Republicans May Have Challenger in WA-3 to Flip Seat From Incumbent Dem

By Jim Ellis — Wednesday, July 23, 2025

House

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Skamania County) has repeatedly confounded Republicans. She has twice won a southwestern Washington congressional district that is arguably the second-most Republican seat in the country that elects a Democrat to the US House, behind only Rep. Jared Golden’s 2nd District of Maine.

It appears, however, that the Republicans may have found a stronger candidate for 2026. In the past two elections, Perez has defeated Army veteran Joe Kent (R) who proved himself too extreme for the district’s electorate. Though he is not yet completely confirming that he will be a candidate, most believe that state Senate Minority Leader John Braun (R-Centralia) will formally announce his congressional candidacy sometime this week.

If the Republicans are to hold their slim majority, converting Washington’s 3rd District becomes a must-win. Before Rep. Perez recorded her initial upset victory in 2022, the seat had been under Republican control since the 2010 election.

The Dave’s Redistricting App organization calculates a 52.0R – 46.4D partisan lean. It is one of 13 districts that voted for President Trump in 2024 but reverted to electing or re-electing a Democratic nominee for the House.

Rep. Perez, then a local automotive business owner along with her husband, upset Kent in 2022 with a 50.1 – 49.3 percent victory. This, after six-term incumbent Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler failed to qualify for the general election from the state’s jungle primary. Two years later, despite President Trump carrying the district over Kamala Harris with a 50-47 percent margin, Rep. Perez won re-election, again opposite Kent, with a 52-48 percent spread.

Washington’s 3rd District lies in the southwestern corner of the state and is anchored in the city of Vancouver in Clark County, which lies directly across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. In addition to housing all of Clark County, the 3rd encompasses Cowlitz, Lewis, Pacific, and Skamania counties, with part of Thurston. The population is predominantly white, but with a Hispanic Voting Age Population figure of just about nine percent. Hispanics constitute the district’s largest minority group.

John Braun was initially elected to Washington’s state Senate in 2012 and has run unopposed in the next three succeeding campaigns. He was chosen Minority Leader after the 2020 election. Should he make the final decision to run for Congress, Braun would not have to risk his state Senate seat since the 2026 election is the mid-term of his four-year tenure.

Prior to the 2024 election, most political prognosticators were predicting that the Democrats would assume control of the House. The reason Republicans held was due to converting several seats from the Democrats, namely through the new North Carolina redistricting map that yielded three flips, another two in eastern Pennsylvania, and one each in Alaska, Colorado, and an open seat in Michigan. Winning these seats mitigated Republican losses in California, Louisiana, New York, and Oregon.

A similar pattern will have to appear again in 2026 if the GOP is to hold their slim majority. With few conversion opportunities apparent for either party during the early part of this election cycle, the GOP converting the WA-3 seat becomes a paramount district in their plan to hold and potentially expand the current majority.