t gaslight people that crime’s actually not that bad or that actually inflation could be much worse if we lived in another country or whatever it is. That’s not a compelling argument.
DY: Just for context, for a national audience, can you describe your district and tell me what your constituents care the most about right now?
MGP: My district is seven counties, six of ’em are very, very rural. It’s a timber district. We grow trees here and we also have a lot of shellfish. So it’s definitely a natural resource economy and it’s one that takes a lot of pride in self-sufficiency and independence. This district, my community, we had the highest population of the Ku Klux Klan west of Mississippi. We also had the highest population of Wobblies, otherwise known as IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] members in the entire country. And so it is a place where there is a muscle memory for the middle really showing up and saying ‘neither of those are a great fit for me’ and really needing to exercise agency and ownership over their representatives. [I’m in] Southwest Washington, bordered by the Columbia River in the south. I live in the Gorge on the eastern part of the district and it goes all the way to the ocean.
DY: What are some of the biggest issues or things that people care about in that area right now?
MGP: I think out of the top 30 issues, the top six would all be economic: being able to afford a home, being able to spend time with your family, being able to afford groceries, feeling like you have economic agency and hope to have the same kind of life and economic wellbeing that you were raised with. And fentanyl is a huge issue in my community. We are on the I-5 corridor, so there’s definitely trafficking coming in. Wildfire is also a really big issue here. One of my counties just went down to a four day school week because of falling revenues [which were] definitely impacted by falling timber revenue. Meanwhile, wildfire’s one of the largest emitters of CO2 in our state. So it just feels like people aren’t listening to us about what is impacting our lives and what we want. We don’t want to stand in line for another federal grant that we’re not going to get anyways. We want to be able to keep our mills open and have jobs with a future and be able to own farmland and own homes and work in the woods.
DY: I know that the Secure Rural Schools (SRS) Act did not pass in the House at the end of last year. Is that something you’re thinking about and how that lapse in funding will affect your district?
MGP: Yeah, it’s one of the things that keeps me up at night. I mean my son’s not in school yet, but it’s something that they’ve talked about in our school districts too. What are we going to do if SRS doesn’t go through? And so I’m just constantly elevating it with my colleagues. I’m walking around the House floor with my son on my shoulders. His school could go down to a four day school week if this [SRS] isn’t done, this is urgent. This is not abstract for us. And just the turbulence and uncertainty is just so emotionally taxing. It’s just a big weight for everybody, not just people with kids in school, not just people in school districts, but all of us.
DY: Yeah. Do you feel like rural communities are well represented in Congress? Do you feel like other lawmakers understand what’s happening in these communities, like the ones that you represent?
MGP: I think it’s pretty rare. Even members that have districts that are more rural than mine often don’t live in the rural parts of their district because we spend so much time flying – getting to the airport is a thing. I think it’s very easy for people to get divorced from the realities of living in a rural community where if the well system fails your daycare is shutting down. We’re not able to go outside during wildfire season. So no, I don’t feel like rural communities have the kind of functional representation of what it’s like to try to raise a family right now. That’s been an important thing for me to bring to the table here.
DY: There’s a lot of discourse right now about how the Democratic Party is just no longer serving working class people, but you have won your elections campaigning on a working class identity and representing a working class rural district. How do you think that the Democratic party could better represent an appeal to rural voters going forward?
MGP: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of condescension. I think in rural communities there’s a lot of grief and a sense of loss that we’ve basically been treated like an internal resource colony for the rest of the country. Our kids are told that, to be successful, they need to move to L.A. or New York. I think that’s a loss for the entire country. That means that there’s just fewer ways of being in the world and making a living. Then the consolidation in farmland, the lack of access to the capital to keep that land in a family, to keep it in production. That drives up grocery prices for everyone.
Congress needs to consider these issues with humility. Being a lawyer or a doctor is not God’s highest calling for everybody. That’s not the goal. It’s not like we feel like we have achieved less by working in the trades. Don’t treat us like we need your help. We want respect. We want agency. We need to be at the table. Do not talk about us. We can talk for ourselves. I think we need an inversion of the kind of flow of representation. One of the bills I’ve introduced is calling for remote witness testimony because – I go to these committee hearings – and it’s expensive. The cost of dropping everything, if you’re actually running a family business, the cost of dropping everything and flying to D.C. and finding a babysitter for your family or whatever it is, finding somebody to take care of your business while you’re gone, get a hotel, get a flight, get here, testify.
That means that there’s been incredible selection bias concerning whose voices are heard here. And remote witness testimony can go a long way to creating a more representative sample of what the American experience is and not one that is trying to solve problems that are perceived in our community.
DY: What would you say to someone who lives in a rural community who might not feel like they belong in politics because they don’t have that legal background, they come from a trades or working class background, but they want to serve their community? How would you empower them to step into a political position?
MGP: Their worldview and that experience is profoundly necessary here. You do not get a full picture of what is productive legislation if you have everybody showing up for the job with one experience and one value system. We need a representative body, and people will help you do it. That was one of the shocking things: people door knocked for me, people helped me get a campaign off the ground. It is true, it is an incredible amount of work, but people will help you do it if you can clearly express that you are doing this for our community, that it is of the community.
DY: My last question for you is what’s something that you’re really pushing for or focused on during the 119th Congress?
MGP: One of the big reasons I ran was for the right to repair legislation, and it’s the same idea of “we are not just consumers, we are stewards.” We don’t want to be reliant on a cheap stream of goods. We don’t want to see our shop classes get turned into computer programming. We want to be able to run our own businesses and fix our stuff and make things last longer. That’s real environmentalism. And so I think it is a manifestation of respect for the trades of respect for stewardship and self-sufficiency, and those rights are being taken from a lot of these terms of service contracts that say, “I’ve got to take my truck into an authorized dealer to get something done. I’ll void the warranty if I open it up myself.” That’s not right.
This interview first appeared in Path Finders, a weekly email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Each Monday, Path Finders features a Q&A with a rural thinker, creator, or doer. Join the mailing list today, to have these illuminating conversations delivered straight to your inbox.
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