SEATTLE — In a Southwest Washington race that will help decide the balance of power in Congress, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez led challenger Joe Kent in Tuesday night results. As of 8:17 p.m. PST, Gluesenkamp Perez had 52.5% of the vote to Kent’s 47.5%.

The 3rd Congressional District rematch between Democrat Glusenkamp Perez and Republican Kent, who faced off in 2022, has been widely considered a tossup. A microcosm of the fight over rural and working class voters, it has captured national attention.

The candidates have taken different approaches.

Glusenkamp Perez — a political novice when she flipped the conservative-leaning district two years ago with a margin of less than 3,000 votes — has largely kept her focus close to home and portrayed herself as more in touch with local values than Kent, who bought a Southwest Washington house in 2020.

She has wooed the district’s Republicans with that message, addressing them directly in a KOIN 6 debate. “I’m proud of living in a rural community where we get our water from a well and exercise self-sufficiency,” she said. “Joe Kent thinks he knows better than us. He doesn’t even know us.”

Glusenkamp Perez, who co-owns a Portland auto repair business with her husband, also casts herself as a champion of blue-collar workers. Supporting shop classes will help the housing affordability crisis, she says, by teaching people home-building skills.

While at times she distances herself from other Democrats, some in her party have looked at Glusenkamp Perez as a model of how to win back disaffected rural and working class voters who have migrated to Trump’s GOP.

But this year’s nail-biter of a race, despite her advantages of incumbency and a far larger campaign war chest, has underscored the challenges. At one debate last month, at Lower Columbia College, the crowd seemed markedly pro-Kent, at times applauding him and jeering her.

A Green Beret veteran and former CIA officer, Kent has stressed national themes voiced by former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed him. Kent blames overspending by the Biden administration for inflation, calls for mass deportations in the face of “out of control” migration and raises alarm about transgender students participating in girls’ sports.

Like Trump, he frequently depicts the U.S. and the world in dark terms, opposing aid to Ukraine, for instance, because he says the country’s war with Russia has put us on the verge of World War III.

Kent smiles often, however, and alludes to his compelling personal story, which encompasses 11 combat deployments and the loss of his first wife in a 2019 terrorist bombing in Syria when Shannon Kent was serving in the Navy. He remarried in 2023.

“I fought for you for 20 years. I’d be honored to fight for you in D.C. ,” Kent, 44, said during another October debate, broadcast by KOIN 6 TV.

In the final weeks of the campaign, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson swooped into Southwest Washington to campaign for Kent. Johnson’s hearty support signaled the GOP establishment’s newfound embrace of a candidate who has falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen and associated himself at times with far-right extremists.

“I have so many things for Joe Kent to do in Congress,” Johnson said. “I can’t wait for him.”

Glusenkamp Perez wound down the campaign with a RV tour across the district’s seven counties, meeting with folks, she said in a social media post, “to talk about farming, fishing, and the need for our Southwest Washington priorities to drive the legislative agenda, not party bosses in D.C.”

She has kept the spotlight on one big national issue: abortion. A staunch defender of abortion protections, she accuses Kent of shifting his position for political reasons. He previously called for a federal abortion ban and now says he’s content with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that lets states set abortion policy.

Kent has said he changed his mind on a national ban not because of a voter backlash to abortion bans unleashed by the Dobbs decision but because of conversations with people in his district whose views on the issue are different than his.

“I don’t support a national abortion ban, and you can count on me,” he said Lower Columbia College debate. “My word is my bond.”

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