Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., is projected to defeat Republican state Sen. John Braun and win a third term representing Washington’s 3rd Congressional District, a seat President Donald Trump carried by roughly 3 percentage points in 2024.
The win is notable because Gluesenkamp Perez twice broke publicly with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., this past September, siding with Republicans on procedural votes that let GOP leaders push their agenda past conservative holdouts. Without her vote and that of Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, House Republicans’ agenda would have stalled.
Her first break with party leadership drew a public rebuke from Jeffries, who called it a “breach of trust.” Some further-left Democrats went so far as to call for her removal from the House Appropriations Committee.
Her district stretches from the city of Vancouver through rural southwest Washington and smaller coastal towns, terrain where independence from party leadership can matter more to voters than loyalty to it. She first won the seat by unseating a Republican incumbent, and her willingness to buck Democratic leaders on procedural votes may have helped rather than hurt her with district voters this time around.
Braun, a former Navy captain who also helps run his family’s emergency-vehicle manufacturing company, Braun Northwest, ran as a more conventional Republican than Gluesenkamp Perez’s prior opponent, Joe Kent, whose ties to far-right groups had dogged his past campaigns. Kent later served briefly as Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center before resigning over disagreements on Middle East policy.
The contest drew more than $20 million in spending, according to the Washington Standard, reflecting how closely both parties were watching a district that sits at the edge of Trump territory but has twice elected a Democrat willing to cross her own leadership.
The outcome hands House Democrats a seat in their effort to rebuild a majority, but it also signals that party leaders may continue to face resistance from members like Gluesenkamp Perez on close votes in the next Congress.
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