The right way to cope with the getting old Interstate 5 bridge connecting Vancouver, Washington, with Portland, Oregon, has lengthy been an enormous concern in Pacific Northwest politics.
So it made sense Joe Kent, a Republican candidate for Washington’s third congressional district now represented by freshman Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), would characteristic on his web site an interview with a neighborhood resident concerning the bridge.
However the man within the video has additionally been charged with violating a state regulation by mendacity about his residence to run for a seat within the state legislature, which the Perez marketing campaign says undercuts his credibility.
“Whereas Marie is bringing again main infrastructure wins for the district that had been years within the making, Joe Kent is busy posting conspiracy theories on-line all day and utilizing folks accused of fraud as validators for his warped on-line worldview,” mentioned Tim Gowen, Perez’s marketing campaign supervisor.
“The voters need somebody who will ship, not spend his time offended on the web.”
A telephone message and an electronic mail left with the Kent marketing campaign went unreturned.
A Kent-Perez race can be a rematch of one of the crucial watched 2022 races that noticed Perez barely eke out a slender win, with 50.1% of the vote. It could even be a check of the enchantment of the dwindling inhabitants of average Home Democrats versus a candidate who ran as an ardent Donald Trump supporter the primary time round.
Previous to 2022, the district had been represented by Jamie Herrera Beutler, a average Republican who was considered one of 10 Home Republicans to vote with Home Democrats to question Trump in 2021 within the wake of the failed riot try on the U.S. Capitol. She misplaced to Kent after Trump endorsed him within the major.
Perez is considered one of three co-chairs of the 10-member Blue Canine coalition within the Home, a gaggle of average, typically rural Democrats which have seen their numbers shrink within the final decade. The group’s different co-chairs embody Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska).
Kent, a former Inexperienced Beret, gained discover in 2022 for his ties to right-wing extremists personalities and teams. The Associated Press reported he had sought the assist of white supremacist Nick Fuentes and appeared at a rally in assist of jailed Jan. 6 attackers.
Kent’s web site says he’s “targeted on restoring frequent sense Republican values and defeating the woke extremist Democrat Congresswoman Marie Perez.”
Within the video in query, former airline pilot John Ley is interviewed by Kent on his marketing campaign web site as a part of a collection of movies known as “Get Native,” meant to spotlight Kent’s engagement with space points. Within the video, Ley calls himself “the native Clark County professional on transportation.”
Ley was charged in September with registering to vote and filing to be a candidate for the Washington state legislature in 2022 in a district completely different from the place he lived. The legal cost got here greater than a 12 months after a judge had declared Ley ineligible when an opponent filed a problem to Ley’s residency. Ley had claimed residency within the legislative district after renting a room from a good friend within the district for $1 a month.
Ley has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer has mentioned the case quantities to a selective prosecution of a hardly ever enforced state regulation. He’s at present scheduled for an April 2024 trial date.
