Special Forces Veteran Joe Kent Announces 2024 Run for Washington’s 3rd Congressional District

FILE - Republican candidate Joe Kent waits before taking the stage for a candidates debate
AP Photo/Rachel La Corte, File
Kristina Wong

Special Forces veteran Joe Kent announced Wednesday he is running in 2024 for Washington’s 3rd congressional district.

“I’m excited to announce that I’m running for Congress to restore common sense values to SW Washington. Our woke congresswoman Marie Perez votes in lockstep w/ the radical left’s agenda that’s crushing working families,” he tweeted.

Kent, who ran in 2022 for the seat, was behind Perez by fewer than 3,000 votes, according to the Associated Press’s tally.

Kent is a retired Green Beret who is running on an America First platform of fiscal responsibility and fewer foreign entanglements. His late wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, was killed in Syria by an ISIS suicide bomber in 2019 as former President Donald Trump was trying to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, but the Pentagon and war hawks in Congress resisted.

Kent has already garnered the endorsement of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), one of the holdouts who forced major concessions from establishment Republicans in exchange for their vote for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

Kent released a statement calling attention to Perez’s first votes in Washington, D.C.:

Over the last two years, the people of Southwest Washington got to know me as a fighter for our conservative values, as a twenty-year combat veteran, as a father of two young boys who lost their mother in a needless overseas war, and as someone who cares deeply about the future of our country.

But we are only beginning to learn who our Democrat Congresswoman Marie Perez really is. In her first three votes, the moderate mask has fallen off and revealed a woke extremist.

Her first vote was for far-left radical Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker. Her second vote was against requiring members of Congress to actually show up to work and vote in person.

And her third vote was in favor of the Biden Administration’s 87,000 new IRS agents who disproportionately target middle-income Americans and small businesses.

She believes the solution to record inflation is more government spending and higher taxes. She opposes allowing parents to choose the best school for their children. And she wants more laws to restrict our Second Amendment rights. She’s already earned the rank of “Most Progressive member of Congress according to ProgressivePunch.org.
To defeat her, we must unify the centrist and right-leaning voters of the Republican Party, and we need to make sure all of us turn out to vote, including the over 80,000 Republicans who didn’t show up in 2022.

And I will be the candidate to do that. I look forward to meeting and hearing from the voters of the district and sharing my message of common sense conservatism as we advance towards victory in November 2024.

Perez responded by accusing him of cozying up to “extremists and white nationalists.”

Breitbart News found evidence that Perez’s auto body shop she owns with her husband offered support to Antifa rioters ahead of the 2020 election, although her campaign denied it.

The shop’s Instagram account posted, along with a photo of Perez’s husband: “If you and your leaf blower have been gettin busy supporting human rights, we’d like to do what we can to help keep that little machine working right (pro bono) shoot us an email and check your fluids!”

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