If Democrats Were Smart, They Would Embrace Millennial Raised By Pastor In Texas And Not AOC

Democratic Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez represents Washington’s 3rd district, a district President Donald Trump won in 2024.

While representing a red district in a blue state, the congresswoman who refers to herself as “MGP” is somewhat of an anomaly. She was raised in Texas, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant pastor at an Evangelical church, according to The Chronicle

She told The Chronicle she was a frequent haunt of both the Young Democrats and the Young Republican clubs while attending high school. She speaks about building coalitions rather than falling behind party lines.

“Extremists do not pass bills in Congress. Work happens in the middle,” she said.

“The rhetoric and the celebrity happens at the extremes, and we’ve got to start electing people that believe in public service again,” she told the outlet.

She casts herself as a strong supporter of the police and the second amendment. She’s a mechanic by profession and her rhetoric on trade and manufacturing can often sound downright Trumpian.

“Local, union shops like these are how we bring back U.S. manufacturing and rebuild jobs in the trades,” she tweeted in 2024.

My 3rd stop in Vancouver today was veteran-owned Thompson Metal Fab where they’re busy working on some major projects vital to our region’s infrastructure.

Local, union shops like these are how we bring back U.S. manufacturing and rebuild jobs in the trades. It’s pretty metal. pic.twitter.com/3AGP2Xwjgc

— Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (@RepMGP) January 3, 2024

Like Trump, she’s been an ardent critic of the Chinese pipeline bringing cheap plastic goods into America. After Trump took on a heavy dose of criticism from MGP’s party over a comment about American children getting less dolls for Christmas, MGP appeared to side with him.

“You’re talking to a lady who doesn’t give my child toys. I’m a big believer in dirt and string and sticks,” she told The New York Times’ (NYT) Ezra Klein in an early May interview.

She backs the blue, unions, American manufacturing and is not afraid to criticize the left.

“One thing that’s weird is watching the Democratic Party suddenly become the defenders of the stock market and Nasdaq. That’s a weird thing to me,” she told Klein.

As a Democrat, her views are not all fully aligned with conservative values.

Her opponent in the last two congressional elections, Army veteran and former CIA operative Joe Kent, has accused MGP of having a radical record. In 2020, according to Breitbart, an Instagram post on her family’s mechanic shop’s account allegedly offered free leaf blower tune-ups at a time when members of Antifa were using leaf blowers to repel police tear gas at protests.

She’s also antifa- Perez’s auto shop in Portland supported antifa during the 2020 riots & she is taking their legislative priorities to Congress. https://t.co/msmur9xPjY

— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) August 10, 2023

A spokesperson for MGP said she had nothing to do with the post and pushed back hard on the notion that she doesn’t support police.

“Any claim Marie or her husband have ever supported Antifa is a lie,” the spokesperson told Breitbart.

“In 2020, as tear gas and pepper spray were causing harm to Portland residents, an employee at Marie’s shop once wrote an Instagram post offering to repair broken leaf blowers. That’s it. Nothing Marie or her husband said or did was in any way anti-law enforcement. Let’s be absolutely clear on this: Marie’s small business has suffered multiple break ins so she knows first hand the important work that police do to protect public safety and address crime. Marie supports fully-funding our police and opposes political violence in all its forms,” the spokesperson said.

MGP does come from the same liberal wing of her party as Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They both backed self-styled Democratic Socialist and Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary. But, unlike AOC, MGP has increasingly voted with Republicans on issues that matter to her constituents.

In 2024, she was one of five Democrats to vote yes on the End The Border Catastrophe Act, a vote that was consistent with her criticism of former President Joe Biden’s record on immigration. (RELATED: Just Four Dems Vote To Keep Non-Citizens From Voting In US Elections)

“President Biden has failed to end the crisis at our southern border, so I voted to do what he refuses to do: secure our border and stop the violent drug cartels pumping fentanyl into our country,” she said in a statement after the vote.

Though, as Kent pointed out on a website he built to highlight what he calls MGP’s radical record, she also voted no on the 2023 Secure The Border Act.

But, again siding with mostly Republicans, she voted to censure Democratic Texas Rep. Al Green for disrupting Trump’s joint address to Congress in March.

MGP’s moderate approach is playing out against a backdrop of a Democratic Party struggling to retain relevance.

One effort, the details of which were obtained by the NYT, will spend $20 million to “reverse the erosion of Democratic support among young men, especially online.”

The project is apparently called “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan,” or SAM, for short. The money will go towards studying “the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces,” according to the outlet.

While the left continues to struggle identifying the root causes of their 2024 electoral failures, MGP continues to vote differently, oftentimes seeming to ignore the tidal direction of her party.

Her rhetoric, focusing on manufacturing and restoring economic agency to homeowners and farmers, is a far cry from many of her peers. While Kamala Harris appeared focused on targeting specific racial groups with proposed policies, MGP appears to be focused on economic empowerment.

“The question is not what the nominal picture of wealth in these terms are, but how much economic agency and self-determination we have,” she told Klein.

“Do you have the power to stay home and spend time with your family? Or are you working three jobs? Are you able to own a home, to own land, own farmland? Or are you stuck in a cycle of perpetual running that you don’t want to be in? Do you have the right to make your own stuff? Do you have a level playing field to start your own business? Those are the questions.”