Politics
This Democrat pulled off one of the country's biggest upsets. Can she win again in Trump country?
Two years ago, one of the nation’s biggest political upsets took place here amid the radiant greenery of the Pacific Northwest. A new mom, the 34-year-old owner of an auto repair shop, made a run for Congress with zero help from national Democrats and nabbed a seat Republicans had held for more than a decade.
Now that seat is central to the fight for control of the House.
The incumbent, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, is among the least likely Democrats you’ll find in Congress.
She trashes the Biden administration’s record on immigration and won’t endorse Kamala Harris for president. She resides down a gravel road in a house she and her husband built. She exalts those who work with their hands — plumbers, mechanics, electricians — and belittles the highbrows who populate Washington, speaking the put-upon language of people ignored or disdained because of where they live or how they labor.
“It makes my skin crawl,” she told a small gathering at a strip-mall bar and grill, “when I hear a politician get up there and they say, ‘My dad was just a janitor. I’m the first person in my family to go to college.’” What does that sound like to everyone else in the room who didn’t go to college?”
(Her degree in economics from Portland’s prestigious Reed College goes unmentioned.)
Columnist Mark Z. Barabak joins candidates for various offices as they hit the campaign trail in this momentous election year.
Still, Gluesenkamp Perez’s willingness to buck her party and her fluency in grievance politics are the reason she stands a chance in this southwest corner of Washington state, in a district that twice voted for Donald Trump and will surely do so again Nov. 5. She’s one of the few rural Democrats left in Congress and one of just five House Democrats seeking reelection in pro-Trump districts. All are endangered species.
Her Republican opponent, whom Gluesenkamp Perez barely defeated two years ago, is an unreconstructed MAGA warrior, who hangs with the Proud Boys and white nationalists and parrots Trump’s blather about a stolen 2020 election and Jan. 6 martyrs. He moved to the district less than a year before launching his candidacy.
But given the district’s Republican lean, the rematch appears to be a toss-up at a time control of the House may come down to just a handful of seats.
“A bunch of people who didn’t vote in 2022 in the midterm will be voting this time around,” said Mark Stephan, who teaches political science at Washington State University in Vancouver, population roughly 200,000, which is the closest thing the district has to a large city. “Enough that it could go either direction.”
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With the campaign heading into the homestretch, Gluesenkamp Perez recently embarked on a RV tour of the 3rd Congressional District, down twisting two-lane roads, past farmland and forests daubed with red, yellow and orange. Her husband, Dean, the couple’s 3-year-old son, Ciro, and the family’s German shepherd, Uma Furman, came along for the ride.
Six days, 20 stops, many in wide spots with just a few thousand residents. It’s in those rural reaches the campaign will be decided.
At the end of Day One, after visiting two small taverns for “Pints with Perez” events, it was time for some family fun. So the RV bee-lined to a chainsaw museum in Amboy, where the couple spent nearly an hour browsing the floor-to-ceiling display, eyes wide with delight.
“This is super cool,” exulted Dean, an auto mechanic who does the repair work at the family-run garage.
“Yes, this is amazing,” the congresswoman agreed.
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and her husband, Dean, in a chainsaw museum.
(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)
Gluesenkamp Perez was born and raised in Texas, but her family has deep roots in Washington state, going back generations on her mother’s side. (Gluesenkamp Perez’s great-great grandfather helped quarry the stone used to build the state Capitol.) She spent childhood summers with family in Bellingham, playing in the woods and developing an abiding love of nature.
There are no political reds or blues in the forest, she tells audiences.
Gluesenkamp Perez’s father, an immigrant from Mexico, pastored in an evangelical church in Houston. When Perez stopped going to services, her parents stopped paying for college, so she worked three jobs to pay her way through Reed. One was in a factory making iPhone cases.
As she bids for reelection, Gluesenkamp Perez’s main sales pitch is her blue-collar self.
Someone who appreciates hard labor and thrills to the sight of heavy machinery. Who scrounged to build her home and start a small business, struggled to meet a payroll and was forced to deal with clueless bureaucrats. In short, someone who shares her constituents’ skepticism toward big government and antipathy for far-off Washington, D.C.
Recounting an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill, Gluesenkamp Perez describes looking over the witnesses with their fusty manner and fancy pedigrees and wondering if any had ever turned a wrench.
“It’s wild to me to see these D.C. staffer bros in bow ties making decisions,” she said, calling for national codification of abortion rights to nullify the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. “They don’t know what the f—.” Her voice trailed off, the crowd at another saloon stop erupting in laughter at her indecorous F-bomb.
::
Gluesenkamp Perez’s Republican opponent, Joe Kent, is trying to nationalize the race, turning the contest into a ratification of Trump, his pugnacious personality and belligerent policies. She’s trying to rise above party labels — even as national Democrats and their allies pour millions into her campaign — and focus almost entirely on the whys and wherefores of the 3rd District.
The congressional seat can’t be surrendered to “a political hack,” she told a few score at a roadhouse grill in Amboy, done up with cobwebs and skeletons for Halloween. “We have got to have a seat that’s based on local issues … not something that’s imported from a think tank or political action committee, but here. Us. We are the solution.”
Gluesenkamp Perez, holding her son, Ciro, answers questions after a “Pints with Perez” event in Amboy, Wash.
(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)
Her platform is all practicality: making farm loans more accessible; better insulating mobile homes to save energy; giving people the right to choose where to repair broken appliances and the like, rather than having to ship them back to the manufacturer.
Why she asked, should tax-deferred 529 savings accounts only pay for college tuition, books and such? “We needs a tax code that honors the trades,” she said, allowing write-offs for the kinds of equipment used by loggers, plumbers and electricians.
In Washington, Gluesenkamp Perez has had no compunction separating herself from her party. A vote study by CQ Roll Call found her the second-most likely House Democrat to break ranks.
She backed a resolution rebuking Harris for her role in the administration’s border policy and was one of just four Democrats supporting a defense bill that would have limited abortion access, transgender care and diversity training for military personnel. She opposes an assault-weapons ban — though Gluesenkamp Perez would raise the age for purchasing one from 18 to 21 — and was one of just two House Democrats to oppose a student-debt relief plan proposed by the Biden administration.
The latter drew a flood of scathing reviews of the family’s auto repair shop — “Worst car care Ive been to,” one Yelp reviewer wrote online — in a purposeful left-wing campaign of retribution. Much of the trolling came from outside the district.
At home, Democrats like Howard Marshack are more understanding.
The candidate at a “Pints with Perez” event in Woodland, Wash.
(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)
“She isn’t as liberal as I am,” said Marshack, who was seeing his congresswoman in person for the first time at a Rotary Club luncheon in Vancouver. As he spoke, a steady rain pattered on the promenade facing Portland, just across the Columbia River.
“I can’t help but think that a significant amount of her stances are genuine and possibly some are because she needs to represent her district,” said Marshack, 75, a retired family law attorney “That’s OK, given the options I have … I can’t stand her opponent.”
::
The words “Trump” and “Harris” never pass Gluesenkamp Perez’s lips, if she can possibly manage.
But in this ferociously inflamed political season, discussion of the fight for the White House is unavoidable. Drawn in, Gluesenkamp Perez appears less than sure-footed, pausing and carefully choosing her words, as though verbally picking her way through a political minefield — which she is.
In Longview, the district’s second-largest city (population not quite 40,000), she spoke to a friendly audience of about 50 residents gathered in a curtained-off section of another bar and grill. Several wanted to know her thoughts about the two presidential antagonists.
One woman asked what she should say to Trump-supporting neighbors who fail, she suggested, to realize how he’ll hurt their interests if elected. Gluesenkamp Perez’s roundabout response — about respecting people who do manual labor, building community — petered out in a small sigh. “It’s a wild political climate,” she said.
A man wondered what the congresswoman thought of Harris’ proposal for a $25,000 tax credit for first-time home-buyers. Another long and winding answer followed — about affordability, regulations, building her own home, the virtues of shop class — before Gluesenkamp Perez finally expressed concern the proposal could merely end up boosting housing costs.
The refusal to embrace Harris in a district the Democrat seems destined to lose is hardly surprising. “What I say is not going to change anyone’s vote in my community,” she said as she left the Shamrock grill and prepared to roll to her next stop.
At least not in the presidential race. But it could make a big difference in her coin-flip race for reelection.
Gluesenkamp Perez may be a freshman member of Congress — and an improbable one, at that. But she’s no political naif.
Politics
Kamala Harris blasts Trump administration’s capture of Venezuela’s Maduro as ‘unlawful and unwise’
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Former Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday evening condemned the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, calling the operation both “unlawful” and “unwise.”
In a lengthy post on X, Harris acknowledged that Maduro is a “brutal” and “illegitimate” dictator but said that President Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela “do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable.”
“Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela do not make America safer, stronger, or more affordable,” Harris wrote. “That Maduro is a brutal, illegitimate dictator does not change the fact that this action was both unlawful and unwise. We’ve seen this movie before.
“Wars for regime change or oil that are sold as strength but turn into chaos, and American families pay the price.”
SEE PICS: VENEZUELANS WORLDWIDE CELEBRATE AS EXILES REACT TO MADURO’S CAPTURE
Vice President Kamala Harris had strong words for the Trump administration’s capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. (Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)
Harris made the remarks hours after the Trump administration confirmed that Maduro and his wife were captured and transported out of Venezuela as part of “Operation Absolute Resolve.”
The former vice president also accused the administration of being motivated by oil interests rather than efforts to combat drug trafficking or promote democracy.
“The American people do not want this, and they are tired of being lied to. This is not about drugs or democracy. It is about oil and Donald Trump’s desire to play the regional strongman,” Harris said. “If he cared about either, he wouldn’t pardon a convicted drug trafficker or sideline Venezuela’s legitimate opposition while pursuing deals with Maduro’s cronies.”
SECOND FRONT: HOW A SOCIALIST CELL IN THE US MOBILIZED PRO-MADURO FOOT SOLDIERS WITHIN 12 HOURS
President Donald Trump shared a photo of captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro aboard the USS Iwo Jima after Saturday’s strikes on Venezuela. (Donald Trump via Truth Social)
Harris, who has been rumored as a potential Democratic contender in the 2028 presidential race, additionally accused the president of endangering U.S. troops and destabilizing the region.
“The President is putting troops at risk, spending billions, destabilizing a region, and offering no legal authority, no exit plan, and no benefit at home,” she said. “America needs leadership whose priorities are lowering costs for working families, enforcing the rule of law, strengthening alliances, and — most importantly — putting the American people first.”
MADURO’S FALL SPARKS SUSPICION OF BETRAYAL INSIDE VENEZUELA’S RULING ELITE
CIA Director John Ratcliffe, left, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio watch U.S. military operations in Venezuela from Mar-a-Lago in Florida early Saturday. (Donald Trump via Truth Social)
Maduro and his wife arrived at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn late Saturday after being transported by helicopter from the DEA in Manhattan after being processed.
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Earlier in the day, Trump said that the U.S. government will “run” Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”
Harris’ office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr contributed to this report.
CARACAS, Venezuela — It was about 2 a.m. Saturday Caracas time when the detonations began, lighting up the sullen sky like a post-New Year’s fireworks display.
“¡Ya comenzó!” was the recurrent phrase in homes, telephone conversations and social media chats as the latest iteration of U.S. “shock and awe” rocked the Venezuelan capital. “It has begun!”
Then the question: “¿Maduro?”
The great uncertainty was the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro, who has been under Trump administration threat for months.
The scenes of revelry from a joyous Venezuelan diaspora celebrating from Miami to Madrid were not repeated here. Fear of the unknown kept most at home.
Hours would pass before news reports from outside Venezuela confirmed that U.S. forces had captured Maduro and placed him on a U.S. ship to face criminal charges in federal court in New York.
Venezuelans had watched the unfolding spectacle from their homes, using social media to exchange images of explosions and the sounds of bombardment. This moment, it was clear, was ushering in a new era of uncertainly for Venezuela, a nation reeling from a decade of economic, political and social unrest.
Government supporters display posters of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, right, and former President Hugo Chávez in downtown Caracas on Saturday.
(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)
The ultimate result was an imponderable. But that this was a transformative moment — for good or bad — seemed indisputable.
By daybreak, an uneasy calm overtook the city of more than 3 million. The explosions and the drone of U.S. aircraft ceased. Blackouts cut electricity to parts of the capital.
Pro-government youths wielding automatic rifles set up roadblocks or sped through the streets on motorcycles, a warning to those who might celebrate Maduro’s downfall.
Shops, gas stations and other businesses were mostly closed. There was little traffic.
“When I heard the explosions, I grabbed my rosary and began to pray,” said Carolina Méndez, 50, who was among the few who ventured out Saturday, seeking medicines at a pharmacy, though no personnel had arrived to attend to clients waiting on line. “I’m very scared now. That’s why I came to buy what I need.”
A sense of alarm was ubiquitous.
Motorcycles and cars line up for gas Saturday in Caracas. Most of the population stayed indoors, reluctant to leave their homes except for gas and food.
(Andrea Hernandez Briceno / For The Times)
“People are buying bottled water, milk and eggs,” said Luz Pérez, a guard at one of the few open shops, not far from La Carlota airport, one of the sites targeted by U.S. strikes. “I heard the explosions. It was very scary. But the owner decided to open anyway to help people.”
Customers were being allowed to enter three at a time. Most didn’t want to speak. Their priority was to stock up on basics and get home safely.
Rumors circulated rapidly that U.S. forces had whisked away Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
There was no immediate official confirmation here of the detention of Maduro and Flores, both wanted in the United States for drug-trafficking charges — allegations that Maduro has denounced as U.S. propaganda. But then images of an apparently captive Maduro, blindfolded, in a sweatsuit soon circulated on social media.
There was no official estimate of Venezuelan casualties in the U.S. raid.
Rumors circulated indicating that a number of top Maduro aides had been killed, among them Diosdado Cabello, the security minister who is a staunch Maduro ally. Cabello is often the face of the government.
But Cabello soon appeared on official TV denouncing “the terrorist attack against our people,” adding: “Let no one facilitate the moves of the enemy invader.”
Although Trump, in his Saturday news conference, confidently predicted that the United States would “run” Venezuela, apparently during some undefined transitional period, it’s not clear how that will be accomplished.
A key question is whether the military — long a Maduro ally — will remain loyal now that he is in U.S. custody. There was no public indication Saturday of mass defections from the Venezuelan armed forces. Nor was it clear that Maduro’s government infrastructure had lost control of the country. Official media reported declarations of loyalty from pro-government politicians and citizens from throughout Venezuela.
A billboard with an image of President Nicolas Maduro stands next to La Carlota military base in Caracas, Venezuela, on Saturday. The graffiti reads, “Fraud, fraud.”
(Andrea Hernandez Briceno / For The Times)
In his comments, Trump spoke of a limited U.S. troop presence in Venezuela, focused mostly on protecting the oil infrastructure that his administration says was stolen from the United States — a characterization widely rejected here, even among Maduro’s critics. But Trump offered few details on sending in U.S. personnel to facilitate what could be a tumultuous transition.
Meantime, Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez surfaced on official television and demanded the immediate release of Maduro and his wife, according to the official Telesur broadcast outlet. Her comments seemed to be the first official acknowledgment that Maduro had been taken.
“There is one president of this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” the vice president said in an address from Miraflores Palace, from where Maduro and his wife had been seized hours earlier.
During an emergency meeting of the National Defense Council, Telesur reported, Rodríguez labeled the couple’s detention an “illegal kidnapping.”
The Trump administration, the vice president charged, meant to “capture our energy, mineral and [other] natural resources.”
Her defiant words came after Trump, in his news conference, said that Rodríguez had been sworn in as the country’s interim president and had evinced a willingness to cooperate with Washington.
“She’s essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Trump said.
Pro-government armed civilians patrol in La Guaira, Venezuela, on Saturday after President Trump announced that President Nicolás Maduro had been captured and flown out of the country.
(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)
Somewhat surprisingly, Trump also seemed to rule out a role in an interim government for Marina Corina Machado, the Venezuelan Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime anti-Maduro activist.
“She’s a very nice woman, but doesn’t have respect within the country,” Trump said of Machado.
Machado is indeed a controversial figure within the fractured Venezuelan opposition. Some object to her open calls for U.S. intervention, preferring a democratic change in government.
Nonetheless, her stand-in candidate, Edmundo González, did win the presidency in national balloting last year, according to opposition activists and others, who say Maduro stole the election.
“Venezuelans, the moment of liberty has arrived!” Machado wrote in a letter released on X. “We have fought for years. … What was meant to happen is happening.”
Not everyone agreed.
“They want our oil and they say it’s theirs,” said Roberto, 65, a taxi driver who declined to give his last name for security reasons. “Venezuelans don’t agree. Yes, I think people will go out and defend their homeland.”
Special correspondent Mogollón reported from Caracas and staff writer McDonnell from Boston. Contributing was special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal in Mexico City.
Politics
Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizes Trump’s meetings with Zelenskyy, Netanyahu: ‘Can we just do America?’
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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Sunday called for President Trump to only focus on America’s needs as the president meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president has been heavily involved in the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts since returning to the White House.
Trump met with Zelenskyy on Sunday at Mar-a-Lago to discuss a peace plan aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war that began with an invasion by Moscow in February 2022.
Netanyahu arrived in Florida on Sunday ahead of their scheduled meeting on Monday at Trump’s estate to address Israel’s conflicts in the Middle East. It will be the sixth meeting of the year between the two leaders.
TRUMP ZELENSKYY SAY UKRAINE PEACE DEAL CLOSE BUT ‘THORNY ISSUES’ REMAIN AFTER FLORIDA TALKS
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized President Donald Trump’s meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Greene, responding to Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy and Netanyahu, said that the Trump administration should address the needs of Americans rather than becoming further involved in global conflicts.
“Zelensky today. Netanyahu tomorrow,” she wrote on X.
President Donald Trump welcomes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida. (Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images)
“Can we just do America?” the congresswoman continued.
The congresswoman has been a vocal critic of supplying U.S. military aid to foreign countries amid the conflicts in Europe and the Middle East.
She has also referred to Zelenskyy as “a dictator who canceled elections” and labeled Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide and humanitarian crisis.
ZELENSKYY READY TO PRESENT NEW PEACE PROPOSALS TO US AND RUSSIA AFTER WORKING WITH EUROPEAN TALKS
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and President Donald Trump had a public feud in recent months. (Getty Images)
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This comes after Taylor Greene, who is set to resign from the House in January, had a public spat with Trump over the past few months as Trump took issue with the Georgia Republican’s push to release documents related to the investigations into deceased sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump had withdrawn his endorsement of Greene and called her a “traitor” over the public feud.
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