Republican Joe Kent, left, and U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, right are competing for the U.S. House seat in the 3rd Congressional District. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian)
Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez continued to lead Republican Joe Kent Wednesday in one of a handful of congressional races nationwide yet to be called.
Gluesenkamp Perez, who is seeking a second term representing the 3rd Congressional District, led Kent 51.7% to 48% with Wednesday’s tally of votes.
“Still too early to call, lots of ballots remain,” Kent said in a social media post earlier on Wednesday. He urged voters to check the status of their ballots to ensure their vote was counted.
The congresswoman expressed the same sentiment in a statement Tuesday night.
“The election won’t be called for days,” she said. She added that checking to see if ballots were counted was more important than voters checking results.
“Some dweasel tried to firebomb our ballots into oblivion and scare us away from participating in our democracy,” she said, referring to the Oct. 28 arson at a drop box in the district that damaged and destroyed hundreds of ballots.
“Southwest Washington responded by showing up to vote in record numbers anyways. Political violence and political extremism have no place in our corner of the country,” Gluesenkamp Perez said.
This is a rematch of the 2022 electoral battle in which Gluesenkamp Perez beat Kent by 2,629 votes in one of that year’s biggest ballot upsets. Moreover, that defeat cost the Republican Party the 3rd Congressional District seat it had held for more than a decade.
The winner will serve a two-year term as representative of the district, which encompasses Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, Wahkiakum, and Skamania counties and a touch of Thurston County. The 3rd district’s southern boundary is the Columbia River. It includes Vancouver and rural areas with ties to timber and agriculture, and coastal towns like Long Beach.