Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is a working-class Democrat that is mobilizing a new generation of rural, dirt road democrats. She owns an auto repair shop, lives in rural Skamania County, and is the first Democratic candidate outside of Clark County to run in the 3rd congressional district in decades.

Rural Experience

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has helped to lead her small town in developing a downtown association, and has sat on her conservation district board of directors. Marie’s roots go deep in the region. Her great-great-grandpa Bert Gilmore helped build the Washington State Capitol as the quarry foreman, and her grandmother Carol Gilmore was born in a logging camp in Sappho, Washington. Her parents met at Western Washington University after her father immigrated from Mexico.

Second Civil War

As Congress holds the last of the hearings about former president Donald J. Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, attempted overthrow of a free and fair election, rumors of a second civil war trend through social media platforms. Joe Kent has been a vocal supporter of Trump’s “big lie,” and spoke at the Jan. 6 rally, calling those arrested for the siege of our nation’s capital “political prisoners’’ that need to be released from “FBI gulags.” Kent has called for defunding the Department of Education, closing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the arrest of Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has been backed by far-right ideologues like Steve Bannon and billionaire Peter Thiel, who are architects of campaigns sowing distrust in U.S. democratic institutions, and ushering in an era of Christian nationalism.

Historical Irony

Joe Kent has held rallies at grange halls across Southwest Washington sharing rhetoric that is stoking a second civil war. It is historical irony as grange halls were founded in an effort to heal rural communities after the first Civil War. In 1867, Oliver Hudson Kelley was sent on a trip through the south to develop agricultural communities. Kelley went on to help found the grange hall movement in the aftermath of the destructive and divisive Civil War to nurture unity in rural America.

Luckily, Southwest Washington has Marie Gluesenkamp Perez to throw a wrench in Joe Kent’s plans. Gluesenkamp Perez is sharing a message of unity that is more in line with the grange hall history.

Ballots Mailed

Ballots are being mailed out across the 3rd Congressional District, and residents will have an opportunity to choose the candidate representing unity, or the candidate sowing the seeds of a second civil war. The 3rd Congressional District has 743,780 residents, and 261,830 live outside of Clark County. This block of largely rural voters will be a key constituency determining the margin of victory in this race. The dirt road democrats that sign waved recently in Tenino plan to canvas and sign wave in small rural towns throughout Southwest Washington to make sure the spirit of democracy heads off the rumors of a second civil war at the ballot box.

Warren Neth,

Yelm