With votes recounted in Clark, Thurston and Cowlitz counties Monday, Rep. Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, trailed Kent by 960 votes. He was leading by 257 votes on Friday. Facing backlash over her vote to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Herrera Beutler had been in second place since election night in the 3rd District race in Southwest Washington. But her support eroded in subsequent ballot counts, which favored Kent. That trend continued Monday, as a new batch of Clark County ballots put Kent ahead for the first time. Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez remained in first place with about 31 percent of the total vote, leaving her headed for a November race against either Kent or Herrera Beutler. Kent was at 22.8% and Herrera Beutler at 22.3% as of Monday afternoon. Thousands of votes remain to be counted in the mail-in election, with Clark County estimating 10,000 remain in the region’s largest population center. Those votes are scheduled to be counted on Tuesday. The race for second place on the November ballot could go to a mandatory recount. A mechanical recount is triggered if the difference between the No. 2 and No. 3 candidates is less than half of 1% and less than 2,000 votes. A manual recount would take place if they approach a quarter of 1% and 150 votes. While some national election experts called the race for Kent on Monday, Herrera Beutler did not immediately concede. “We will monitor vote counting for one more day before making any statements,” campaign spokesman Craig Wheeler said in an email. Kent’s campaign manager, Ozzie Gonzalez, said in a text message that Kent would have no comment until the election is certified. County assessment boards are scheduled to certify their results on August 16, and the secretary of state must certify statewide results by August 19. On Twitter, Kent joined other Republicans in attacking the FBI’s probe of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Monday. The agents were reportedly investigating whether classified documents or other public records had been removed from the White House. “We must bring the national security state to heel, or we will no longer have a country. This must be our top priority in 2023. Starting with the FBI and DOJ,” Kent tweeted. With the 3rd District leaning Republican, national Democrats may be taking a fresh look at whether to invest in the general election race to take a shot at Kent, who has aligned himself with far-right members of Congress, including U.S. Reps. Matt Gage and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Gluesenkamp Perez, who lives in Skamania County and co-owns an auto repair shop in Portland, said in an interview that she is ready to take on Kent, touting her ability to connect with working-class voters and zeroing in on his ties to extremists and white nationalists. “You don’t put a Proud Boy on your staff and not know. This is a choice,” she said, referring to an Associated Press report that Kent’s campaign had paid a man identified as a member of the extremist group, whose leader and other members have been charged with rioting conspiracy for allegedly helping coordinate of the January 6 attack. Although post-counted ballots were still in, Kent and some of his allies suggested that the delay in final results may have been the result of fraud or a conspiracy to defeat him. Before taking the lead, Kent, who has repeated Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast, where he is a regular guest. In the podcast, Kent called the vote count a “non-transparent process” and complained that his own ballot was contested — a story widely shared as evidence of possible fraud by some conservative election conspiracy websites and supporters of Kent on social media. Kent’s signature on the ballot envelope had been flagged as a possible mismatch as part of the routine verification process — designed to prevent fraudulent ballots. The issue was quickly resolved as Kent filled out a new signature card, said Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey. Counting votes in the county took somewhat longer this year because an unusually large number of voters kept their ballots until the end, Kimsey said. About 92,000 ballots arrived at ballots or by mail the day before the election, on Election Day itself and the day after — compared to 49,000 over the same three days in the 2018 midterm primaries. From the trend of late votes, it was clear that the majority of late ballots were from Kent supporters. “Every single one of these ballots has to go through a signature verification process in a very conscientious and careful way,” Kimsey said. “That’s what we’re doing”.
