Marie Monday

Why one of my favorite Democrats is getting a lot of love.

Hot off the presses yesterday was not one but TWO in-depth features on Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03).

Friends of Welcome know her well: the freshman Member of Congress who in 2022 narrowly defeated right-wing nut Joe Kent in a Trump district that race-raters “calculated” she had only a 2% chance of winning.

The rest of the country got to see her in the spotlight on Monday in a double-header from New York Times Magazine’s Jason Zengerle and POLITICO’s Natalie Fertig.

As a proud member of Team Normal, I adore Marie. The future of the Democratic Party MUST not only look like the country, but also sound like them, socialize like them, discern like them, budget like them, dress like them and care like them.

We don’t achieve our goals by cranking out cookie-cutter Democrats from The Democrats © Build-A-Candidate Factory who aren’t even all that appetizing to voters anymore (not that “The Democrats” even exists, as we’ve mentioned).

Differentiation, independent-thinking, human dignity, authenticity, faith and compassion draw voters nigh unto them, particularly in an increasingly independent electorate.

Photo courtesy of The New York Times Magazine.

Here’s your mash-up of some of the best parts of both pieces (aka TLDR):

The Blue-Collar Democrat Who Wants to Fix the Party’s Other Big Problem

“Before she was elected to Congress, in 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez ran an auto-repair shop with her husband; her professional and personal acquaintances still largely consist of people who work in the trades — construction, carpentry, woodworking.”

“Too often, she believes, policymakers are not only disrespectful to people who work with their hands, but also ignorant of the reality of their day-to-day lives. “If the commission had had somebody who has worked in construction in the body, they would know that if you raise the cost of a table saw by $400, people are just going to put a circ saw on a sheet of plywood — and more people are going to lose their fingers,” she says.”

“Sworn into Congress at age 34, with no previous experience as an elected official, Gluesenkamp Perez operates very differently from most of her fellow politicians. Interviewing prospective staff members, she’s as likely to ask them about what kind of car they own as about what kind of political experience they have. She hired her legislative director, in part, because the woman drove a Toyota Camry with 200,000 miles on it. “That says a lot,” Gluesenkamp Perez explains. But what really sets her apart is the way she thinks about the federal government itself — which she believes is woefully out of touch with the needs of working-class Americans.”

“Like most Democrats in that year’s midterms, Gluesenkamp Perez sought to capitalize on the backlash to the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, often telling the story of having a miscarriage and walking through a gantlet of protesters outside a Planned Parenthood to receive urgent care. Unlike most Democrats, she pledged not to vote for Nancy Pelosi to be Speaker of the House, and spoke openly about the guns she owns.”

“The old Blue Dogs had come to be seen as the most conservative and big-business-friendly wing of the party. Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden wanted to drag the Blue Dogs into the Democratic Party’s modern era, refashioning them as a more populist group — one that pushes for a production economy rather than a financialized one, and one willing to take on big government and big business.

Most important, the new Blue Dogs wanted to make it possible for more people like themselves (“normal people,” Gluesenkamp Perez calls them), from more districts like theirs, to get elected to Congress. “For so long it’s been this narrative of to be a good candidate or a good representative, you should be a straight white male, no kids, J.D. and a trust fund,” Gluesenkamp Perez says. The twin realities of partisan gerrymandering and political polarization mean there aren’t too many places where the Blue Dogs think they can pick up seats. But the coalition’s chairs believe that in a handful of races, the combination of a red-but-not-too-red district and an extremist Republican candidate creates an opportunity for the right kind of Democrat. This cycle, the Blue Dogs have so far endorsed six candidates.”

“But when I asked Gluesenkamp Perez if she thought Ocasio-Cortez possessed the type of working-class perspective that she contends Congress is so sorely lacking, she demurred. “It’s not just your personal experience,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “It’s who you view as your constituency. Like, who are you there for? Are you there working for ideas? Or are you there working for people?” Because Ocasio-Cortez represents such a solidly blue district — where Democratic presidential candidates regularly receive 70 percent or more of the vote — Gluesenkamp Perez believes that Ocasio-Cortez is working for the former. “If you’re working for ideas, you are much more vulnerable to sort of activist capture than if you have the nuance of individual people,” she continued. “And people that work for a living are very diverse, and most of them are not socialists.”

Read the full piece here.

She’s a Blue-Collar, Bible-Quoting, Israel-Supporting, Pro-Choice, Millennial Latina. Is She the Future of Democratic Progressivism?

“But all along, Gluesenkamp Perez presented something of a classification problem: What kind of Democrat was she exactly? She evinced strongly progressive views on a host of issues like abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and access to childcare. But she had some of that old-school conservatism on gun rights and conservation that defines rural Democrats like Montana Sen. Jon Tester.”

“The intense anger directed at Gluesenkamp Perez reveals an interesting and fraught divide inside the Democratic Party. While party leaders are quite happy to retain her seat in a closely divided House, she has become engaged in a generational ideological debate with much of the party’s left flank — most prominently grassroots groups passionate about student loan debt forgiveness and support for Gaza — over who gets to define what helping working-class Americans actually looks like.”

“A homeschooled preacher’s kid who’s pro-choice, Gluesenkamp Perez is just as likely to drop F-bombs as quote from Leviticus — and often does both. She’s sarcastic and detailed when talking one-on-one, but has an idiosyncratic public speaking style…”

“There was sort of this idea that I was this undercover AOC,” she told me, referring to fellow millennial and New York City Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Working class. Latina. Underdog. So that was sort of the only things they were really seeing.” But, when faced with the same policy questions as AOC, she added: “I’ve come to very different conclusions.”

“Her vote on student loan debt relief, for example, was based on some basic “what’s in it for my voters” data. She explained Washington state was number 48 out of 50 for the average amount of student loan debt forgiven by Biden’s plan. (Her office clarified it was 46th per a report by the Progressive Policy Institute, which also ranks Washington at 26 out of 50 for average student loan balance.) Her district, she went on, holds just 3 percent of the state’s federal student loan debt. “We were not part of this party at the policy table,” she said. Translation: This didn’t do much for her district. Instead, voting for it would have angered constituents who objected to the government giving rich families a break.

But it might surprise her critics on the left to hear that Gluesenkamp Perez considers this vote a more progressive position than AOC’s or Biden’s. “There are ways that Biden could have presented this that would have been a more progressive approach,” she said. (Biden’s 2022 student loan forgiveness plan, which the Supreme Court ultimately blocked, would have forgiven debt based on the individual or their household’s current income at the time.) “This is a regressive tax policy, because your earnings are not the same thing as your net wealth.” She said the real legislative work she wants done is to address why college tuitions have increased so much, and why every decent-paying job seems to require a master’s degree.”

“In fact, many of her controversial votes have won her new supporters.

Patrick Reynolds, a lifelong Republican, told me he’ll vote for her in November — after voting for a third GOP candidate in the 2022 primary and then abstaining from the general. With one daughter in the trades and another hoping for a military career, he likes where Gluesenkamp Perez stands on those issues. He also was impressed with her as a person, saying she once left him a voicemail based on a Facebook comment he made.

“She’s really open to having discussion,” he said. “She’s won my support, And I’ve never voted Democrat my entire life.”

Read the full piece here.

We need more Maries. Help her win a tough re-election in November by contributing to her via our Win the Middle slate.