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Joe Kent (Washington)
2025 - Present
0
Joe Kent is an officeholder of the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He assumed office on July 30, 2025.
Kent (Republican Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Washington's 3rd Congressional District. He lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Biography
Joe Kent was born in Sweet Home, Oregon. He served in the United States Army from 1998 to 2018. Kent received his bachelor's degree from Norwich University in 2017. His professional experience includes working for the CIA. Kent has been affiliated with the Global War on Terror Foundation, Concerned Veterans for America, and Boy Scouts of America.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Washington's 3rd Congressional District election, 2024
Washington's 3rd Congressional District election, 2024 (August 6 top-two primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House Washington District 3
Incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez defeated Joe Kent in the general election for U.S. House Washington District 3 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez (D) | 51.7 | 215,177 |
 | Joe Kent (R) | 47.9 | 199,054 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.4 | 1,673 | ||
| Total votes: 415,904 | |||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House Washington District 3
Incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez and Joe Kent defeated Leslie Lewallen and John Saulie-Rohman in the primary for U.S. House Washington District 3 on August 6, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez (D) | 45.9 | 97,274 |
| ✔ | | Joe Kent (R) | 39.3 | 83,389 |
 | Leslie Lewallen (R) | 12.2 | 25,868 | |
 | John Saulie-Rohman (Independent Party) | 2.5 | 5,406 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 186 | ||
| Total votes: 212,123 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Brent Hennrich (D)
- Leslie French (R)
- Davy Ray (D)
Polls
- See also: Ballotpedia's approach to covering polls
Polls are conducted with a variety of methodologies and have margins of error or credibility intervals.[2] The Pew Research Center wrote, "A margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level means that if we fielded the same survey 100 times, we would expect the result to be within 3 percentage points of the true population value 95 of those times."[3] For tips on reading polls from FiveThirtyEight, click here. For tips from Pew, click here.
The links below show polls for this race aggregated by FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics, where available. Click here to read about FiveThirtyEight's criteria for including polls in its aggregation.
Election campaign finance
| Name | Party | Receipts* | Disbursements** | Cash on hand | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez | Democratic Party | $11,856,002 | $11,895,854 | $26,460 | As of December 31, 2024 |
| Joe Kent | Republican Party | $2,654,420 | $2,708,358 | $-1,032 | As of December 31, 2024 |
| Leslie Lewallen | Republican Party | $840,313 | $840,313 | $0 | As of December 31, 2024 |
| John Saulie-Rohman | Independent Party | $0 | $0 | $0 | Data not available*** |
|
Source: Federal Elections Commission, "Campaign finance data," 2024. This product uses the openFEC API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
* According to the FEC, "Receipts are anything of value (money, goods, services or property) received by a political committee." |
|||||
Satellite spending
- See also: Satellite spending
Satellite spending describes political spending not controlled by candidates or their campaigns; that is, any political expenditures made by groups or individuals that are not directly affiliated with a candidate. This includes spending by political party committees, super PACs, trade associations, and 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups.[4][5][6]
If available, this section includes links to online resources tracking satellite spending in this election. To notify us of a resource to add, email us.
| By candidate | By election |
|---|---|
Race ratings
- See also: Race rating definitions and methods
Ballotpedia provides race ratings from four outlets: The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, Sabato's Crystal Ball, and DDHQ/The Hill. Each race rating indicates if one party is perceived to have an advantage in the race and, if so, the degree of advantage:
- Safe and Solid ratings indicate that one party has a clear edge and the race is not competitive.
- Likely ratings indicate that one party has a clear edge, but an upset is possible.
- Lean ratings indicate that one party has a small edge, but the race is competitive.[7]
- Toss-up ratings indicate that neither party has an advantage.
Race ratings are informed by a number of factors, including polling, candidate quality, and election result history in the race's district or state.[8][9][10]
| Race ratings: Washington's 3rd Congressional District election, 2024 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Race tracker | Race ratings | ||||||||
| November 5, 2024 | October 29, 2024 | October 22, 2024 | October 15, 2024 | ||||||
| The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter | Toss-up | Toss-up | Toss-up | Toss-up | |||||
| Decision Desk HQ and The Hill | Lean Republican | Lean Republican | Lean Republican | Lean Republican | |||||
| Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales | Toss-up | Toss-up | Toss-up | Toss-up | |||||
| Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball | Lean Republican | Toss-up | Toss-up | Toss-up | |||||
| Note: Ballotpedia reviews external race ratings every week throughout the election season and posts weekly updates even if the media outlets have not revised their ratings during that week. | |||||||||
Endorsements
Kent received the following endorsements.
- Former President Donald Trump (R)
- Washington State Republican Party
- Veterans for America First
Pledges
Kent signed the following pledges.
2022
See also: Washington's 3rd Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House Washington District 3
Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez defeated Joe Kent in the general election for U.S. House Washington District 3 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez (D) | 50.1 | 160,314 |
| Joe Kent (R) | 49.3 | 157,685 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.6 | 1,760 | ||
| Total votes: 319,759 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Nonpartisan primary election
Nonpartisan primary for U.S. House Washington District 3
The following candidates ran in the primary for U.S. House Washington District 3 on August 2, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez (D) | 31.0 | 68,190 |
| ✔ | | Joe Kent (R) | 22.8 | 50,097 |
 | Jaime Herrera Beutler (R) | 22.3 | 49,001 | |
 | Heidi St. John (R) | 16.0 | 35,219 | |
 | Vicki Kraft (R) | 3.2 | 7,033 | |
 | Davy Ray (D) | 2.2 | 4,870 | |
 | Chris Byrd (Independent) | 1.7 | 3,817 | |
 | Leslie French (R) | 0.5 | 1,100 | |
| Oliver Black (American Solidarity Party) | 0.2 | 456 | ||
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 142 | ||
| Total votes: 219,925 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Christopher Maynard (D)
- Brent Hennrich (D)
- Matthew Overton (R)
- Lucy Lauser (D)
- Chris Jenkins (D)
- Wadi Yakhour (R)
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Joe Kent did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign ads
View more ads here:
Campaign website
Kent’s campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Meet Joe Kent Joe Kent is a retired 20-year-veteran of our nation’s Special Forces and a widower raising his two young sons in Yacolt, Washington State. His first wife, who also served, was killed while fighting ISIS in Syria. Four years later, he married Heather Kaiser. Following his military service and work as an field operative in the CIA, Joe served as a foreign policy advisor to President Trump and as a project manager for technology company before retiring on his military pension in January of 2023 to devote himself fully to the campaign. Joe’s candidacy for US Congress is focused on restoring common sense Republican values and defeating the woke extremist Democrat Congresswoman Marie Perez. [11] |
” |
| —Joe Kent's campaign website (2024)[12] | ||
2022
Video for Ballotpedia
| Video submitted to Ballotpedia Released February 18, 2021 |
Joe Kent completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Kent's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
| Collapse all
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Kent's campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
JOBS Resources in this district provide a thriving timber and fishing industry, but intrusive federal regulations have crippled these job-producing industries. I will work to remove cumbersome rules from these industries responsibly.
We need responsible forest management that preserves our forest and restores our renewable and sustainable timber industry. The catastrophic wildfires of 2020 demonstrate what happens when logging is limited, the uncleared undergrowth, and unmaintained logging roads in the backcountry. By allowing more responsible logging, we can preserve our forests and keep our timber industry thriving.
The fishing industry has also been over-regulated by the federal government, killing jobs and excessively placing burdens on our fishermen. We must end predatory Chinese fleet fishing off our coast; these Chinese fishermen are illegally stealing our resources while our government focuses on limiting our fishermen. I will also advocate for federal funds to build more fish hatcheries and make salmon preservation a priority.
We must have strict immigration control and a robust physical border wall to ensure our nation’s security. Illegal immigration affects our economy and the ability of working-class Americans to obtain jobs. For decades establishment Republicans and Democrats have told us that unrestricted immigration is good for our nation and will not affect Americans’ ability to obtain employment. Major corporations, who greatly benefit from cheap labor, push this narrative. This allows the corporations to circumvent minimum-wage requirements while getting richer; meanwhile, our working-class struggles to find jobs. I will introduce and support legislation to build a border wall, push back on blanket amnesty, deprive sanctuary cities of federal funding, and enforce strict employer verification requirements for their employees to end non-US citizen labor demand.
We must end our endless wars. As a congressman, I will introduce legislation to withdraw our troops from Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan and push our Intelligence community to develop practical ways to combat terrorism without major troop deployments offensively. We initially went to Afghanistan to strike back against Al-Qaeda, who attacked us on 9/11, and the Taliban’s elements that provided them sanctuary. We immediately changed course without consulting Congress or the American people to a mission focused on nation-building instead of focusing on hunting and killing those who attacked us. Shortly after, the Bush administration, with the support of establishment democrats, lied to the American people to get us into a second regime change war that dragged us into nearly two decades of failed nation-building that has only enabled Iran and our enemies. These wars must end.
Our nation must retain a modern and highly skilled military, poised to strike and deter our enemies around the world at a moment’s notice. I support modernizing our force to focus on our main threat, China. For the past two decades, we have focused on ground counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations. We must support a decisive pivot to fighting a modern nation in every warfare domain, especially cyber and information warfare.
I fully support the men and women of our law enforcement community. I will fight any efforts to defund the police. I will fight to use the tools of federal law enforcement to dismantle the Antifa terrorist organization.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is our number one national security threat and is already at war with us. China is stealing US intellectual property and using slave labor to undercut global manufacturing. We must focus on balancing our budget to strengthen the US dollar, onshore our industries, and forbid US companies from off-shoring their manufacturing. We must build a strong coalition of nations against the CCP’s aggressive practices abroad and their genocide and human rights abuses against their people. I will push to offensively use tariffs against Chinese imports and sanction China for its numerous human rights violations. I will push our diplomats to make alliances in the Pacific against the CCP. I strongly support President Trump’s tariffs, barring of Chinese technology, and cracking down on the CCP’s infiltration of US industry, think tanks, and universities.
Putting this nation first will always be my guiding principle when dealing with issues abroad. We are the leader of the free world because we are strong at home. I will empower the State Department to build and retain relationships with nations that share our values and advance our interests. I strongly support the historic accomplishments of the Abraham accords in the Middle East. We must strengthen our NATO alliance and ensure that NATO shoulders its share of the security burden and does not support Russia by purchasing Russian oil and gas. To fortify our key alliances, we must not lead our allies on foolish nation-building endeavors as we have done in Afghanistan for nearly twenty years. We should only ask that our allies go to war when it is absolutely necessary.
I am a pro-life Christian. I will work tirelessly to protect the rights of unborn children. I will work to cut off federal funding for abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood.
We need to get the federal government out of our schools and return curriculum development to the states. I will work to prevent Planned Parenthood, The 1619 Project, and Critical Race Theory from entering the curriculum of our schools.
The social media technocrats are monopolies and must be broken up. The internet and access to social media is a modern public utility. I am a free speech advocate; free speech is a sacred right in this nation that no one can take from us. Our technology and social media companies have crossed the line by depriving people of their ability to express themselves and operate in our society. Social media have repeatedly acted on behalf of the far left and democrats. Look no further than the Hunter Biden laptop / NY Post issue just before the 2020 election as an example of big tech that has gone off the rails. We need to examine how big tech impedes Americans’ rights and remove big tech’s ability to act like a nation-state.
I am also a 2nd Amendment advocate and do not support any new gun legislation. I most especially do not support House Resolution 127, the recent partnership/proposals and funding requests advocated by March for Our Lives with the White House, or gun platforms from the Biden Administration. I will push for Constitutional Carry/concealed carry permit reciprocity in all 50 states, so all citizens can exercise their right to bear arms and defend themselves without government interference.
The government overtaxes hard-working Americans and appears to feel little obligation to account for the money it demands. I will work to lower our individual and corporate federal income taxes and go after government excess in every aspect of the federal government.
Our nation’s debt is our number one national security threat. Our inflation and debt spending are so out of control that China and other countries may stop buying our debt; when that happens, we will lose our status as the prime reserve standard currency, which will lead to our economy collapsing. China sees this weakness and will exploit it to take down our economy without firing a shot. We must balance our budget, end needless spending, and dramatically change entitlement spending by expanding options for younger workers.
Government involvement in health care has driven the cost up. We should deregulate health care, allow for more competition in the market, make medical expenses tax-deductible and allow individuals to purchase insurance across state lines. We also need to remove the high-deductible insurance policy requirement to access Health Savings Accounts.
I will fight to make a federal cap on the cost of high-demand prescription drugs such as insulin to protect our citizens from the big pharma’s predatory practices.
We must put an end to career politicians. Our founders fought against the ruling class and monarchy to create a government of the people by the people. We need more regular government officials who go to DC to serve their people and return to the communities that elected them. I will push to have Congressional and Senate term limits mirror the limits placed on the President.
Energy Independence is non-negotiable and essential to securing our sovereignty. I will pursue an all-of-the-above strategy that utilizes our natural gas and oil reserves while accelerating the development of clean and safe breakthrough nuclear reactor technology.[11] |
” |
| —Joe Kent's campaign website (2022)[13] | ||
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
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Candidate U.S. House Washington District 3 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on February 20, 2021
- ↑ For more information on the difference between margins of error and credibility intervals, see explanations from the American Association for Public Opinion Research and Ipsos.
- ↑ Pew Research Center, "5 key things to know about the margin of error in election polls," September 8, 2016
- ↑ OpenSecrets.org, "Outside Spending," accessed December 12, 2021
- ↑ OpenSecrets.org, "Total Outside Spending by Election Cycle, All Groups," accessed December 12, 2021
- ↑ National Review.com, "Why the Media Hate Super PACs," December 12, 2021
- ↑ Inside Elections also uses Tilt ratings to indicate an even smaller advantage and greater competitiveness.
- ↑ Amee LaTour, "Email correspondence with Nathan Gonzalez," April 19, 2018
- ↑ Amee LaTour, "Email correspondence with Kyle Kondik," April 19, 2018
- ↑ Amee LaTour, "Email correspondence with Charlie Cook," April 22, 2018
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Joe Kent for Congress, “Meet Joe,” accessed July 19, 2024
- ↑ Joe Kent, “Issues,” accessed September 20, 2022
