Freshman U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, is following a commitment to refuse financial support from corporate political action committees (PACs), End Citizens United told The Chronicle Friday.
“Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez has continued to abide by her pledge to reject corporate PAC contributions — unlike Joe Kent who has taken thousands from corporate PACs, convicted insurrectionists and felons,” Jonas Edwards-Jenks, a spokesperson for End Citizens United, wrote in an email. “It’s clear that while Congresswoman Gluesenkamp Perez is fighting every day to put the needs of working people from Southwest Washington ahead of corporate special interests, extremist fraud Joe Kent cannot be trusted to do the same.”
End Citizens United is a political action committee founded in 2015 that has supported and endorsed Democratic candidates. It has endorsed and contributed to Gluesenkamp Perez' campaign.
The statement by Edwards-Jenks comes after the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) cast doubt on the claims the Gluesenkamp Perez campaign has made — including in an Aug. 30 article in The Chronicle.
“Marie Gluesenkamp Perez isn't just taking corporate PAC money, she's raising hundreds of thousands of dollars of it into a PAC of her own. Perez deceptively broadcasting such a blatant lie shows her complete disrespect of southwest Washington voters,” NRCC Spokesperson Ben Petersen wrote in an email to The Chronicle.
According to End Citizens United, which created the pledge for congressional candidates to reject corporate PAC money, a corporate PAC is a designation by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). During the 2022 election cycle, corporate PACs contributed more than $150 million to campaigns.
“PACs that are connected to a corporation and engage in federal elections must file a Statement of Organization with the FEC,” the organization states on its website. “If they are operated by a corporation they must disclose that information with the FEC, thus designating them as a corporate PAC.”
Founded in 2015, the stated goal of End Citizens United is to overturn a landmark 2010 Supreme Court Case that found the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from restricting campaign expenditures from corporations.
The NRCC has pointed to several donations to the Gluesenkamp Perez campaign — including a $1,000 donation from a corporate PAC representing a Building Materials company before the 2022 election — as evidence that the congresswoman has failed to follow her commitment.
Emmett Avery, a spokesman for the Gluesenkamp Perez campaign, told The Chronicle that the $1,000 donation from CRH Americas, Inc. PAC on Oct. 25, 2022, was received “in error and has since been returned.”
Filings from the FEC show that a separate $2,500 contribution from the CRH Americas, Inc. PAC was also returned.
Several other donations from corporate PACs to the Gluesenkamp Perez campaign during the 2022 and 2024 election cycles have also been returned, FEC filings show.
According to filings with the FEC, Kent, Gluesenkamp Perez’s Republican challenger in both 2022 and 2024, has accepted several donations from corporate PACS, including $2,500 from Alticor's PAC, $250 from HSP PAC, and $1,000 from the National Right To Work Committee PAC, during his two bids for Congress.
The contributions had not been returned as of noon Friday, according to the FEC website.
The statements come as Gluesenkamp Perez seeks a second term in office, and as her campaign insists she will continue to reject the contributions.
A first-time candidate for Congress in 2022, a refusal to accept corporate PAC money was a pillar of the Gluesenkamp Perez campaign. According to an archive of her campaign website from October 2022, the first item on Gluesenkamp Perez’s platform was to get “big money out of politics.”
“I’m running to take on politicians who are bought and paid for by large corporations who refuse to pay their fair share while working families who follow the rules fall further behind,” her website stated. “I’m not taking a dime of Corporate PAC money and will put people over profits. I like to get my hands dirty fixing things, not working the system.”
While in Congress, Gluesenkamp Perez has served as a co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition PAC, which financially supports Democrats around the country. Filings with the FEC show the Blue Dog Coalition PAC has accepted more than $800,000 in corporate PAC money in the current congress, though the donations were not earmarked for the Gluesenkamp Perez campaign.
Since June 2023, the Blue Dog Coalition PAC has donated $10,000 to Gluesnekamp Perez’s reelection campaign through four contributions. According to Avery, Blue Dog PAC's “contributors include a wide variety of individuals and organizations, and its overhead costs and staff time are paid for by the grassroots contributions made to the PAC.”
“Blue Dog PAC is not a corporate PAC by any definition, and portraying it as such would be inaccurate,” Avery said in a statement to The Chronicle.
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This article has been updated to include that End Citizens United is a political action committee that has supported and endorsed Democratic candidates and that it has supported Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez' campaign and endorsed her.
