Joe Kent (photo, left; bio here), is an ex-military guy who tied himself to Trump and far, far-right politics who’s run for Congress twice in a GOP-leaning swing district that includes Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.
Two years ago, in 2022, Kent was slow to concede (see story here) after narrowly losing to Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez (see results here). The 2024 election is a rematch, and despite Trump’s victory, Kent is losing by a much wider margin, -3.7% versus -0.8% in 2022.
Where he lost by 2,629 votes in 2022, he’s currently down by over 12,000 votes. That’s too big a deficit to overcome in final vote counting. But I find nothing in the news to indicate he’s conceded or congratulated his opponent.
The outcome isn’t surprising. Even as a Trump tide washed over swing states nationally, Washington swung leftward in 2024 (see story here).
Trump is unpopular in Washington; he was under 40% here in all three of his elections (2016, 2020, and 2024), whereas a statewide GOP candidate normally can count on getting at least 42%. You would be hard-pressed to find another Republican who performs more poorly in Washington at the ballot box.
Therefore, it’s surprising that Kent chooses to run as a Trumper, instead of carving his own political identity. That seems like poor strategy, and Democrats should hope he keeps running against Gluesenkamp-Perez, because he’s positioned himself to continue losing.