Republican congressional candidate Joe Kent, left, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, speak with reporters before an Aug. 17, 2024 fundraiser in a Vancouver, Wash. restaurant. (Jerry Cornfield/Washington State Standard)
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson dropped into Vancouver on Saturday to make clear that Republicans badly want to win back the congressional seat in southwest Washington they lost two years ago.
Johnson headlined a luncheon fundraiser at El Gaucho restaurant for Joe Kent who is battling Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who pulled off one of the biggest electoral upsets in 2022 by beating Kent to seize the 3rd Congressional District seat from Republicans.
The same two candidates are now embroiled in a bitter rematch, the outcome of which in November could determine whether Johnson is Speaker in 2025. And he knows it.
“The road to the majority runs through this district,” Johnson told reporters before the private event at the waterfront restaurant. “This is one of the top five races of the country. Everybody’s attention is on it.”
Two years ago, Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair shop owner, beat Kent by 2,629 votes. Kent, an Army Special Forces veteran, advanced from the primary by defeating six-term Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who paid a political price for voting to impeach President Donald Trump after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Kent has said he emerged from that “brutal” intraparty battle “not just broke but in debt.” This time around is different. He’s starting with money in his campaign coffers, albeit far less than Gluesenkamp Perez has in hers.
And Kent secured the endorsement of Leslie Lewallen, who campaigned fiercely in the primary as a more electable conservative Republican but finished third. While Gluesenkamp Perez is winning the primary with 45.9% of the vote, the total percentage of votes cast for Republicans exceeds 51% with Kent collecting 39.3% and Lewallen 12.2%.
On Saturday, Kent, in brief comments to reporters, said Johnson’s visit “shows how united the Republican Party is to flip the seat,” grow its majority and tackle issues of inflation, crime, fentanyl and securing the border.
“We’re in a really bad spot. People are really hurting right now,” Kent said.
Johnson, of Louisiana, sought to allay any doubts he and the National Republican Congressional Committee would provide needed resources to Kent to take on the incumbent who had about five times as much cash on hand in mid-July.
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“I’m bringing all the assistance I can,” said Johnson, who traveled to Bellevue for a fundraiser Saturday evening. “I believe he’s going to have plenty of air cover.”
Johnson said this time the race is about an incumbent who is “on board with the people that are radical, progressive, socialist” and votes “against the values of this district.”
“The big difference between now and last time is that Gluesenkamp Perez has a voting record, and it is one of the worst in all of Congress,“ Johnson said. Kent, he said, is “a reasonable governing conservative who will fix the problems. That’s a really, really stark contrast.”
Notably, Kent leaned in on election fraud conspiracies, spoke loudly for a national ban on abortion and fully embraced Trump in 2022. While there’s no sign he’s retreating on those positions, he’s refocused his campaign message in 2024 on areas like the economy, immigration and crime. He’s not been endorsed by Trump.
Meanwhile, Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign seemed to relish the speaker touching down in one of the hottest political battlegrounds in the nation.
On Thursday, Emmett Avery, a spokesman for the congresswoman’s campaign, threw shade on the imminent visit, saying southwest Washington’s values “aren’t Louisiana’s values, and Mike Johnson doesn’t understand that Joe Kent’s extreme, white nationalist stances are not who we are.”
Though Gluesenkamp Perez touts her willingness to cross party lines on policy matters, she had no plans to meet with Johnson in his pass through her district.
Maybe in the future, Avery said.
“She’d be happy to show Mike Johnson the national security necessity of replacing the I-5 bridge,” Avery said. Or bring him to an event like Saturday’s Squirrel Fest in Longview, which he described as “a much better reflection of our community values than raising money for a white nationalist like Joe Kent.”