I am a constituent of United States Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat who received national attention in 2022 when she defied all expectations and flipped a stubborn Republican House seat in southwest Washington back to the Democrats after 12 long years.

Having achieved the seemingly impossible, Perez’s campaign was subsequently analyzed in think piece after think piece about how Democrats could win back the country. Some latched on to her centrist sensibilities as the winning ingredient, with the New York Times’ Bret Stephens calling her a possible “next Bill Clinton” and part of the “sanity caucus.” Even on the progressive end, Breaking Points’ Krystal Ball made the case that her populist rhetoric was the key to Democratic victory. Perez herself opined that she won because she rejected “partisan point scoring” and focused narrowly on the needs of the district. No matter the flavor of the analysis, though, the overwhelming conclusion was that Perez was someone who could give the Democratic Party advice and a model for success going forward, with headlines such as “A Red-District Conqueror Wants Fellow Democrats to Look in the Mirror” and “Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s Message is a Clarion Call for Both Parties.”

But this media narrative doesn’t show what it’s actually like to be represented by Perez. In reality, she has betrayed those who worked tirelessly to get her elected ever since she took office, with such dirty deeds as selling out to corporate interests and the genocidal state of Israel (via AIPAC), joining the godforsaken Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats, and voting alongside MAGA in a strategy, as blatant as it is stupid, to keep her seat—all while gaslighting her constituents and brazenly looking to skirt accountability along the way. Initially, Perez spun a convincing Democratic rebrand, one that was perceived as an honest departure from politics as usual and resonated with the working class. Now, she has proven to be just another example of the kind of politics we need to get rid of.

A Promising Start

Perez’s first race was intriguing for a number of reasons. Her predecessor, Jaime Herrera Beutler, was one of the few Republicans to break ranks from her party and vote to impeach first-term President Donald Trump over the January 6 riots, spurring primary challenges against her. One of those challengers happened to be full-blown MAGA sycophant Joe Kent, who had a heightened profile thanks both to his appearances on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and Tucker Carson Tonight, as well as the controversies surrounding him. Kent, it turned out, had had a friendly phone conversation about social media strategy with white nationalist Nick Fuentes (whom he later distanced himself from). He had also agreed with a town hall attendee’s concerns about the racist Great Replacement theory, and had come under scrutiny after he listed a company that didn’t seem to exist as his employer—sparking questions among some voters about whether he was just a former CIA employee, or a current one.

Fears of Kent’s right-wing extremism raised the stakes of the election even further for those horrified by the prospect of him seizing power and casting shame on us all. Very few of us wanted to be known as the district who elected the next Marjorie Taylor Greene. If Kent’s name rings a bell, by the way, it’s because he went on to be a footnote in the infamous Signalgate scandal and was recently confirmed as Trump 2.0’s Director of the National Counterterrorism Center—his reward for being such a good boy.

Then there was Marie herself: young for a congressperson (34 at the time), a resident of rural, forested Skamania County, and a working-class mom. Well, “working-class” in air quotes; she actually owned a small car repair business, but that didn’t stop her from acting like just another 9-5 wage earner. She was running heavily on a no-corporate-PAC money pledge, proselytizing about the nobility of work in the trades, railing against the smugness of the detached Democratic liberal elites who look down on the uneducated laborers and ignore rural perspectives, affirming her commitment to reproductive freedom, proposing “right to repair” legislation, and calling for regular people like her to be represented in Congress. Despite running as a Democrat, Marie explicitly promised to be an “independent voice in Congress.”

With her everyman bona fides, willingness to call out her own party, clean campaign contributions, and underdog vibes, Marie possessed a populist attraction that appealed to the broad spectrum of voters in her district, including the old guard Republicans, the rural counties, the normie Dems, and progressives in the big city of Vancouver, Washington. There were definitely red flags that did not go unnoticed on the Left—her weird position to “bring back paper” and the timber industry, which she offered as an environmental solution to the problem of plastic, not supporting Medicare for All despite the policy’s popularity nationwide, bragging at a debate that Joe Biden had exceeded Trump in the issuing of fossil fuel permits, and her dull warmongering against Russia and China, to name a few. But hey, she wasn’t Joe Kent, she was blue-collar (sort of), and as Breaking Points’ Krystal Ball pointed out, she was a Bernie caucus voter in 2016. If she wasn’t taking corporate checks, then at least she might be moveable, my friends and I reasoned.

All candidates faced off against each other in Washington’s jungle primary, splitting the Republican vote and paving an easy lane for the Democrat to move on to the general against Joe Kent. From there, my community became the most politically mobilized that I’d seen since Bernie, with crowds of people showing up to campaign events and knocking on doors. Marie won. She also went on to pull off her re-election in 2024, albeit using a very different campaign strategy—but more on that later.

Since Perez secured her initial victory, she’s spent her time constantly lobbing disappointment after disappointment at her supporters, providing perplexing excuses for her extreme right-wing votes, and even showing open contempt for the people of her district, all of which recently crescendoed into the biggest protest I’ve ever seen in my hometown of Vancouver when she held a town hall there this April. What made it even more special was the fact that this protest was clearly dominated by regular ol’ Democrats. It took a whole lot to get to that point, but Marie had finally broken the libs.

The Betrayals

The betrayals of Marie Gluesenkamp Perez have been many, but the most egregious are as follows. First and foremost, the biggest has been Perez’s complete bait-and-switch on her pledge against taking corporate cash. This was the central selling point of her original platform. In an early ad, Marie stated, “I’m not running to represent drug companies, or oil companies—or frankly, any special interest. They all have lobbyists—they don’t need politicians, too.” She also said we didn’t need another “corporate shill” in Congress.

But once she got into office, all that changed. She now takes money from the very special interests she spoke out against in those early ads, and more. For my local citizen journalism project covering MGP’s recent campaign contributions, I broke down how her main PAC, the Marie for Congress PAC, directly accepted thousands from both the American Petroleum Institute PAC—a qualified lobbyist registrant PAC—and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The American Forest and Paper Association PAC has also contributed directly to Marie for Congress, along with the Chamber of Commerce PAC. Furthermore, she receives thousands in installments from the Blue Dog PAC, which supports the Blue Dog Coalition she’s part of. It’s heavily financed by all kinds of corporate interests, chiefly the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, and war industries. Finally, Perez takes Democratic leadership money, which also comes in large part from corporate interests and wealthy individuals.

Notably, the campaign ad for her second run removed all references to the “no corporate money” pledge, with MGP instead opting for amplifying the annoying rural resident gimmick, her love for the timber industry, and later, a sudden obsession with border security in her shameless ploy to out-right the right.

Toning down the no-corporate-cash promise was at least honest on the part of her campaign given what a falsehood it has become, but adding insult to injury is that she continues to deny taking corporate money in other contexts. Time and time again, MGP has stated on Twitter and elsewhere that she still does not accept corporate PAC money. That is at worst a bald-faced lie, and at best a sneaky deception based on technicalities, equivalent to a lie. It also demonstrates clear contempt for her voters, who she must think are too stupid to check the public FEC filings.

Next, there’s her unwavering support for the genocide in Gaza. Everywhere Perez has gone for 23 months, she has been begged by her own constituents to stop voting to assist the genocide and to stop accepting AIPAC cash (Perez has raked in $285,128 as of August 22 of this year, according to AIPAC Tracker). But, four months post-October 7, MGP indicated she wouldn’t be changing her position in a Longview Chronicle interview, adding that she couldn’t help but feel like Putin was somehow involved with the Hamas attacks. In this same interview, she weaponized feminism against those who were asking her to stop sending bombs to blow up babies in Gaza, stating, “It makes me sick to hear all these old men without babies talking about babies getting killed[…] I’m like, when is the last time you changed a diaper?” For the record, her anti-genocide constituents span the gender spectrum. I should know, I’m one of them.

Since then, Perez has stubbornly continued her complicity in genocide. A local group in her district, Ceasefire CD3, noted in a press release that, “Since 2024, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has voted to cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, send funding to Israel at least three times, and censure Representative Rashida Tlaib (the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress and one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress) for her advocacy for Palestinian human rights.” Perez’s ice-cold heart clearly does not have room for the children of Gaza, but you’d think she’d do something given the constituent pressure, the starvation policy, and as the nation has turned swiftly on its support for Israel. Yet she remains steadfast. Even the slimiest Democratic operatives, like Andrew Cuomo and Ritchie Torres, as well as the far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene have (at least rhetorically) changed their tune—but not Perez.

In an August 2025 town hall, MGP said on the matter, “I think it's pretty important to have a country in the Middle East that doesn't kill gay people.” I guess she failed to notice that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is trying to indiscriminately kill gay and heterosexual people across Palestine. In a recent interview with the Columbian newspaper, she stated, “I’m not going to carry water for Netanyahu,” while subsequently indicating that she would, indeed, continue to carry water for Netanyahu by supporting military aid for Israel.

Prior to October 7, 2023, Perez was already turning against progressives seemingly every chance she got. MGP was one of four Democrats to vote for the Republican Unleashing American Energy Act, which should really be called the Unleashing American Fossil Fuels During the Sixth Mass Extinction Act. That vote went directly against the wishes of the large environmental movement in southwest Washington, not to mention her lip service about the climate crisis’ disproportionate impact on the working class. The most populous city in her district (Vancouver) has developed one of the most ambitious climate action plans in the nation, but that apparently meant nothing to Marie as she kicked left and doggedly pursued support from the right. In other environmental betrayals, Perez joined three of her Blue Dog buddies to pass the West Act in the House, rolling back a Bureau of Land Management rule that “put conservation on equal footing with mining, oil and gas development, grazing and other uses” in decisions about how to lease public land.

In May of 2023, MGP also voted alongside House Republicans (and only one other Democrat, Maine’s Jared Golden) to repeal Biden’s student loan forgiveness pause and force student debtors to make retroactive payments (voting against the interests of over 90,000 people in her district, per the Debt Collective). Not only that, but she made the following statement of contempt for her college-educated constituents: “College costs too much [and] the credentials produced get unwarranted social status, justifying more cost increases by our country’s elite.” Notably, Perez herself holds a degree from a private liberal arts university in Portland, Oregon, but presumably she doesn’t feel she has “unwarranted social status.” Many also noticed that she had just had her car repair company’s Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiven by the U.S. government. She also attempted to deflect the criticism of her vote with yet another cringey car analogy, saying, “I’m all for repairing what’s busted but the higher education system is totaled.” Yuck.

Then there was her vote for the Denouncing the Horrors of Socialism Resolution, which was a ridiculous performative bill—especially as recent polling shows more Democrats have a favorable view of socialism than of capitalism, putting Perez at odds with the views of her voters once again.

Disturbingly, Perez was also one of 13 signatories on an invitation to Congress members for a Bible study meeting led by Ralph Drollinger, a known far-right figure who is also the Trump Cabinet spiritual advisor. Drollinger is rabidly anti-LGBTQ, and has shared his belief that the COVID pandemic was the wrath of God being enacted on gay people. He also believes that the US government’s God-given responsibility is to “moralize a fallen world through use of force.” It’s genuinely terrifying that so many people in power, including Marie, would entertain the theories of this fanatic and promote his Bible study. It also calls into question where MGP actually stands on queer rights, especially given her 2023 vote for a military policy bill amendment that restricted access to abortions and gender-affirming care for members of the U.S. military.

There’s seemingly no issue where Perez hasn’t tacked hard to the political right. Recently, she also voted for the SAVE Act, another Republican bill which claimed to address the non-issue of non-citizens voting in our elections. It would have required proof of citizenship at the voting booth, creating huge barriers to married women and trans individuals. MGP herself called the bill a “dumpster fire”—after having voted for it. That vote, combined with her support for the Laken Riley Act (a bill to detain immigrants while their immigration case is pending based on a mere accusation of a crime) prior, appeared to be a liberal dealbreaker at her April town hall.

MGP’s latest votes show she feels perfectly comfortable in her seat and has no intention of changing her strategy. Just a few weeks ago, she joined 17 other Democrats and 214 Republicans in support of an amendment by Lauren Boebert to punish contractors who participate in boycotting Israel. She also just voted for a pair of bills targeting kids in Washington, D.C. that would lower the youth offender age, require mandatory minimum sentencing for youth, and lower the age at which children can be tried for certain violent crimes to 14 years old. Seriously, with Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?

Community Leaders and Journalists Refuse to Hold MGP Accountable

Has Marie learned anything? No. Why? Because community leaders, as well as journalists at all levels, keep refusing to hold her accountable. Actual voters are furious at Perez, but she continues to receive backing from prominent people in my community, such as Donna Sinclair from local liberal protest group Indivisible Greater Vancouver and Democratic House candidate Terri Niles—some heralded as progressives and environmentalists, plus many other wealthy liberals. As Marie’s betrayals have caused her to be protested everywhere she goes, some choose to either quietly hold fundraisers for her or otherwise be unabashed in their continued support for this genocidaire. Those who shield her from the consequences of her actions are also to blame for enabling her behavior, allowing her to feel comfortable voting the same way or to move even further to the right. 

Furthermore, multiple local newspapers in MGP’s district refuse to cover campaign financing of candidates and engage in naked access journalism, keeping critical questions to a minimum and failing to follow up on inadequate answers. The Longview Daily Chronicle, the Washington State Standard, and the Columbian newspaper have all written articles that simply cover the dollar amounts raised in Perez’s races, while failing to discuss where the money came from—providing no information to the reader about what types of special interests support the candidate. In August of this year, the Columbian Editorial Board asked Perez where she stood on foreign aid to Israel—an odd way to frame the question for an official that has actually taken votes on that aid. She didn’t answer directly, instead opting to ramble about how the Middle East is a safer place with a liberal democracy upstanding (clearly referring to Israel, an apartheid ethnostate, as a liberal democracy), expressing the importance of standing with our allies, and claiming the release of hostages would end the war. She was then asked again if she supported sending weapons to Israel that are being used in the Gaza Strip. She responded with more non-answers, devolving into disclaimers that she is not an expert on the Middle East and did not run for Congress to achieve peace there. She was not made to answer the original question, and none of the four interviewers chose to ask about her $285,128 in pro-Israel donations.

In the national press, Perez gets friendly reviews that, while always touching on the fact that many of her constituents hate her, paint it as if that makes her a badass renegade and ignore the obvious connections the money she receives from a wide variety of corporate interests has to her votes. It seems the press would rather hyper-focus on her lumberjack fashion attire. A recent article from the Daily Kos had the gall to call her the “Blue Collar Whisperer,” despite her years of corporate backing and votes against the working class. Sure, there are critics, they say, but that’s just because she’s so quirky and is “marching to the beat of her own drum”—trying to hold on to “the middle” in our increasingly polarized politics, they muse. One article in Compact stated, “Some on the progressive left have kept Gluesenkamp Perez at arm’s length because she won’t perform politics as moral theater,” referencing her SAVE Act vote as if it wasn’t a very real voter suppression bill uniquely targeting women and trans people that she helped pass the House. All these critics are scrambling to put a label on her, the article goes on to say, but she’s just too cool for one. Every time she talks, “she exposes the hollowness of the stage they’re all performing on.” I can’t think of anything more hollow than making pay-to-play votes for a genocidal foreign entity or the fossil fuel industry. Amazingly, Ezra Klein interviewed Perez for an hour earlier this year and failed to ask her about a single vote she had cast.

The Endgame of “Vote Blue No Matter Who”

At the end of the day, the story of Marie “Gluey” Perez is a lesson in where a “Vote Blue No Matter Who” approach takes you. When you uncritically support Democrats simply because they are “Dems,” regardless of policy, you end up ratcheting to the right, election after election, off the cliff into fascism. This is what happens when people, especially those with elevated voices in our communities and the media, choose devotion to a party (which increasingly stands for nothing) over accountability—even as fewer and fewer of us can pay the bills every month, the climate crisis looms, and we collectively stare down a livestreamed genocide committed in a bipartisan fashion by our country, all with the help of Marie.