Standing beneath towering shelves of kegs in the back of Vancouver’s Loowit Brewing, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has just given a thank-you talk to her supporters after squeaking through another tight election. As she wraps up her remarks in that December gathering and pauses for questions, a man in the crowd speaks up: “I’d like to see you expand the Blue Dog Coalition … I think that’s exactly what we need at the broader level.”
“I have had so many people come up to me in D.C., and be like, ‘Hey, you know, I think we should, like, maybe start something that’s oriented around people in the trades and who are working for a living,” Gluesenkamp Perez said to the crowd. “And I’ll slowly put on my Blue Dogs hat, ‘Like you mean what we’ve been doing?’”