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I was so pleased and excited when I had my first conversation with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez early in her first campaign. I believed her when she said she was running to help her constituents, all her constituents.
As her first term progressed, I began to wonder. She was helping, it’s true. But gradually when I read her press releases and Facebook posts it seemed as though she was really helping a small segment of her constituency, one that she felt was most like her.
And then her vote for the SAVE Act made alarms go off loudly and widely. Not by Democrats alone, but by women who felt their right to vote would be jeopardized, because they had used their married names for decades and decades, for instance.
I have never been sure, even now, if the problem was that Ms. Glusenkamp Perez was naïve about our government and its challenges, or if she has intentionally misrepresented her political affiliations.
That’s not really the point anyway. I think we all have a right to expect a congressional representative who works for all of their constituents, red or blue. I don’t believe Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez has done that.
These are incredibly challenging times in the country we all love. We need representatives who will do their homework so that they really understand the issues and the ramifications in decisions about them. A representative who doesn’t “inherit” their predecessors’ fundraisers and most of their staff, as Gluesenkamp Perez did. Someone who will tell us exactly who they are, without pretense or dissembling in order to get votes.
I think Brent Hennrich may be the person to do that.
Michal Nortness
Centralia
