Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., is projected to win a third term representing Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, defeating Republican state Sen. John Braun in a seat President Donald Trump carried by roughly 3 percentage points in 2024.
The district stretches from the city of Vancouver through rural southwest Washington and smaller coastal towns. More than $20 million was spent on the race, according to the Washington Standard, reflecting how much both parties had riding on the outcome.
Gluesenkamp Perez’s win is notable not just because of the district’s political lean, but because of what she did to get there. In September, she twice broke with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., siding with Republicans on procedural votes that rescued the GOP’s legislative agenda from conservative infighting. Without her vote and that of Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, House Republican leadership would have been stuck.
The first defection drew a rare public rebuke from Jeffries, who called it a “breach of trust.” Some further-left members of her own party went so far as to call for her removal from the House Appropriations Committee.
Whatever the cost within her own caucus, the move appears to have paid off at home. Gluesenkamp Perez first won the seat by unseating a sitting House Republican, and has built a reputation as a Democrat willing to break ranks rather than toe a party line in a district that leans toward Trump.
This race was expected to be tighter than her previous two. Braun, a former Navy captain who helps run his family’s emergency-vehicle manufacturing company, Braun Northwest, ran as a more conventional Republican than her past opponent, Joe Kent. Kent had struggled with electability questions tied to his ties to far-right groups; he later served briefly as Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center before resigning over disagreements on Middle East policy.
The win gives House Democrats a boost in their effort to retake the majority next year, but it also sets up continued friction with leadership. A lawmaker willing to cross Jeffries on procedural votes once already is unlikely to fall in line automatically on future ones.
