As she seeks to unseat a freshman representative in one of the most hotly contested congressional districts in the country, candidate and Camas City Councilor Leslie Lewallen told a crowd at the Mainstream Republicans of Washington Saturday that “COVID woke me up to the atrocities happening to the people, and the values, and to the country that I love.” “COVID and those horrible liberal policies that I saw got me back off the sidelines, and that’s when I decided to run for city council,” Lewallen said, adding she knocked on 5,000 doors during her campaign. “And the No.
1 thing that people told me, as I was knocking on all of those doors in Camas, Washington, is, ‘I don’t want to see Southwest Washington become like Portland. I don’t want to see the crime. I don’t want to see the homelessness.
I don’t want to see businesses fleeing, and I don’t want to see people moving out of state because this has become a wasteland.’” Those comments, Lewallen said, inspired her to seek to represent the Third Congressional District in the nation’s capital, though she must first advance out of the top-two August primary. With the state party formally endorsing another Republican candidate, Joe Kent, for the seat, Lewallen has repeatedly sought to present herself as an alternative with a viable path to office.
“That’s the other elephant in the room — I do have a Republican opponent,” Lewallen said. “And he ran the last time. He barely defeated Jaime Herr.
