Marie Gluesenkamp Perez Keeps Frustrating Democrats. Her Allies Say That’s Why She Wins.

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Washington state Democrat who represents one of the most competitive House seats in the country, has been repeatedly at odds with her party this year.

She was among the fewer than two dozen Democrats to vote in support of censuring Democratic Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García for lining up his own succession plan last week. Earlier in the month, she was one of the only Democrats to vote with Republicans for a funding measure to reopen the government. And earlier this year, she voted to censure another Democrat, Rep. Al Green, for disrupting the State of the Union.

But some Democrats argue that she should be the model rather than an outcast and could help provide a pathway for their party to win back the House.

“She is widely liked here, and so I don’t anticipate there being a huge problem that would overthrow her ability to get reelected, but it’s definitely going to be a tough fight for her,” said Chris Carlson, chair of the Cowlitz County Democrats in Washington state. “And it just continues to be, because for every decision that’s made that isn’t 100% Democrat, there’s always going to be that contingency that’s going to be very loud about it.”

Carlson told NOTUS she’s heard from plenty of Democrats in the county in the last week who weren’t happy to see Gluesenkamp Perez vote to end the shutdown, when many Democrats hoped lawmakers would continue to hold the line over health care subsidies. But Carlson said she thinks the bigger priority should be hanging on to the seat.

“This is not a liberal district,” Carlson said. “We are a red district, and our only hope of holding on to any kind of representation for western Washington in Congress is to re-elect Marie. Like that’s just the reality of the situation. If she doesn’t win, we lose that seat.”

Gluesenkamp Perez’s campaign manager, Tim Gowen, told NOTUS by email that the lawmaker is “not a party strategist,” noting that personal experiences, like having a toddler and not having broadband Internet at home, are what inform her decisions as a policymaker.

“We’re focused on winning re-election in some of the most difficult terrain in the nation for a Democrat,” Gowen said. “We’ll leave the insider baseball talk to the pundits.”

Her allies insist she’s positioned herself well to continue to appeal to a set of voters that don’t regularly vote for Democrats.

“People are upset, but they’ve been upset at her in the past, and then time moves on and they see all the good work she does,” said Phil Gardner, who managed Gluesenkamp Perez’s first campaign and is now a senior adviser at Blue Dog Action, which backs moderate, working-class Democrats like Gluesenkamp Perez.

Nestled in the solidly Democratic Pacific Northwest, Gluesenkamp Perez’s district is made up of rural communities that run on manufacturing and logging, along with the city of Vancouver. The western Washington district voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 by a margin of nearly 14,000 votes, and reelected her by 16,000 votes.

The lawmaker’s penchant for bucking her party precedes this month.

Gluesenkamp Perez has often found herself at odds with more progressive Democrats who balk at her breaks with the party on policies like student loan debt forgiveness, which she voted against last year, and immigration, where she sided with Republicans in April to require proof of citizenship to vote.

It’s earned her pressure from the right and the left, including from Brent Hennrich, a Democratic challenger running to her left on a health care-focused platform. Hennrich previously ran but stepped aside in 2022 to consolidate Democratic support behind Gluesenkamp Perez.

Now he’s running again, and he said Gluesenkamp Perez’s vote to end the shutdown, while not a surprise, is even more evidence she’s not what he thinks voters there need in their member of Congress.

“The Democrats only had one tool to use, and she was against that, and made her side very clear,” Hennrich told NOTUS. “I’ve gotten reactions from constituents that were surprised, and reactions from others that kind of just had hoped that maybe she would see the light, but didn’t.”

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said that while Gluesenkamp Perez is “sometimes mispunching” and breaking ranks, she’s not a candidate whom he expects to be seriously challenged from the left.

“There are people who call themselves moderates who consistently side with billionaires and corporations and love taking their corporate PAC money,” Green said. “And I would much rather focus on primarying those kind of people than someone who’s looking out for farmers against big monopolies and wants to tax billionaires and is still finding her sea legs on which fights to pick with her party on cultural issues.”

Republicans, however, see an opening and plan to prioritize the district.

“Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s record reads like a blueprint for failure,” Christian Martinez, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement. “From voting against keeping the government open to fueling the border crisis, she’s proven she’s too extreme for Southwest Washington.”

Still, Democrats are planning to go all in for her. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has her listed as one of its 2026 “Frontline” members.

“She answers to Southwest Washington families, not to political insiders or party leaders,” a spokesperson for the DCCC said in a statement. “Voters will keep sending her back to DC because they know she works for them, no one else.”

A national Democratic strategist told NOTUS that Gluesenkamp Perez’s unique political brand includes her focus on going to events in the district and avoiding getting involved in punditry on the national issues of the day. The strategist pointed to her ability to generate attention for hyperlocal bills like one requesting a study into LED headlight brightness and another for federal funding to cull sea lion populations to protect Columbia River salmon.

“Like, if you were Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and you’re going on MSNBC to talk about the East Wing ballroom, instead of talking to your local news about, like, logging issues, that shows where your priorities are,” the strategist said. “And obviously, she shows the correct priorities for her district.”