3rd Congressional District candidates sound off

During a recent League of Women Voters of Clark County interview panel, candidates hoping to represent Washington’s 3rd Congressional District — including two Camas candidates — got candid about everything from immigration and wars abroad to securing energy sources for the future and preserving programs like Social Security and Medicare. 

Incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and two of her three  challengers — Republican candidate Leslie Lewallen and Independent candidate John Saulie-Rohman, both of Camas — participated in the League of Women Voters interviews. The League said Republican candidate Joe Kent’s campaign did not respond to requests from the nonpartisan organization to take part in the interviews. 

Voters will select their top choices for Congress during the Aug. 6 primary, with the top two vote-getters moving on to the November general election. Ballots must be postmarked or dropped in official ballot boxes (by 8 p.m.) on Election Day, Tuesday, Aug. 6.

Camas Councilwoman focuses on immigration and fentanyl; says she does not support legalizing abortion nationwide

Lewallen, a fifth-generation Washingtonian, member of the Camas City Council since November 2021, former prosecutor for King County and supporter of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, was the first to answer the League’s questions. 

Lewallen answered a series of yes-or-no questions, saying she does not support legalizing abortion nationwide; does not support abolishing the electoral college; does support an update to the Voting Rights Act recently introduced by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives; and will accept the results of the election no matter who wins. 

League of Women Voters volunteer Sally Hale asked Lewallen to weigh in on immigration issues. 

“We need to close the southern border,” Lewallen said, adding that she believes the United States needs to “secure a wall and any other means to secure the southern border (with Mexico).” 

“We’ve had 10 million illegal immigrants cross the southern border,” Lewallen said. “We do not know who they are, and they have not been properly vetted.” 

Asked how she would collaborate with her Democratic and Independent peers if elected to Congress and what steps she would take to reduce the political division in Congress and among the constituents of the 3rd District, Lewallen touted her position as a Council member. 

“I’m a Camas City Council member,” she said. “It’s not left or right. It’s just what issues are important to Camasonians? I always look at how things are impacting our citizens and ask: ‘Is this a rule the government … should be involved in? And, two, what are the unintended consequences of the proposed legislation?’ And, three, ‘How will this decision actually help the citizens of Southwest Washington?’” 

Lewallen said she believes she is “able to work with anybody and everybody.”

Hale asked Lewallen what energy sources she supports that would “provide adequate power for the future” and what she believes Congress can do to “ensure the reliability of the country’s electrical grid.” 

Lewallen said she is open to considering “any and all available energy sources.” 

“This is something very critical to Southwest Washington,” Lewallen said. “Especially when there’s discussions about breaching the lower Snake River Dam.” 

Breaching the four dams on the lower Snake River — something environmental leaders and indigenous tribes have said is critical to the recovery of salmon and other native fish — is something Lewallen disagrees with. 

“That’s absolutely not what we need to be doing at this stage of the game,” Lewallen said. “We have communities like Lewis County that are already struggling with the power grid. This is a safe, renewable source of energy — one that we sell to other states — so we absolutely want to protect our dams and support every source of energy so we are energy independent and won’t have to rely on foreign countries for our energy sources.” 

Asked if Congress should continue to ensure the continued viability of Social Security and Medicare programs, Lewallen said she would “absolutely” protect both programs. 

“These are programs that have been in existence for a long time. People rely on these benefits,” Lewallen said. “I think that, when you talk about spending cuts, there’s broad abuse and waste at every level of government. There are departments we should be auditing, including the Department of Defense. They need to be able to pass an audit before they get any more federal spending or federal dollars.”

Lewallan said she is “still America First,” but believes the United States should not be “America Alone” when it comes to conflicts in other parts of the world. 

“I believe in peace through strength,” Lewallen said. “We should absolutely be helping our allies, but that does not mean that we have unaccountable and non-transparent spending. We have to trust but verify. We need to know where every single, solitary dollar is being spent.”
“I think right now, though, what’s happened is that Americans … it’s not that we don’t want to help our allies and it’s not that we don’t want to work together with other nations,” Lewallen added. “It’s that we have an unsecured southern border and our priorities are off. So we need to reestablish good priorities and put Americans absolutely first and secure that southern border.”

Saulie-Rohman wants to ‘focus on things we do agree on’ to reduce polarization

The Independent candidate from Camas, John Saulie-Rohman, answered the same set of questions and said he — unlike Lewallen — does support legalizing abortion nationwide and would support abolishing the electoral college, which gives outsized voting power to smaller states. He also said he will support the results of the election, no matter who wins. Unlike Lewallen, Saulie-Rohman does not support the Republicans’ Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE Act, which seeks to ban non-citizens from voting despite the fact that it is already illegal for a non-citizen to vote in U.S. elections. 

“It’s a waste of time,” Saulie-Rohman said of the SAVE Act. “Non-citizens cannot vote in elections.” 

Saulie-Rohman said that, if elected to Congress, he would bring the ability to work with people from a wide range of socioeconomic and other backgrounds and would “prioritize the American people and not our pursuit of empire or wars abroad.” 

On immigration, which Saulie-Rohman called a “hot-button issue,” he pointed out that many of the Republicans’ talking points on immigration are not productive for the American public. 

“I would like to point out that, oftentimes, we hear arguments that fentanyl is pouring across the border and that these murderers and rapists are invading our country,” Saulie-Rohman said. “And that’s not productive. The vast majority of fentanyl is (coming in) through ports of entry. And people seeking refuge in this country are here to find work and to find a better life. To address that, we have to find a way to allow them a pass to find that better life and to become contributing citizens of our country.” 

Saulie-Rohman said he is “keenly aware that polarization is tearing this country and our Congress apart, resulting in no effective legislation and no production out of Congress.” 

“That leaves us, the American people, at a loss,” he added. “We need to realize we share commonalities. And we need to focus on those things we do agree on — we need to improve our education, invest in infrastructure. We need to invest in things at home that provide a return — not in the form of bombs and war around the world that is destroying countries and people and providing zero return on our investments.”

Having worked in the energy industry, Saulie-Rohman said he “knows very well the impacts renewable energy has on our system.”
“Renewable energy plays a key role in how we move forward and transform our energy infrastructure,” Saulie-Rohman said. “We need to do it in a reliable way that does not put in jeopardy the energy we provide to people.”

When it comes to Social Security and Medicare, Saulie-Rohman feels strongly that these types of programs “are the bedrock to providing people a confidence that they will have something after retirement.”
“As we continue to spend outside of our budget and fail to bring in necessary revenues through tax cuts … the solution is not to cut more and cut more,” he said, adding that he would support removing the cap on Social Security taxes, which allows wealthier people to not pay Social Security taxes on their income after the first $147,000. 

“Why is it that, up to a certain amount, we stop contributing to Social Security,” he asked, adding that “privatization of Medicare is just absurd.”
“Private health insurers have no business meddling in this program,” Saulie-Rohman said, “resulting in higher costs and less services to those who rely on it.” 

Saulie-Rohman concluded his interview, saying he would draw a line at participating in wars and conflicts in other nations by asking if what the United States was doing was “in the best interests of the other country we’re either invading or attempting to overthrow.”
“Unless the intentions are to improve the lives of the people of a particular country, we should not support that,” he said. 

Incumbent congresswoman explains her views

Incumbent Democratic Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who beat Republican challenger in the November 2022 election, said she also supports legalizing abortion nationwide; updating the Voting Rights Act and will accept the results of the election no matter who wins. The Congresswoman would not, however, support abolishing the electoral college. 

When it comes to working across the aisle and tempering this country’s political divisiveness, Gluesenkamp Perez said she regularly works with Republicans in Congress to pass legislation that will benefit her constituents in Southwest Washington. 

“It’s important that we not buy into the power structure of (political parties) that don’t have interests of Southwest Washington at heart,” she said, adding that though her peers in Congress may not care about replacing the Interstate 5 bridge or about how locally owned businesses are doing in Southwest Washington, she does care about local issues. 

“That’s how you make headway,” Gluesenkamp Perez said, adding that she wants policies that “reflect the experiences of normal people … people on waitlists for daycare or trying to buy a starter home” and that political leaders in Congress “need to solve the root causes of issues.”

On the issue of immigration, Gluesenkamp Perez said she has “repeatedly called on the president to make this a priority, fund border patrol at historic levels.”

Like at least one of her Republican challengers, Gluesenkamp Perez equated immigration with fentanyl and said she has “seen the wreckage of fentanyl (with) people getting into car wrecks, losing their kids, dying in parking lots” and feels politicians “have to help staunch the flow of fentanyl” by securing the country’s borders. 

According to the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute think tank, the United States citizens are 10 times more likely than undocumented immigrants to be fentanyl drug traffickers than immigrants, with “only 0.02% of people arrested by the Border Patrol for crossing the border illegally (having) possessed fentanyl.” The Institute also found that “over 90% of fentanyl seizures occur at legal crossing points or interior vehicle checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes.”

Gluesenkamp Perez said she believes in an “all of the above” energy policy that invests in better technology to help keep energy more affordable. 

And, when it comes to protecting Social Security and Medicare, the congresswoman said she believes government leaders “have a duty to ensure these programs people have earned” are solvent and available into the future. To do that, she would advocate for making people who earn more than $147,000 a year also need to pay Social Security taxes on income over that limit. 

“Ensuring that people pay their fair rate (is important),” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “(People earn) $147,000 and then get a free ride after that? I don’t think it’s fair or right.” 

Gluesenkamp Perez said she pursues issues important to Americans, but believes the country “is best served when we have geopolitical security across the globe.”
“It is in our national interest to stop dictators like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin from invading democratically elected nations,” she said. 

To view the League of Women Voters of Clark County’s July 18 interviews with the 3rd District congressional candidates, visit cvtv.org and search for “League of Women Voters 3rd Congressional District candidates.”