NYT: “Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is running on fixing one of the busiest bridges in the region. Her far-right opponent calls it an ‘Antifa superhighway.’”

Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez: “My community is going to build that bridge… This is our work.”

A new report from the New York Times chronicles Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s success in securing funds to replace I-5, an achievement that will revitalize critical infrastructure and bring good-paying jobs to Washington’s 3rd Congressional district.

In December, Gluesenkamp Perez secured a $600 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to replace the deteriorating bridge, which serves as the “main connector for an entire region of the Pacific Northwest” and one of the “most significant infrastructure projects” on the West Coast.

While the project has become “an example of how Republicans” like election-denier Joe Kent “are seeking to transform even the most basic of local issues into battlegrounds in the nation’s culture wars,” Gluensenkamp Perez has kept her eye on the prize: delivering for her community.

DCCC Spokesperson Dan Gottlieb:
“Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez always has her constituents’ needs top of mind – serving as a determined advocate for Washington’s hardworking families in the halls of Congress and already making a significant impact back home. While Joe Kent continues peddling conspiracy theories, Gluensenkamp Perez will keep listening to and delivering on behalf of her constituents.”

The New York Times: Aging Bridge Is a Flashpoint in Competitive Washington State House Race
Annie Karni | March 3, 2024

• The first thing Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez told donors gathered at a recent wine-and-cheese campaign fund-raiser was of the role she played in securing $600 million in federal funding to rebuild one of the region’s main arteries, the aging Route I-5 bridge.

• “Bringing that grant home was a dogfight,” said Ms. Perez, 35, a first-term Democrat from a rural, working-class district in Washington State that twice voted for former President Donald J. Trump, and who is facing one of the toughest re-election races in the country this year.

• “My community is going to build that bridge,” she told the roomful of gray-haired donors gathered in a packed living room in Washougal, Wash., with giant windows overlooking the Columbia River. “This is our work.”

• Ms. Perez considers this funding to be a major coup for her district and her re-election campaign. But the bridge in one of the country’s most competitive districts has become a political piñata in the race, which is all but certain to pit Ms. Perez against the far-right Republican Joe Kent, whom she beat in 2022 by less than 1 percentage point.

• Mr. Kent, who denies the legitimacy of the 2020 election and has referred to those jailed for taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as “political prisoners,” has branded the reconstruction plan an “Antifa superhighway.” He has claimed that the proposed project, which includes a light rail and tolls, will bring unwanted urban elements from Portland into the car-centric, predominantly white community of Clark County, Washington, effectively serving as “an expressway for Portland’s crime & homeless into Vancouver,” as he wrote on social media.

• It is an example of how Republicans, many of whom opposed President Biden’s sweeping $1 trillion infrastructure law, are seeking to transform even the most basic of local issues into battlegrounds in the nation’s culture wars in elections this year in which control of Congress is at stake. Mr. Kent’s attacks, which rely on buzzwords of the hard right, place the bridge at the center of a national political discussion that vilifies the left and plays on fears of demographic change.

• In an interview, [Secretary Pete] Buttigieg said Ms. Perez “absolutely had a role” in the project being chosen to receive the largest grant of its kind.

• “We choose projects based on their merits,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “Effective advocates help to illustrate those merits.”

• Built in 1917, the Interstate 5 bridge is one of two major crossings between Washington State and Oregon, with about $132 million worth of freight crossing the bridge every day, as well as about 69,000 commuters from Ms. Perez’s district. It is the main connector for an entire region of the Pacific Northwest, but it is widely believed to be at the end of its life.

• The span has become so congested that for many hours a day, vehicles crawl across at 35 miles per hour. The entire structure is supported by pilings of Douglas fir sunk in mud — “pretzel sticks in chocolate pudding,” as the mayor of Vancouver, Anne McEnerny-Ogle, likes to describe it — that puts it at high risk of total collapse in the event of a major earthquake.

• “There are projects that are just too large and too complex to be done through existing funding mechanisms,” Mr. Buttigieg said, explaining why the project had received such a large grant. “There needs to be extra support.”

• He described the Interstate 5 bridge as the “worst trucking bottleneck in the region” and said it was an example of “a bridge designed to the state of the art 100 years ago that can and must be replaced.”

• In 2022, Ms. Perez, who ran an auto repair shop, beat Mr. Kent, a Trump-endorsed retired Green Beret whose wife had been killed fighting ISIS, by just two votes in each precinct in the district. Now Mr. Kent is back, hoping to be swept to victory with Mr. Trump at the top of the ticket.

• Ms. Perez tries to stay in the mind-set of her constituents. On Capitol Hill, Ms. Perez is the rare Democrat who often breaks with her party on major votes, often drawing the ire of progressives who she says do not value the priorities of the working class.

• “On the floor, I really have to pay attention to my votes,” she said. “It’s this constant analysis of, ‘How much can I afford to piss off people to do what I think is right?’”

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