VANCOUVER, Wash. — It's election season, which means KGW's The Story is once again fact-checking some of the political ads people in Oregon and southwest Washington are no doubt already sick of seeing. One such ad targets Republican Joe Kent, who seeks to unseat Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in Washington's 3rd Congressional District.
Gluesenkamp Perez narrowly beat Kent in 2022, becoming the first Democrat to hold the district seat in over a decade. She's very pointedly legislated as a moderate befitting her purple district, even helping to revive the old Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative Democrats.
Kent, a former Green Beret and Gold Star spouse, has the endorsement of former President Donald Trump and has attempted to somewhat moderate his brand of right-wing populism as he looks to retake the 3rd District — which covers southwest Washington north to Centralia and out to the coast — for Republicans.
The two candidates meet Wednesday night in Longview for a debate.
While the 3rd District race may have been overlooked at the national level in 2022, that's not the case anymore. Right now, Republicans hold the U.S. House by a slim margin, with the chamber consisting of 220 Republicans, 212 Democrats and three vacancies. The open seats are because two Democrats died and a Republican resigned, so it's effectively a split of 221-214.
If Democrats can hold all of their seats and beat just four Republicans, they could take control of the House — which means there's a lot of attention right now on purple districts, like Washington's 3rd, which could go either way.
In 2022, Gluesenkamp Perez won with about 160,000 votes to Kent's 157,600. Though Gluesenkamp Perez now has the benefit of being an incumbent, Kent may be coming into the general election with less Republican disunity than he did two years ago.
Claim: Kent has white nationalist ties
An ad currently airing against Kent was paid for not by the Gluesenkamp Perez campaign, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC. It starts with on-camera statements from some people, the implication being that they are 3rd District voters:
"I voted Republican in the past and I'm not voting for Joe Kent."
"He actually pals around with white nationalists and neo-Nazis."
"There's no place for that kind of extremism here."
The ad displays a photo of Kent yelling and a headline from the The Chronicle, a Centralia newspaper, dated March 11, 2022. The headline is "White Nationalists Dominate Discussion at Joe Kent Town Hall in Onalaska."
The article itself adds important context that the headline doesn't. A Chronicle reporter was present at a town hall held by Kent in March 2022. The story reports that five men drove hours from Idaho to attend the town hall in Washington, and another drove down from Tacoma. The six men were there to defend white nationalist internet personality Nick Fuentes, whom Kent disavowed after reporting revealed that they'd spoken on a call early in Kent's campaign.
During the town hall, the Fuentes supporters peppered Kent with questions of a white nationalist bent — alluding to the so-called "Great Replacement Theory" — some of which Kent appeared to agree with, the Chronicle reported.
However, the Chronicle reported that eventually the gathering of locals grew more hostile toward Fuentes' supporters, and they cheered when Kent said his platform was about fighting for all Americans, regardless of skin color or religion.
Kent addressed his interaction with Fuentes in an interview with Laural Porter on KGW's Straight Talk in 2022.
"When I first announced I was gonna run for Congress, I had a wide range of consultants that reached out to me and offered their services. I did speak with Nick once. He talked about doing things with social media and I assumed he was another consultant," Kent said. "I had no idea who Fuentes was or any of the controversy. So that's the extent of our association. I know one of my opponents attempted to link us together — since then Fuentes has been attacking me. His goon squad even shows up to many of my events to say that I'm not enough of a white nationalist or something like that. I'm not a white nationalist, at all."
Claim: Kent's campaign hired a Proud Boy
But Fuentes isn't the only far-right figure linked to Kent, which the ad addresses next. Citing an Associated Press story from July 2022, the ad claims that Kent hired a consultant who was a member of the Proud Boys, a right-wing street fighting group involved in the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol.
As it happens, the ubiquitous photo of Kent yelling used throughout the ad was taken by an AP photographer in Sept. 2021 at a Washington, D.C. rally in support of people arrested for the January 6 riot. The same photo is used as the thumbnail on this July 2022 story.
The AP story cites campaign finance disclosures showing that Kent paid over $11,000 to Graham Jorgensen, identified as a Proud Boy by a law enforcement report. Kent's campaign told AP that Jorgensen was a low-level worker who handed out literature and put up signs, denying that he had any current affiliation with outside organizations.
The AP story explicitly states that Jorgensen was paid for consulting work.
Claim: Kent supports an abortion ban
The ad next claims that Kent would ban abortion without exceptions for rape or incest. That's an easy one for us to fact-check, because it cites our own Straight Talk show from July 2022. Here's what Kent said on the topic during that show:
"I would move to have a national ban on abortions. I believe life begins at conception. I think we have to have a pro-life culture in our country."
Again, the ad is correct in its claims, however Kent has said that the only exception should be if the mother's life is in danger.
The ad closes with several final statements of opinion from "voters," calling Kent an "angry, hateful man" and again suggesting that some Republicans find him too extreme.