Mark Z. Barabak: She’s won twice in Trump country. What can this Democrat teach her party?

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has a blunt message for fellow Democrats as they wail and wonder how they’ll make their way back from the political wilderness.

It’s going to take time. And lots of work.

“This is not like, ‘Oh, here’s one weird trick … Use this word, not that word,’ ” said the 36-year-old congresswoman, fresh off reelection in a rural district Donald Trump just carried for the second time.

Gluesenkamp Perez likened the Democrats’ mission to building a bicycle wheel, saying there is no universal blueprint. “Every spoke matters and needs to be in appropriate tension,” she said. “You can’t just make one cast-iron spoke and expect the wheel to hold up.”

Gluesenkamp Perez, the mother of a toddler and owner of a family-run auto repair shop, became a political folk hero in 2022 by pulling off one of the biggest upsets in the country, coming from nowhere to win a Republican-held House seat representing the southwest corner of Washington state.

The victory made her one of just five House Democrats representing districts that Trump carried in 2020. Two have been reelected. Republicans flipped a seat in Pennsylvania and the remaining contests – in Alaska and Ohio – remain too close to call.

So when it comes to discussing how Democrats might address their hemorrhaging rural support, Gluesenkamp Perez speaks with some authority. But also some hesitation.

“I am not a strategist. I am not a party operative,” she said from her Capitol Hill office. “It’s the wrong idea to take away from this that I’ve got some 10-point plan.”

Still, Gluesenkamp Perez does have some pointed advice as her party seeks to woo and win back the working-class voters who, for decades, were foundational to Democratic success. To wit:

Stop talking down to people, as if they’re too dumb to know what’s politically good for them. Treat those who work with their hands with the same respect and regard as people holding jobs with fancy degrees. And, perhaps above all, run more candidates who’ve gotten dirt under their fingernails, mud on the soles of their boots or grease stains on their coveralls.

“The track record of success is not whether you went to an Ivy League institution,” Gluesenkamp Perez said, but rather “what that person has done with their life, how they’ve contributed to their community, beyond building a resume that’s traditionally credentialed.”

Washington’s 3rd Congressional District runs north from the Columbia River, which forms the border with Oregon. The closest thing to a large city is Vancouver, with a population of roughly 200,000. Endless acres of farmland are edged by mountains and lush forest; when the trees blaze with autumn colors, it’s a heavenly sight.

Swimming against the Trump tide, Gluesenkamp Perez won re-election this month by significantly outperforming Kamala Harris. She pulled more votes than her fellow Democrat not just in the blue bastions of Vancouver and its suburbs, but also in the rural reaches of the district. In fact, the redder the county, the more Gluesenkamp Perez topped the vice president’s showing.

Part of that is her relatability, as someone who lives in the countryside in a home she and her husband built. Campaigning, the congresswoman spoke of the nearly four-hour round trip the couple drive to take their toddler to the one day care center in their county. She described the frustrations – head-scratching regulations, nit-picky bureaucrats – she’s dealt with while running her auto shop.

Some of that, of course, is unique to her experience. But there’s a broader applicability.

Her platform was all about practicality. Making farm loans more accessible. Using tax-preferred savings funds to pay not just for college but also tools used by loggers, plumbers, electricians and the like. Giving people the right to choose where to fix their broken appliances, rather than having to ship them back to the manufacturer.

Gluesenkamp Perez doesn’t hesitate to break with fellow Democrats on issues like border security – she backed a resolution rebuking Harris for her role in the administration’s policies – and hasn’t waded into the culture wars that animate many in her party.

“I think it’s important that we hold our cultural and moral precepts steady and with integrity,” said Gluesenkamp Perez, who called for codification of a national right to abortion rather than leaving decisions on women’s health to a bunch of “staff bros” in Washington. “But it’s also true that I don’t … know any Mexican Americans or Latinos that asked us to use significant political capital to make ‘Latinx’ happen. You need to be useful to your community and not an ideology.”

Most voters, she went on, aren’t wielding a clipboard and checking off issue boxes. What matters to them is whether a candidate reflects their values and seems “a good fit for the community … In many ways, the message is the messenger.”

That means sharing the lived experience of the people whom a lawmaker seeks to represent.

“It’s important that I lose power when everyone else loses power in the ice storm,” said Gluesenkamp Perez. “That my home insurance rates go up, too. That fentanyl is impacting my [child’s] playgroups.”

There is, as the congresswoman suggests, no one-size-fits-all solution for Democrats seeking to reclaim lost rural ground and working-class support.

In Montana, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is about as authentically rural as they come. A plain-spoken farmer and Montana native who famously lost three of his fingers in a childhood meat-grinding accident, his buzz cut and ample belly make him no one’s idea of a slick, poll-tested politician.

Still, Tester lost his reelection bid to a Republican who moved to the state just a decade ago and revealed a shaky relationship with the truth. (Among the controversies was Tim Sheehy’s claim to have been shot while serving in Afghanistan.)

That said, when you’re flat on your back you have to pick yourself up and start somewhere.

Democrats could do worse than listening to someone who’s won a pair of tough races and speaks a language rural voters appreciate and understand.

Mark Z. Barabak is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, focusing on politics in California and the West.