Perez fields questions at latest town hall

Despite occasional outbursts and one person who repeatedly shouted, “progressives will not vote for you,” the mood at U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s town hall Wednesday evening in Battle Ground was much more subdued than other ones recently.

Last week, Perez’s town hall in Longview “devolved into a shouting match … as audience members questioned her continued support for Israel despite a rising death toll in the Gaza Strip,” The Daily News reported.

In April, during her last Clark County town hall, hundreds challenged the Democratic congresswoman on her voting record while an overflow crowd outside the Vancouver venue chanted, “Vote her out.”

The crowd of about 200 people who gathered inside the Battle Ground Event Center to hear Perez speak were considerably more low-key.

Clark County Councilor Wil Fuentes moderated the town hall and relayed audience members’ written questions about Medicaid and Social Security cuts, wildfire prevention, releasing files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case, ensuring that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not wrongfully detaining American citizens and more.

Perez called out Republican-led legislation known as the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act for its “deep cuts around Medicaid” and negative impacts to the Social Security trust funds.

“It’s a policy that’s entirely oriented around taking stuff from the bottom 10 percent and moving it to the top 1 percent,” Perez said of the bill. “Ignoring 89.9 percent of the country is a really, really dumb way to run an economy. That is not how you keep the wheels on the bus. It also added $4 trillion to the national debt, which is about $31,000 per American household.”

Perez said she is very concerned that the Social Security trust funds may soon become insolvent. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, U.S. retirees are facing an $18,000 benefit cut by 2032 if nothing is done to shore up the Social Security trust funds.

“Right now, you only pay into Social Security on the first $146,000 that you earn, and after that, you kind of have a free ride,” Perez said, adding that removing the income cap would “address about 80 percent of the solvency crisis in the trust fund.”

On the Epstein sex-trafficking case, Perez called out Republicans in the House for prematurely ending the most recent congressional session to avoid voting on the Epstein files.

“I want to be clear. Child predators need to be pursued at every level. There should be no free pass,” Perez said. “It is deeply enraging to me to see, you know, parliamentary procedure be deployed to hide sex offenders.”

Asked what she is doing to help mitigate wildfire risk in the 3rd Congressional District, Perez said she is co-leading a bill to get more parity for wildland firefighters.

“We’re seeing the fire season get longer and longer and longer,” Perez said. “Understanding how to fight a wildland fire requires a lot of experience, and (I am) trying to affirm the necessity of keeping that workforce available and whole.”

She added that she is also working to give firefighters better access to timber roads “to fight the fire proactively and quickly without having to rely on helicopters.”

Asked how she will make sure ICE is not wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens, Perez said she has encouraged constituents who know of this type of situation to reach out to her office.

“I think it’s important that … there is due process, that we are a country of law and order. And that is the thing that’s the real risk — that we lose sight of the thing that makes our country safer and stronger, which is the process,” she said.

Constituents also wanted to know why Perez, a leader of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition, believes it is so important to work across party lines.

“I’m trying to build the biggest team possible,” Perez said. “Really knowing your neighbors and persisting in a deliberative democracy … is kind of the core point of finding these bipartisan issues and a shared agenda.”

Constituents push back

Although several of Perez’s responses drew applause from the audience, it was clear Wednesday that not everyone was satisfied with the congresswoman’s track record.

Fia Marie, a self-described “queer, trans activist,” distributed pamphlets before the start of the Battle Ground town hall that called out a private fundraiser Perez was set to attend Thursday in Ridgefield and claimed Perez was “enabling and profiting from the rise of fascism and the merciless genocide of Palestinians.”

Outside the town hall, Vancouver resident Carrie Parks propped up a sign calling for the end of “brutality against immigrant families.”

Parks, 69, said she had supported Perez in 2022 and 2024, contributed money to her campaign and urged her neighbors to cast their vote for the Democratic candidate.

Now, Parks said, she has become disenchanted by Perez’s lack of attention to human rights issues.

On Wednesday, the town hall moderators passed on Parks’ question asking the congresswoman what she is doing to support immigrant families and prevent anonymous, often masked ICE officers from “disappearing” people off the streets during raids on suspected undocumented immigrants.

Parks said she would like Perez to visit the ICE detention center in Tacoma to ensure the people being held there are being treated humanely.

“I want her to go there and talk to the people,” Parks said.

When it comes time to vote for her 3rd District representative in 2026, Parks said she likely will vote for the Democratic candidate but said she will not go out of her way to support Perez’s reelection campaign as she’s done in the past.

“I want a representative who will really listen to people in her district,” Parks said.