VANCOUVER, Wash. — On Election Day just a few weeks from now, freshman Democratic Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez will defend her southwest Washington seat in a rematch against Joe Kent, a Trump-endorsed Republican she narrowly beat back in 2022.
Washington's 3rd Congressional District is a closely-watched race, even on the national stage. Republicans hold the U.S. House of Representatives by a razor-thin margin, and Democrats are hoping to retake it. In order to do that, they'll need to hold on to the seats they have now and pick up a few more. Naturally, Republicans are trying to stop that from happening.
Gluesenkamp Perez won in 2022 by just a few thousand votes, becoming the first Democrat to hold the seat in over a decade. Kent is banking on that reservoir of longtime Republican support for his right-wing challenge, while Gluesenkamp Perez attempts to appeal to moderate and third-party voters to repeat her 2022 win.
With so much attention on the 3rd District, political ads have been coming hot and heavy, particularly negative attack ads.
The Story previously fact-checked an ad attacking Kent, bankrolled by the the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC. But there's also an attack ad against Gluesenkamp Perez running currently, this one paid for by the National Republican Campaign Committee, and it deserves its own evaluation.
Claim: Gluesenkamp Perez has ignored the Mexico border
The ad includes an audio clip of Gluesenkamp Perez speaking on the Pod Save America podcast in March 2023 saying this: "Listen, like, nobody stays awake at night worrying about the southern border."
That's the opening salvo, but the ad almost entirely hinges on that statement — it's even repeated later. While the clip is indeed of Gluesenkamp Perez speaking on the cited podcast, it's taken out of context.
In a full version of the podcast on YouTube, one of the hosts asks Gluesenkamp Perez how she won her election in a historically Republican-leaning district. Here's an extended version of her comment:
"Listen, like, nobody stays awake at night worrying about the southern border. Like, that's just not ... people stay awake at night worrying that their kid is gonna relapse, or that, you know, someone's gonna drop out of school or they're gonna lose their house."
In context, Gluesenkamp Perez is pretty clearly saying that she doesn't think her constituents are concerned so much with national talking points about the Mexico border, but about the localized impacts of that and other issues.
Claim: Gluesenkamp Perez isn't worried about fentanyl
Continuing from the same clip, the ad attacks Gluezenkamp Perez for not being worried about fentanyl, citing several news reports about fentanyl coming in from Mexico and how deadly it has been for young people.
The claims about fentanyl itself aren't really debatable — we know that much of the powerful synthetic opioid is coming in from Mexico, and it has contributed to skyrocketing overdose deaths in the U.S. Interestingly, a Washington Post story cited in the ad faults successive presidential administrations from both parties for failing to better deal with the problem.
It's also worth pointing out that colossal amounts of fentanyl come into the U.S. through legal ports of entry, as the article notes, even though right-wing rhetoric often links the problem to illegal border crossings by migrants and asylum-seekers. That is, fentanyl tends to be smuggled into the U.S. under the guise of legal commerce.
Saying Gluesenkamp Perez isn't worried about fentanyl based on that short out-of-context clip is a real stretch, when she's specifically said the opposite in other statements and even alludes to it in the full version of the clip. This past February, Gluesenkamp Perez co-sponsored a bill that would tighten security at the border and require that immigration officers immediately detain and expel what they called "inadmissible aliens."
The ad continues by saying that "Perez sleeps easy in DC while overdoses here skyrocket ... Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won't fix this — she's too busy denying it."
Again, these claims are all built on the one short clip, and do not comport with the congresswoman's platform or record. On her campaign website, Gluesenkamp Perez says she believes in fighting the drug crisis through increased border security, stricter punishments for sale and possession of drugs, along with expanded access to treatment, rehab and job opportunities.
The congresswoman has previously broken with the majority of House Democrats to vote for border security bills overwhelmingly favored by Republicans, even one that would restore Trump-era policies.