Two years ago, one of the greatest political upheavals took place here, amidst the radiant greenery of the Pacific Northwest. A 34-year-old new mom and auto repair shop owner ran for Congress without help from national Democrats and won a seat that Republicans had held for more than a decade.

This seat is now at the heart of the fight for control of the House.

Incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is among the least likely Democrats to be found in Congress.

She destroys the The Biden administration’s record on immigration and I will not approve Kamala Harris for president. She lives off a gravel road in a house she and her husband built. It exalts those who work with their hands – plumbers, mechanics, electricians – and demeans the intellectuals who populate Washington, speaking the language of people ignored or disdained because of where they live or how they work. they work.

“It gives me goosebumps,” she said at a small gathering at a mall bar and grill, “when I hear a politician stand up up there and say, ‘My father was just a janitor.’ I’m the first person in my family to go to college” What does this mean for everyone else in the room who didn’t go to college?

(His degree in economics from Portland’s prestigious Reed College is not mentioned.)

Columnist Mark Z. Barabak joins candidates for various offices as they embark on the campaign trail in this momentous election year.

However, Gluesenkamp Perez’s willingness to oppose his party and mastery of grievance policy That’s why she has a chance in this southwest corner of Washington state, in a district that voted for Donald Trump twice and surely will again on November 5. Democrats are seeking re-election in pro-Trump districts. All are endangered species.

His Republican opponent, whom Gluesenkamp Perez barely defeated two years ago, is an unreconstructed MAGA warrior hanging out with him. the proud boys and white nationalists and Trump parrots gossiping about a stolen 2020 election And Martyrs of January 6. He moved to the constituency less than a year before launching his candidacy.

But given the district’s Republican leaning, the rematch appears to be a toss-up at a time when control of the House could come down to just a handful of seats.

“A number of people who didn’t vote in the 2022 midterms will vote this time,” said Mark Stephan, who teaches political science at Washington State University in Vancouver, a population of around 200,000 inhabitants, which is the closest thing the district has. to a big city. “Enough that it could go either way.”

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As the campaign winds down, Gluesenkamp Perez recently embarked on an RV tour of the 3rd Congressional District, on winding two-lane roads, past farmlands and forests daubed in 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 large areas with only a few thousand residents. It is in these rural areas that the campaign will be decided.

At the end of the first day, after visiting two small taverns for the “Pints ​​with Perez” events, it was time for some family fun. So the camper headed to a chainsaw museum in Amboy, where the couple spent nearly an hour walking through the floor-to-ceiling exhibit, eyes wide with delight.

“It’s super cool,” said Dean, an auto mechanic who does repair work in the family garage.

“Yes, it’s incredible,” admitted the MP.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and her husband, Dean, at 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, dating back several generations on her mother’s side. (Gluesenkamp Perez’s great-great-grandfather helped quarry the stone used to build the State Capitol.) She spent her childhood summers with her family in Bellingham, playing in the woods and developing an eternal love for nature.

There is no political red or blue in the forest, she told the audience.

Gluesenkamp Perez’s father, a Mexican immigrant, was a pastor at an evangelical church in Houston. When Perez stopped going to the services, her parents stopped paying for her college education, so she worked three jobs to pay for her education at Reed. One of them was at a factory making iPhone cases.

As she seeks reelection, Gluesenkamp Perez’s biggest selling point is her blue-collar identity.

Someone who appreciates hard work and gets a thrill from seeing heavy machinery. She sought to build her house and start a small business, struggled to pay her salaries and was forced to deal with clueless bureaucrats. In short, someone who shares his constituents’ skepticism of big government and their antipathy for faraway Washington, DC.

Recounting an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill, Gluesenkamp Perez describes examining the witnesses with their sullen mannerisms and fanciful pedigrees and wondering if any had ever turned the key.

“It’s crazy to me to see these DC staff bros in bow ties making decisions,” she said, calling for a national codification of abortion rights to overturn the Dobbs decision of the Supreme Court. “They don’t know what it is.” His voice trailed off, the crowd in another saloon stopped bursting into laughter at his unseemly F-bomb.

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Gluesenkamp Perez’s Republican opponent, Joe Kent, is try to nationalize the racetransforming the contest into a ratification of Trump, his pugnacious personality and his bellicose policies. She’s trying to look past 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 seat of Congress cannot be ceded to “a political hack,” she told a few dozen people at a steakhouse in Amboy, decorated with cobwebs and skeletons for Halloween. “We need to have a seat based on local issues…not something that’s imported from a think tank or political action committee, but here. We. We are the solution.

Gluesenkamp Perez, holding his son Ciro, answers questions after a “Pints ​​with Perez” event in Amboy, Washington.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

Its platform is purely practical: making agricultural loans more accessible; better insulated mobile homes to save energy; giving people the right to choose where to repair broken appliances, etc., rather than having to return them to the manufacturer.

Why she asked: Should tax-deferred 529 savings accounts only pay for college tuition, books, etc.? ? “We need a tax code that honors the trades,” she said, allowing deductions for the types of equipment used by loggers, plumbers and electricians.

In Washington, Gluesenkamp Perez had no qualms about separating from his party. A voting study by CQ Roll Call found she was the second most likely House Democrat to break ranks.

She supported a resolution reprimanding Harris for its role in the administration’s border policy and was one of four Democrats to support a defense bill that would limit access to abortion, transgender care and diversity training for military personnel. She opposes a ban on assault weapons — although Gluesenkamp Perez would raise the age for purchasing one from 18 to 21 — and was one of only two House Democrats to oppose a student debt relief plan. proposed by the Biden administration.

The latter sparked a flood of scathing reviews of the family’s auto repair shop — “Worst auto service I’ve ever experienced,” one Yelp reviewer wrote online — in a determined left-wing retaliation campaign . Much of the trolling came from outside the district.

At home, Democrats like Howard Marshack are more understanding.

The contestant at a “Pints ​​with Perez” event in Woodland, Wash.

(Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

“She’s not as liberal as I am,” said Marshack, who was seeing his MP in person for the first time at a Rotary Club luncheon in Vancouver. As he spoke, a steady rain fell on the promenade facing Portland, just across the Columbia River.

“I can’t help but think that a lot of her positions are genuine and maybe some of them are because she has to represent her district,” said Marshack, 75, a retired law attorney of the family. “It’s OK, given the options I have…I can’t stand his opponent.

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The words “Trump” and “Harris” never leave Gluesenkamp Perez’s lips, if she can.

But in this fiercely heated political season, discussions about fight for the White House is inevitable. Drawn in, Gluesenkamp Perez seems less sure of herself, pausing and choosing her words carefully, as if verbally navigating her way through a political minefield – which she is.

In Longview, the district’s second-largest city (nearly 40,000), she spoke to a friendly audience of about 50 residents gathered in a curtained-off section of another bar and grill. Many wanted to know his thoughts on the two presidential antagonists.

One woman asked what she should say to neighbors who support Trump and who don’t realize, she suggested, how much he will harm their interests if elected. Gluesenkamp Perez’s roundabout response – about respecting people who do manual labor and building community – fizzled out with a small sigh. “It’s a wild political climate,” she said.

One man wondered what the congresswoman thought of Harris. proposed $25,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers. Another long, winding response followed – on affordability, regulation, building your own home, the virtues of business school – before Gluesenkamp Perez finally expressed concern that the proposal could simply end up increasing housing costs.

The refusal to accept Harris in a district that the Democrat seems destined to lose is hardly surprising. “What I say won’t change anyone’s vote in my community,” she said as she left the Shamrock grill and prepared to head to her next stop.

At least not in the presidential race. But it could make a big difference in his toss-up race for re-election.

Gluesenkamp Perez may be a new member of Congress — and an unlikely one, at that. But she is not a political naive.