A Democrat who represents a GOP-leaning House district in Washington state has shared a revealing interaction she had with Vice President Kamala Harris months before her electoral shellacking by Donald Trump.
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez told the New York Times in an interview published Friday that she initially had high hopes when Harris became the Democratic nominee — but never got so much as a phone call to shore up her support.
“When Harris first came out, I was open to talking with her. I know she called a lot of my colleagues; she never called me,” the freshman Democrat said. “I’ve had one interaction with Harris, at her Naval Observatory Christmas party.”
“I’m not super comfortable at that kind of thing. I’d had a couple of beers, and I noticed that almost all of the garlands were plastic. My district grows a hell of a lot of Christmas trees,” she recalled.
“I was strong-armed into taking a picture. I said, ‘Madam Vice President, we grow those where I live,’” Gluesenkamp Perez went on.
“She just walked away from me. There was kind of an eye roll, maybe. My thinking was, it does matter to people where I live. It’s the respect, the cultural regard for farmers. I didn’t feel like she understood what I was trying to say.”
The apparent disdain by Harris for Gluesenkamp Perez, who also owns an auto body shop, and her working-class constituents was repaid Tuesday night.
Trump, 78, won the election with a majority of support from Americans without four-year college degrees, according to a Fox News voter analysis.
Gluesenkamp Perez, who described herself as being “at the platinum level of bipartisanship,” is heading for a second term representing the rural Third Congressional District, which is comprised of counties that Trump handily won in the last three election cycles.
The Democratic incumbent declared victory Thursday night after a local newspaper projected her as the winner, with a lead over Republican opponent Joe Kent of nearly 11,000 votes with 87% of the ballots counted, per the Associated Press.
The Times noted that the preliminary results had Gluesenkamp Perez outrunning Harris by seven percentage points in two of her district’s most Republican counties — including Wahkiakum County, which exports timber.
Gluesenkamp Perez was one of several swing-state Democrats who came out after President Biden’s June 27 debate flop against Trump to call on him to drop out.
She also took tough votes in the House against fellow Democrats and the White House’s agenda, urging Biden and Harris to reinstate Trump-era border fixes like Title 42 and “Remain in Mexico,” as well as to repeal hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt cancellations.
Other unpopular votes on which Gluesenkamp Perez joined with Republicans included a bill to require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a resolution condemning Harris as the “border czar.”
“I’ve gotten threats of physical violence from both sides,” the 36-year-old Texas native told the Times.
“I hope that other normal people see me and decide they can run, too,” she added. “There’s not one weird trick that’s going to fix the Democratic Party. It is going to take parents of young kids, people in rural communities, people in the trades running for office and being taken seriously.
“I was talking to a woman who runs one of the largest labor and delivery wards,” she recalled of one conversation with a constituent. “She said 40[%] of the babies there have at least one parent addicted to fentanyl. What is empathetic — to tell them that’s their problem, or to take border security seriously?
“People are putting their groceries on their credit card. No one is listening to anything else you say if you try to talk them out of their lived experiences with data points from some economists.”
Reps for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
