Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is on a quest to bring back the Blue Dogs

Representative for Washington’s 3rd District Marie Gluesenkamp Perez at Dean’s Car Care, the Portland auto body shop she owns with her husband Dean Gluesenkamp, September 23, 2022. Gluesenkamp Perez is working to bring back the coalition of “Blue Dog” Democrats in Congress. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

The Democratic congresswoman’s strategy of appealing to working-class rural moderates won her Washington’s 3rd District. Will it work anywhere else?

Standing beneath towering shelves of kegs in the back of Vancouver’s Loowit Brewing, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has just given a thank-you talk to her supporters after squeaking through another tight election. As she wraps up her remarks in that December gathering and pauses for questions, a man in the crowd speaks up: “I’d like to see you expand the Blue Dog Coalition … I think that’s exactly what we need at the broader level.”

The Blue Dog Coalition, an ever-shifting group of moderate and independent House Democrats, might not be a household name. But it’s not the first time the auto-mechanic-turned-congresswoman, who won reelection even as her southwestern Washington District voted for President Donald Trump, has heard a comment like this. 

“I have had so many people come up to me in D.C., and be like, ‘Hey, you know, I think we should, like, maybe start something that’s oriented around people in the trades and who are working for a living,” Gluesenkamp Perez said to the crowd. “And I’ll slowly put on my Blue Dogs hat, ‘Like you mean what we’ve been doing?’”

U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez speaks to supporters at Loowit Brewing in Vancouver in December after winning her second term in Congress. (Joseph O’Sullivan for Cascade PBS)

In 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez’s first win shocked the political world. A young mother, auto-shop owner and Latina from rural Skamania County with little political support managed to win an open seat that had been held by a Republican for a decade.

As the Democratic Party struggles to respond to its November losses, aging leadership and the Trump administration’s aggressive attempts to expand executive power and impose its will, Gluesenkamp Perez and the handful of Blue Dogs are offering a different brand of politics to expand the party’s tent.

The congresswoman and her colleagues are also trying to do something more ambitious than next year’s elections: They want to deliver a policy agenda that serves working people and brings more rural voters back to the Democratic Party for the long term.

Retaking the House might be the easiest of Democrats’ challenges, with the party needing to pick up just three seats in a midterm cycle – when the president’s party often loses seats.

“Given the incredibly narrow margin and given how Trump’s approval rating, particularly on economic issues, has shifted over the past couple of months, I think Democrats should be in a good position to take back the House next year,” said Erin Covey of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

But as population growth has shifted toward big, Republican-leaning states and the GOP’s redistricting efforts have made it harder for Democrats to win, the party faces a steep challenge in expanding their appeal. One need only look at the U.S. Senate, where on paper, Democrats have little discernible path to a majority in the near future.

Gluesenkamp Perez speaks during a town hall event at Centralia College, Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Centralia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

It remains to be seen whether Gluesenkamp Perez’s political approach will translate beyond Washington’s 3rd Congressional District – which includes all of Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, Skamania and Wahkiakum counties as well as a nibble of Thurston County. Meanwhile, when the representative defends her seat again next year, she’ll face a new dynamic.

Late last month at a Vancouver town hall, the congresswoman drew protests and anger from constituents upset about her vote for the SAVE Act, a Republican-sponsored bill aimed at securing elections from voter fraud. Gluesenkamp Perez will have to hold together her fragile coalition of Democrats and moderate Republicans against what is likely to be a fresh GOP opponent.

“She’s incredibly vulnerable,” said Washington State Republican Party Chairman Jim Walsh, adding: “Her appeal is a millimeter deep.” 

But at her Loowit Brewing appearance, Gluesenkamp Perez’s approach resonated.

“Marie is the first politician I’ve ever given money to, and I’m 68 years old,” said Dave Fergus after the event wrapped up.

A retired Hewlett Packard employee who lives in Vancouver, Fergus made the Blue Dogs comment to the congresswoman. He described himself as a moderate who’d previously voted for Republican Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler, who held the seat for a decade before Gluesenkamp Perez’s victory in 2022. Republicans rejected Herrera Beutler in that summer’s primaries after she voted to impeach Trump.

Gluesenkamp Perez is “always out in the community, she’s always out talking to organizations, she’s always talking to groups, she’s not parroting the talking points” of the major parties, said Fergus. “I love that about her.”

A different approach

One Tuesday earlier this month, Scott Bessent, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and a former global hedge fund manager, took his seat before a House Appropriations subcommittee oversight hearing.

Gluesenkamp Perez, who sits on the committee, peppered Bessent with questions about how to make sure tax audits don’t fall disproportionately on small businesses like the auto shop she owns, and why citizens have had trouble speaking with a live Internal Revenue Service agent about tax questions over the phone. 

And she pressed Bessent to explain how the Trump administration’s tariffs on goods imported into the nation would increase wages in the United States.

“There’s a lot of work to do here toward building real wealth,” she told Bessent. “I’m not really here to be a defender of the stock market, most of the people I know don’t trade stocks in my community.”

“It’s a question of being able to own land, having that capital access to start your own business,”  Gluesenkamp Perez added. “And frankly some of the antitrust work to ensure there’s a level playing field for small businesses like mine.”

In a phone interview a few hours after she questioned Bessent, the congresswoman said that "Tariffs are one tool, but to actually bring back domestic manufacturing is going to require, you know, some of the antitrust work."

"It’s gonna require permitting reform,” she added. “It’s gonna require shop class in junior high.”

That Gluesenkamp Perez and other Blue Dogs, like Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, don’t necessarily reject some Trump policies might leave some Democrats with heartburn – but that’s part of their appeal to voters in conservative-leaning districts.

U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

“I think they saw that there were a lot of grievances in working class and rural communities … that a lot of Democrats I think were not aware were objectionable,” said Phil Gardner, a senior advisor for the Blue Dog Coalition. “The Democratic Party is so entrenched in this higher-income, higher-educated cultural class.”

“Democrats have been so focused on trying to tear [Trump] down as a legitimate participant in American politics,” said Gardner, who ran Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign in 2022. “They investigated him, they indicted him, they impeached him.

“And it failed,” he said. “We’ve been doing the same thing for 10 years and he’s gotten more votes than ever.”

Gluesenkamp Perez said she uses gym time and Bible study to foster connections with Republicans. And she recently spoke with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson about her right-to-repair legislation, which would prohibit auto companies from withholding tools or information to stop people from fixing their own vehicles.

“Back home, most people’s day-to-day lives haven’t really changed,” she said. “And I think that a lot of the legalese and constitutional scholars, that doesn’t land in the same way if you’re working three jobs and not able to put your kids to bed at night.”

Gluesenkamp Perez, right, and her husband Dean Gluesenkamp work on a cylinder head in the Portland auto body shop they own, September 23, 2022. A major policy concern of Gluesenkamp Perez’s is the right-to-repair law. (Genna Martin/Cascade PBS)

‘More independent-minded’

The Blue Dog Coalition sprung from the shellacking Democrats got in the 1994 midterms, and the loss of its House majority that brought the rise of Newt Gingrich. By 2009, when President Barack Obama was sworn in, the coalition had 54 members. That class of Blue Dogs included Democrats holding the at-large congressional districts for North and South Dakota, along with seats in Idaho, Oklahoma and rural Minnesota. Those districts now all vote solidly Republican.

Today, there are 10 Blue Dogs, hailing from Texas, New Jersey, California, Maine, Washington and Georgia.

“From its founding it’s always been this place for Democratic members who are more independent-minded … and working towards what people would talk about as the political center,” said Gardner. That approach is about “representing the districts and the constituency that they have been elected from, and focusing on district above party.”

That means taking criticism for votes that Democrats might find unpopular, such as when Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden in 2023 joined Republican House members to vote against President Joe Biden’s student-loan forgiveness program.

“They’re both younger, they sort of came of their political awareness in the 2000s, watching Bush and Obama, and Occupy Wall Street and the financial crisis,” said Gardner.

The two also share districts with a unique bond: Both cover rural northern coastlines. In a recent social media post, Golden highlighted a request by the U.S. Coast Guard seeking input on changes in navigational aids. Gluesenkamp Perez’s congressional website includes a map touting federal dollars she secured for port improvements, like one allocation to double the Port of Longview’s freight capacity, and another to aid the port of Willapa, used by crabbing and shellfish operators.

“Once they actually met, it was like, oh they’re East Coast-West Coast versions of each other,” said Gardner. 

Neither politician accepts corporate political action committee donations, he said, and they both oppose cuts to Medicaid and extending tax cuts for the wealthy in the GOP budget proposal currently moving through Congress.

Golden, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and former state lawmaker from Lewiston, Maine, represents the largest congressional district east of the Mississippi River. He first won election to the House in 2018. Last year, he won by less than 1 percentage point in a district that went for Trump by about 10 points.

In an interview, Golden said that he got to know Gluesenkamp Perez during the procession of votes in early 2023 as House Republicans struggled to elect a Speaker: “Out of those conversations … grew a political friendship.”

“It’s no secret that she didn’t really get a lot of support in 2022,” said Golden. “The same when I ran in 2018.” 

Golden touted the Blue Dogs for, among other things, pointing to the role they played in pushing House Democratic leadership to pass 2021’s bipartisan infrastructure law, rather than holding it back as leverage for negotiation. On the day he spoke with Cascade PBS about the Blue Dogs, Golden was set to speak on the House floor against Trump’s executive order “taking bargaining rights away from federal employees.”

Formerly a co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition, Golden is now leading the group’s political action committee, which hopes to field strong candidates for next year.

“We’re focused on quality over quantity, and so the answer lies in who might emerge to represent their communities,” Golden said.

“Both parties tend, I think, to look for candidates who are highly credentialed and tend to have networks where they anticipate they can raise money,” he added. “We want to find people from the trades or who don’t have as much political experience.”

Anger at home

In late April, Gluesenkamp Perez held a town hall in Vancouver that drew more than 500 people, many frustrated at her vote in support of the SAVE Act, according to The Columbian. So many people came that many had to stand outside, looking in through windows and “slapping posters, rapping on the glass and continuously chanting, ‘Vote her out,’” according to the report.

A protester is pulled away from the crowd and arrested during a town hall event with Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez at Centralia College, Tuesday, April 22, 2025. Critics at the event were upset about her support of the SAVE Act, a Republican-sponsored bill aimed at securing elections from voter fraud. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

The Republican-sponsored Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act would mandate that residents have proof of citizenship in order to vote. Critics have said the policy could disenfranchise voters, including married women who have adopted their husbands’ last names.

Ahead of the town hall, a member of Indivisible Greater Vancouver’s Facebook site posted an event note, encouraging people to show up and protest Gluesenkamp Perez’s vote.

“Please come out with your signs and let’s let her know that the crossover votes she might get by pandering to Republicans are not worth the votes she will lose from her Democratic base!” wrote the individual.

In a statement to Cascade PBS, the progressive organization said it doesn’t endorse candidates for office, and members of Indivisible “have a variety of opinions about Representative Gluesenkamp Perez.”

“But we are all united in our shared mission to defend democracy through supporting 5 core values: Free and Fair Elections, Equality, Free Speech, Free Press, and Public Education,” according to the statement. “We will continue to engage with elected officials at all levels, including Representative Gluesenkamp Perez, to support these five essential pillars of democracy.”

Over the phone from the Capitol, Gluesenkamp Perez defended her vote.

She was comfortable voting for it in part because the bill isn’t likely to pass in the Senate, which she credited as due to some of the “crazy” provisions added by Republicans. And she pointed to a bill she and Golden introduced earlier this year to establish a committee to consider major election reforms, like getting rid of gerrymandering: “There should be no question that I take elections very seriously.”

"My constituents also believe that only U.S. citizens should vote in elections,” said the congresswoman. She called her vote on the SAVE Act one way to combat “the conspiracy theory that Democrats want to control election outcomes with noncitizen voting.”

Whether she faces a challenge from the left, Republicans will have a fresh chance to claw the district back in 2026, and likely with a new standard bearer. Joe Kent, the military veteran and CIA operative who ran against her in the first two elections, currently awaits confirmation to lead the Trump administration’s National Counterterrorism Center. Kent made news earlier this year for being a member of the groupchat that discussed plans for a military strike in Yemen.

“Having Kent not gunning for this job anymore helps Republicans there,” said Covey of the Cook Political Report. “He had some unique vulnerability and baggage with ties to white nationalists, and that was a big part initially why she was able to win in ’22.”

Walsh, the state GOP chairman, knows Gluesenkamp Perez’s district well. In 2016, Walsh became the first Republican in recent memory to win a seat in the 19th Legislative District, which shares a big swath of rural territory with the 3rd Congressional District. Walsh has continued to win, and since then Republicans picked up the district’s other two legislative seats that were long represented by moderate rural Democrats. Walsh described southwest Washington voters as “honest, blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth people who are not stupid” and who have “a nose for authenticity and weakness.”

Asked what type of Republican could unseat her in 2026, Walsh said a working-class candidate who “gives a damn about taxes” and “doesn’t like tolls on the I-5 bridge … who’s not going to insist to put a rail span on the I-5 bridge” and who “who knows you have to enforce immigration.”

And he pointed to a procedural vote that Gluesenkamp Perez made against the SAVE Act before ultimately voting to approve it on the House floor, calling it “cynicism at the highest level … it’s not exactly a profile in courage.”

The congresswoman said she didn’t mind taking heat from constituents over her vote on the SAVE Act.

“I have no problem getting yelled at, like, you know, the shop floor is not a gentle place,” she said. “The bigger question is how do we get what we want at the end of the day?”

After taking a few more questions, Gluesenkamp Perez excused herself. The House was in session, and she needed to go cast her vote against a resolution to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.

Joseph O’Sullivan, Cascade PBS

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