Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez of Washington was one of six Democrats who voted with Republicans on Nov. 12 to clear a short-term spending measure ending a six-week stalemate to reopen the government. President Donald Trump’s signature ended the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history — which Gluesenkamp Pérez referred to as a “partisan car crash.”
A moderate Democrat who co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition, she has frequently bucked her party. She supported an earlier version of the GOP-led spending patch before the shutdown began, although she missed the Sept. 19 passage vote in the House. In a statement explaining her November vote, Gluesenkamp Pérez accused lawmakers of being more concerned with scoring partisan points than with helping constituents. “The last several weeks have been a case study in why most Americans can’t stand Congress,” she said.
Getting to Congress: Before she entered politics, Gluesenkamp Pérez was the co-owner of an auto repair shop with her husband, Dean. Her first attempts at public office fell short: She lost a 2016 race for the Skamania county commission and a 2018 race for the county public utility commission. Gluesenkamp Pérez landed her first elected position in 2019 when she joined the Underwood Conservation District Board of Supervisors, a local entity that works on natural resource conservation. She held that post until her run for the 3rd District seat held by then-Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican, in 2022. Gluesenkamp Pérez finished first in the all-party primary and faced off against Trump-backed GOP candidate Joe Kent in the November election. Winning by just over 1 percentage point, Gluesenkamp Pérez defeated Kent and flipped the district in what was otherwise a largely disappointing election cycle for Democrats.
Her District: Washington’s 3rd District covers the southwest corner of the state, hugging the border with Oregon. Most of the district’s roughly 780,000 residents live in the city of Vancouver, just across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore. Logging has historically been an important industry for the region: A recent study by the U.S. Forest Service found the state’s southwest region to have been the most productive timber producer in the state in 2020, with 1 billion board feet harvested. The Cascade Mountains and foothills, which run through the district, are covered by hundreds of thousands of acres of parkland, including Mount St. Helens, the most active volcano in the contiguous U.S. Politically, the 3rd is solidly purple. Gluesenkamp Pérez is one of 13 Democrats who represent a district Trump won in 2024, according to analysis by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales — the president took home 50 percent of the vote in her district last November.
What’s New: On Nov. 12, the same day as the funding vote and the first voting day in the House since mid-September, Gluesenkamp Pérez took the opportunity to unveil a privileged resolution rebuking fellow Democratic Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García of Illinois. The resolution cites García for waiting to announce his retirement until Nov. 6, one day after the filing deadline for his seat. García’s chief of staff, who filed to run on Nov. 5, is the only Democrat who submitted paperwork for the primary. The move effectively ensured no other Democrat would run to succeed him.
Point of Interest: Gluesenkamp Pérez’s family history is replete with laborers. Her great-great-grandfather helped build the Washington State Capitol building as a quarry foreman, and her grandmother was born in a logging camp.
Aris Folley contributed to this report.
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