The new congresswoman from the 3rd District is Jaime Herrera Beutler, who as a young Latina is a rarity in the Republican Party. She succeeded retiring Democratic Rep. Brian Baird, who held the seat for six terms. Read More

The new congresswoman from the 3rd District is Jaime Herrera Beutler, who as a young Latina is a rarity in the Republican Party. She succeeded retiring Democratic Rep. Brian Baird, who held the seat for six terms.

Herrera Beutler grew up in the region. Her father was a printer, and her parents raised six children, so finances were tight. It was a blended family—her parents took in an uncle’s children to shelter them from the gangs and violence in Southern California. “My parents demonstrated it’s better to sacrifice your own personal comfort at times,” she told National Journal. She took a job as a nanny to help pay her way through college. She started out studying nursing at Seattle Pacific University, but took time off from her studies after concluding that nursing wasn’t the right field for her. Herrera Beutler ultimately got a degree in communications from the University of Washington in 2004. She got involved in politics as a teenager, knocking on doors for Republican candidates in the 1994 campaign that resulted in the GOP capturing majorities in both chambers of Congress. While in college, she scored a prestigious White House internship.

After graduating, she worked as a legislative aide to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., who became her mentor. Herrera Beutler specialized in health care, education, and veterans and women’s issues. When a seat unexpectedly opened up in the state legislature in fall 2007, she was appointed, and two years later, she won the election in her own right with 60% of the vote. She served on the health, transportation, and human services committees, and encouraged by colleagues to take on a greater role, she became the assistant floor leader, the only woman and minority on the Republican leadership team.

When Baird announced that he would retire at the end of his term in 2010, Herrera Beutler, age 31 and a newlywed, discussed getting into the race with her husband, Daniel Beutler, who was about to start law school. They decided to delay his plans so she could run. “We didn’t want to look back in 10 or 20 years and say to our children we were too comfortable to do what was right,” she said. Herrera Beutler beat out a crowded Republican primary field that included two tea party-backed candidates, winning 28% of the vote, 14 percentage points ahead of her closest competitor. She was the GOP establishment pick in the race and got help from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which put her on its “Young Guns” list of candidates worthy of funding and advertising.

In the general election campaign, Herrera Beutler was swamped by her opponent’s fundraising. Media and technology entrepreneur Denny Heck raised $2 million, including $350,000 of his own money, to her $1.5 million. Still, she remained competitive. She criticized Heck for his support of the health care overhaul championed by Democrats in Congress and of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill. “I may not have founder or CEO in my name,” she said in a dig at her opponent, “but most of the folks in the 3rd Congressional District right now are having trouble with their family budget.… It allows me to truly understand why we’re so frustrated at overspending.” Her television ads concluded, “For fiscal sanity, Jaime Herrera for Congress.”

Heck ran as a moderate Democrat and emphasized his experience in business creating jobs, launching a “jobs tour” of the district and supporting such Democratic measures as a bill creating $30 billion in loans for small business. Heck, who was endorsed by Baird, also favored exempting the highest-income taxpayers from a proposal to extend the Bush-era tax cuts. Herrera Beutler supported an extension for all taxpayers, and also opposed the small business bill. Herrera Buetler won 53% to 47%.

In Washington, she got a seat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and said she would try to reform the way Congress funds transportation projects, which she called “archaic.” On the Subcommittee on Water Resources and the Environment, Herrera Buetler in January 2011 joined 17 other lawmakers in a letter to the Council on Environmental Quality protesting a move to restrict the use of pesticides and herbicides in salmon watersheds.