Burning Ballots, a Far-Right Extremist, and the ‘Muscle of the Middle’

VANCOUVER, Washington — Joe Kent is nervous, and he keeps checking the clock on his phone. A far-right candidate for the House, with connections to white nationalists, Kent is making his closing pitch to GOP voters at a town hall in Vancouver, Washington, a commuter city across the river from Portland, Oregon. And he's expecting an important call from a virtual guest — one Donald J. Trump.

This district in southern Washington state is one of the most competitive swing seats in the country. Voters here backed Trump in 2016 and 2020. But in 2022 — with Kent on the ballot — centrist Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez carried the district, by highlighting Kent's extremist views and affiliations, including reportedly paying a Proud Boy as a consultant.

Nationally, the 2024 campaign for president has become a referendum on MAGA extremism and Trump's inclination toward fascism. The rematch in Washington's 3rd district is a microcosm of that national narrative — pitting a moderate Democrat, who sometimes makes progressives pull their hair out , against an unabashed far-right nationalist. The contest has the potential to determine control of the House — which explains why Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican, has visited the district twice in recent weeks, praising Kent as a "serious person for a serious time," and why Trump is appearing by phone tonight.

This late October town hall is staged at the Clark County GOP headquarters, housed in a strip mall between a Subway and a teriyaki grill. A pair of large, surly men, one with a black MAGA cap and hand tattoos, work security at the door, giving arrivals an intimidating stare down. Tensions are running high. Earlier in the week, an arsonist set fire to an election drop box a neighborhood over, scorching hundreds of ballots.

Kent, himself, is not menacing to look at. In his mid 40s, wearing jeans and a red-and-black flannel shirt, rolled up to expose sleeve tattoos, Kent has a boyish smile and a touch of silver to his curly, dark hair. With a strong jaw and strapping build, he looks a bit like a G.I. Joe figure brought to life. And in the abstract, he has a sterling resume for politics. Kent is a longtime former Green Beret, who served briefly in the CIA; he's also a Gold Star husband who lost his first wife to a suicide blast in Syria in 2019. He was introduced to Trump at Dover Air Base, receiving her remains.

But Kent yokes this Captain America cred to dark and strange beliefs — about abortion, guns, immigration, elections, and the environment — and keeps the kind of company that invites swing voters to view him with alarm.

"Gun Laws Are Infringements"

As minutes tick by, waiting for the call from Trump, Kent stands before an audience of perhaps 80 supporters in front of a sign reading, "We The People." Taking questions from voters, Kent lays out an absolutist Second Amendment agenda that might make an NRA lobbyist gush. "I think gun laws are infringements," he insists. "I want to get rid of all the federal gun laws — like the ATF, the National Firearms Act," Kent continues — referring to the federal law enforcement agency that polices gun crimes, and the 1934 law that blocks civilian access to machine guns. (In a recent debate, Kent said the Second Amendment was "designed" to give the government a "healthy fear of its citizens," who are entitled to "defend ourselves from a tyrannical government.")

Kent talks up an anti-immigrant agenda centered on making life for the undocumented so miserable that "a lot of these guys are going to self-deport." He talks up his plans to abolish the Department of Education to give parents federal money directly so they can "pull their kids out" of public schools. Kent repeatedly describes his plans to "punish" law enforcement agencies he dislikes — including the FBI and police bureaus in liberal cities — by stripping down their budgets and steering that cash into the coffers of right-wing sheriffs. Kent even wants to take out sea lions, protected by the Endangered Species Act, that he warns are ravaging fisheries in local rivers, insisting: "We need to kill predators."

For this partisan crowd, Kent plays his reputation for extremism as a laugh line, clarifying that he wants to eliminate the protected marine life, "responsibly" — adding: "I'm not saying we're going to go out and kill all the sea lions." He then jokes that there's still time for another attack mailer to land in voter mail boxes. "I'm waiting for the ad that says, 'Joe Kent wants to club baby seals.'"

Suddenly, it's go time. The Trump call comes through. With his phone to his ear, Kent grins and almost blushes as he receives a private message from the former president. Kent then taps on the speaker phone for the audience, and Trump touts him as "a proud America First conservative warrior." Trump truly makes Kent blush by touting him as "a good looking guy, handsome as you can be."

The former president crows to the town hall that his own victory against Kamala Harris is almost assured: "We're leading in all seven swing states, and we're doing good." But Trump says he needs loyalists like Kent to secure his MAGA 2.0 agenda. Decrying migrants from Congo, South America, and "rough ones" from the Middle East, Trump insists: "We're going to get them out. We're going to deport them out... We have to do it, or we're not going to have a country at all." It's a nativist message that gets enthusiastic response from this virtually all-white crowd. "Joe will be by my side," Trump says of Kent, before touting his plans to "to crush violent crime" and "cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory and... radical gender ideology." Trump then trashes Kent's opponent as "a total radical-left person," mangling the congresswoman's last name as "Glossencamp Perez."

The phone call is quick — and Kent is visibly relieved after it wraps, telling the crowd, "I got to introduce Trump once before at Mar-a-Lago," but adding: "On the phone, I was actually more nervous than in person." Kent lays out how he was in talks to join a potential second Trump administration in 2020 in a national security role until Trump lost.

Of course, Kent doesn't see the 2020 election that way. In his conspiratorial worldview, that contest was stolen from Trump — Kent has insisted the Biden administration is " not legitimate " — and the non-violent criminals from Jan. 6 should be pardoned . (By comparison Kent has called on Black Lives Matter leaders involved in the unrest following the death of George Floyd to be " hunted down .")

A strong part of Kent's motivation to run in 2022 was to punish then-incumbent GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler for joining in the impeachment of Trump, for unleashing that mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Kent continues to have conspiratorial ideas about elections. At the town hall he alleges that Democrats are hoping to take back the House to upend a Trump electoral win. "The Democrats get majority. You know what that means? That means they don't certify Trump's victory," he warned. "That's a big reason why Speaker Johnson's been out to the district twice."

A major part of Kent's pitch to Washington voters is that a blue state needs a MAGA man in Washington — to keep Trump from taking revenge on them. On the campaign trail, Trump has threatened to withhold wildfire aid from states like California unless they bend a knee to his agenda. And a recent investigation found Trump, in fact, blocked FEMA assistance to Washington state at the end of his term in 2020.

"We're going to need somebody who actually has a little bit of an inside track," Kent insists. "Otherwise, Washington's going to get the stiff shoulder, right?"

"We Can't Wait to Have Him"

Remarkably, this version of Joe Kent is dialed back from the version that ran in 2022. Kent has distanced himself from his past extreme anti-abortion rhetoric , which included comparing the practice to human slavery. "I'm a pro-life Christian. I do not like abortion," he says at the town hall, but then misleads his audience in saying the issue is settled because of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. "Abortion simply is not on the ballot," Kent says, falsely suggesting that Dobbs prohibits a federal abortion ban. (In reality, the Dobbs decision removed abortion from the realm of constitutional rights, placing abortion in the political sphere — subjecting it to the restrictions imposed by state legislatures, or alternatively the U.S. Congress.)

In this 2024 campaign, Kent has also been less flamboyant about his connections with pugilists, white nationalists, and antisemites.

Previously, Kent associated with Nick Fuentes, the Holocaust denying white nationalist and Christian supremacist who once dined with Trump and Kanye West in Mar-a-Lago. Fuentes bragged in 2021 of communicating with Kent and of helping get Kent's "social media up off the ground" by promoting him on Gab. (Gab is an infamously hate-riven Christian nationalist social media network that recently launched an AI chatbot of Hitler . Kent has a following of more than 15,000 on the site. His account is still active, though he appears to have deleted his posts.)

In April 2021, Kent grouped Fuentes in with Trump and the MAGA movement as deserving protection from censorship. He wrote on X: "Many are glad that their political rivals are targeted by the state & big tech" because "they hate Trump, & MAGA." He then insisted: "We must fight for all speech & fight the confluence of gov & big tech."

However by 2022 Kent had changed his tune, writing , "I strongly condemn Nick Fuentes's politics, especially in regards to our ally Israel," adding he did not want Fuentes' endorsement because "his focus on race/religion" was not compatible with Kent's "inclusive populism." Reached by Rolling Stone, Fuentes says today of Kent's 2024 bid: "Since he did not attack us this year, we will not be actively opposing his candidacy."

In June 2022, Kent gave an interview to another infamous white nationalist and Nazi sympathizer . In that interview, Kent touted his relationship with the extremist congressman from Arizona, Rep. Paul Gosar, who has spoken at Fuentes' annual political conference, as well as with Wendy Rogers, an Arizona state senator who was a member of the Proud Boys. A spokesperson later told CNN of the extremist interviewer: "Joe Kent had no idea who that individual was."

Kent has never been reticent about his affiliation with Joey Gibson , the far-right leader of a Washington group called Patriot Prayer, which often held rallies in Portland that produced street violence . During the 2022 campaign, Kent also paid a significant consulting fee to a man reported by the Associated Press to be a member of the Proud Boys fighting club. The Proud Boys are infamous for brawling with leftists in the Pacific Northwest; top leaders of the group are also serving prison time for seditious conspiracy for leading the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Kent's campaign said the man was a low-level staffer and denied he had any current membership in "outside organizations."

Extremism dogged Kent throughout his 2022 campaign. At one town hall, Kent was asked questions by an infamous white nationalist, and Kent appeared to endorse the man's proposal that the United States should place a 20-year cap on all immigration to promote assimilation, and slow what the questioner called "demographic replacement." (A lawyer for Kent threatened legal action in 2023 over coverage of the event; the newspaper that broke the story defiantly released audio of the interaction, insisting: "We have no plans to alter the story.")

This campaign cycle, the Kent campaign is unusually opaque, appearing to funnel a significant portion of expenses and payroll through a shell company called HWY 99. The controversial arrangement was documented by the Daily Beast; it has the effect of depriving the public of visibility into who's working for Kent's campaign team. "We don't know what he's doing with his donors' money," Gluesenkamp Perez tells Rolling Stone. "It's sleazy as hell, and it's reflective of the kind of transparency he would bring to his governance," she says, adding: "I have to assume he's got the same team behind him."

Kent's extremism is not out of place in the modern MAGA movement — or even in Congress. But it is unusual to have a candidate of Kent's extreme leanings competing in a purple, toss-up district. The GOP's national leadership has no issue with Kent playing footsie with white nationalists. In fact they seem to see Kent, with his sharp looks and military pedigree, as a potential star. Appearing in Washington state with Kent, Speaker Johnson insisted: "This is one of the most highly qualified candidates for Congress that we've had in a long, long time. We can't wait to have him."

"Place Over Politics"?

It may seem confusing that a candidate like Kent has come to the fore in a district that serves the Portland suburbs. But Vancouver, Washington, is a bit like Portland's Staten Island. It's a bridge commute away, and home to many cops and other suburb-seekers who want to distance themselves from the grit of urban life.

"The Couve" is the biggest city in Clark County — which gets rural, and red, quickly as you head out of town. The county is sometimes referred to as "Clarkansas" for its political likeness to that southern state. Once a stronghold for the KKK, the region remains a hotbed of both Christian- and white nationalism, with pugilists from the area routinely crossing the river into Portland to clash with anti-fascists.

Jaime Herrera Beutler, the region's longtime former GOP representative, neatly papered over such political divides, serving three terms as a centrist, before getting ousted in the 2022 primary by Kent; she's now a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Washington's 3rd district is currently served by Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, 36, who defeated Kent by just a few thousand votes in 2022. Gluesenkamp Perez has deep family roots in Washington state. She attended school at Portland's liberal Reed College, where she studied economics, before settling in the Columbia River gorge with her husband, teaming up to run an auto shop in an industrial stretch of North Portland. Prior to running for Congress, she'd never held public office, and her victory proved a stunning upset.

Far from being a liberal extremist, Gluesenkamp Perez has served as a centrist in D.C., who has tried to jumpstart the party's center-right Blue Dog caucus, while also joining the bipartisan Problem Solvers caucus. On the trail, she talks up her support for the Second Amendment. And she's infuriated some liberals in the party by, for example, opposing Biden's student loan debt relief package, insisting it needed to be "matched dollar for dollar with investments in career and technical education." She also introduced a strange bill to block a mandate to equip table saws with finger-detection technology, arguing the anti-amputation advance would be too costly while the technology is still under patent.

Gluesenkamp Perez is a staunch defender of democracy, however, and she has called out Kent to his face in their candidate debates, repeatedly demanding that he denounce his connections to far-right fight clubs and white nationalists. Kent has repeatedly deflected .

The "Vote Marie" headquarters are housed in an office park not far from the Vancouver Auto Mall. Gluesenkamp Perez greets this reporter on a soggy day after Halloween in black, weathered, knee-high rain boots, jeans, and a T-Shirt from motocross rally in nearby Washougal. Gluesenkamp Perez has piercing brown eyes and thinks intensely as she answers questions, seated on a couch beneath a logging truck flag. She laughs as she recalls rescuing the flag off the side of the road during an emergency potty break for her pre-school aged son.

Gluesenkamp Perez says that the national frame of Democrats running against MAGA extremists is actually obscuring the unique threat posed by a candidate like Kent. "My guy actually thinks citizens should have tactical nukes," she says, "telling people that we need to defend ourselves against the U.S. military." She adds that communicating the threat of Kent is a challenge — "he presents well" — but insists: "What I know is that it is incredibly dangerous to normalize this."

The Kent campaign did not respond to repeated outreach by Rolling Stone. At his town hall, Kent said that his opponent's focus on his far-right ideas is a diversion. "The Democrats can't talk about law and order, they can't talk about the border, they can't talk about the economy, so all they're doing is saying, 'Look at Joe Kent. Look at Donald Trump. They're super scary. They're super extreme.'"

Gluesenkamp Perez insists she is rooted, as a politician, in the concerns of the voters in her district. And she argues that her brand of "loyalty to place" is "the antidote to national extremism." She draws on metaphors from the auto shop, insisting that political problem solving requires "lifting up the hood" on a divisive issue to "see what part of this do we agree about? Try to understand each other."

The congresswoman paints Kent as the avatar of an extremely "online" movement, with an alarming national agenda. Beyond Kent's extremism, she casts him as a "very slick" outsider, who only moved to Washington this decade, and can't even pronounce the name of his adopted hometown, Yacolt, properly in his TV commercials. She accuses Kent of already looking past a position in Congress, and seeing the seat as a "​​springboard for more power and influence."

Joe Kent is test-driving a political theory that feeding red meat to the most avid partisans can be a path to victory, even in a closely divided district. Gluesenkamp Perez insists that her centrist model can not only hold her district, but provide an example for a saner national politics. "The reason that Mike Johnson and these other national figures have come here," she argues, "is because what we are doing here — flexing the muscle of the middle — is a threat to gerrymandered seats all across the country."

On Nov. 5, Washington voters will decide which candidate has the right theory. And control of Congress — and the future of American democracy — may very well hang on that answer.

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