If the results of this year’s primary election in Southwest Washington are any indicator, the general election could very well be decided by voters who supported third place Democratic candidate Brent Hennrich
Specifically, it could boil down to how many Hennrich supporters vote for Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, in November. Hennrich captured 35,815 votes in the race for 16.7% of the total.
With Gluesenkamp Perez finishing second behind her opponent, Washington state Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, with 78,019 votes (36.4%) during the primary election, she may need to make up with the left wing of her party ahead of November to retain her seat in Congress (Braun finished with 85,058 votes, or 39.7%).
Curious about the chances of that happening, The Chronicle distributed a small survey to left-wing voters in and around Lewis County earlier this month in hopes of answering this very question: Will progressives back the congresswoman despite Hennrich’s refusal to endorse her?
Hennrich, after all, made criticism of Gluesenkamp Perez’s voting record an essential part of his platform, coining the phrase “MGP is GOP.”
He’s continued to be critical of her voting record since the primary.
The four-question survey received 45 responses. More than 80% identified themselves as progressive voters and more than half declared they had voted for Hennrich in the primary. At the same time, just over 91% said they would come out to vote for Gluesenkamp Perez in the general election.
Political views of those who responded varied, but the anecdotal result appears to be near overwhelming support for Gluesenkamp Perez from the left, even with her recent votes with Republicans.
One woman, Lewis County resident Gail Bowman, said her doubts about Gluesenkamp Perez led her to voting for Hennrich in the primary. But she added that she is determined to vote for Gluesenkamp Perez in the general election, even without Hennrich’s endorsement.
“I voted for Brent. I wasn’t real excited about him, either, but Marie bothered me,” she said. “But now that we’re here, I will vote for her.”
Bowman, 73, is retired and lives in the Silver Creek area. A 14-year Lewis County resident and former conservative voter, in recent years she has drifted left politically, and she has many concerns about the congresswoman.
In an interview, she said she went to campaign events for Hennrich and spoke with him directly. She preferred his platform to that of the incumbent, citing concerns with the congresswoman's tendency to vote with Republicans on policies such as the SAVE Act or the Laken Riley Act.
“Marie, you know, for whatever reason, has voted with Republicans on several things, and so Brent seemed like the better choice at the time,” Bowman said. “But it was a longshot.”
This month, Gluesenkamp Perez has once again come under fire for breaking with her party and being the essential vote to keep Republican policies alive in the House of Representatives.
Despite her misgivings about Gluesenkamp Perez, Bowman is certain she wants a Democrat elected to the Southwest Washington seat. She said she is very wary of splitting the vote. She recalled when independent presidential candidate Ross Perot captured roughly 18% of the presidential vote in the 1992 presidential election and 8% in the 1996 election.
Others, such as Tony Draper, are still undecided about how or if they will vote in the general election. For Draper, not voting appears most likely.
Draper was one of the few survey participants who did not vote in the primary and added that he did not expect to vote in the general election.
“There wasn't anyone that captured my vote, I guess, is the polite way to say it,” Draper said.
Draper has lived in Lewis County for about a year, and before that lived in the unincorporated southern parts of Thurston County, which are also part of the state's Third Congressional District. He didn’t grow up in Washington, but spent summers in the Vancouver area living with his grandparents and as an adult has lived up and down the Interstate 5 corridor between Portland and Seattle.
While Draper identified himself as a progressive voter in the survey, he added that he will not “vote blue for blue’s sake.” He added that he is an enrolled tribal member and comes from a large family with a traditionalist and conservative background.
In fact, Draper said he grew up in a culture of avoiding voting for Democrats in part because of the party’s previous relationship with his tribe. Today, Draper doesn’t consider party affiliation as much as policy and is always trying to gauge if candidates are listening to their constituents.
“Even at the local level, if they don't have something to say that is tapped into what people actually need and what people who vote are feeling pain about, I'm not going to really pay attention, blue or red,” Draper said.
So far, neither Braun nor Gluesenkamp Perez have met his criteria.
Another voter brought a different perspective. Richard Rock has lived in Lewis County for just four years, moving to Washington from the southern coast of Texas, motivated by the difficulty of old age and natural disasters such as category 4 Hurricane Harvey, which battered Louisiana and Texas in 2017. Rock and his wife chose the area because it was close to her family.
Rock and his wife have supported Gluesenkamp Perez since they got to Washington, and that’s in large part because of her centrist sensibilities. While Rock has long considered himself a Democrat, he said “it’s hard to maintain that.”
“I don’t like the way the Democrat Party is going right now, and perhaps six months from now I will call myself an independent,” Rock said. “It’s too far left.”
But he still is confident in Gluesenkamp Perez, having voted for her in the primary, and he is planning to vote for her again in November.
Rock’s connection to the Democratic Party follows the party's roots and connections with the labor movement. Rock moved to Texas from his original home in Ohio in his early 30s when the steel mill he was working at closed down and he found an opening at a new mill in Baytown, Texas. Eventually, he would move south to the Corpus Christi area to work in an aluminum mill.
During his labor in those mills, he was closely involved with labor politics. He was part of his union for more than 30 years and at times even served as union president.
Despite Hennrich focusing his platform on being “100% Democrat,” Rock felt that Hennrich was too far left to be supported in Southwest Washington. At the same time, Rock feels that Braun is too far to the right and too connected with President Donald Trump.
Recent immigration policies are a big focus for Rock, who is concerned with securing the southern border, but upset by the more recent tactics of U.S. Immigrations and Custom Enforcement.
“Now, I think we need ICE, but we don't need ICE in the form that we currently have it,” Rock said.
The general election is Nov. 3, with the winning candidate earning a two-year term in the U.S. House of Represenatives.
