A Washington State congresswoman is facing renewed scrutiny over allegations about her college years and early adulthood as she battles to hold onto her rural congressional seat. 

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez brandished a blue-collar image that helped the Democrat win in a Trump-friendly district. But archived student records and podcast claims have resurfaced to haunt her.

Gluesenkamp Perez, who represents Washington's 3rd Congressional District, built her political identity around pragmatism, small-business experience and offering something different to the national Democratic stereotype. 

That image helped fuel her 2022 victory. But as another difficult race takes shape, a far different image is emerging - one tied to fetish-themed campus events at Reed College and a string of unflattering personal allegations published in the New York Post from people who say they knew her years ago.

The most politically damaging material centers on her time at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where she graduated in 2012. 

Gluesenkamp Perez served in student government and chaired the finance committee, placing her near decisions involving student funding.

According to Willamette Week, student senate posts from that period show she helped secure $4,000 for a 'Fetish Ball' described as featuring a DJ and a 'dark room', latex fetish galas and drug-fueled campus rituals.

The event was linked to Reed's Fetish Club, which was known for offering sessions including 'BDSM 201' and instruction on 'flogging and caning, violet wand, and basic rope bondage.' 

Another offering was described as 'kinky crafts,' where participants made their own bondage gear.

Gluesenkamp Perez also championed funding for the 'Renn Fayre', a campus festival infamous for the 'Picts'- groups of students who sprint across campus entirely nude, covered in body paint, to display their genitals to visiting alumni. 

She has sold a very different image to voters - one that saw her present herself as grounded, moderate and focused on everyday life.

In 2008, Willamette Week reported that Reed students had circulated a guide to substances including 'pot and alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, benzos, LSD, DMT, mescaline, MDMA, PCP, ketamine, nitrous oxide, opiates, depressants and psilocybin.' 

Additional references from 2012 have also drawn attention to an 'LSD giveaway' at the student union and 'Nitrogen Day,' described as an event tied to nitrous oxide use - commonly known as whippets.

Gluesenkamp Perez held a role in student leadership while such activities were being promoted.

The most vivid allegations come from outside the official campus record - from people who say they knew her personally after college.

On a January episode of the podcast COEXIST, Inc., Isaac Eger alleged that Gluesenkamp Perez stayed with friends after a breakup, first on a couch and later in a cramped space above a garage. 

According to Eger, she resisted paying even very low rent, which he said was just '$50, $75 a month,' and instead tried to barter with food that had gone bad.

At one point, Eger said, she offered 'four feet of rotten avocados' as payment.

'The kind of avocado where you can't even turn it into guacamole or anything,' he recalled. 'And she's like, "here's rent."'

He said he refused. 'Uh, no, absolutely not,' he remembered telling her. 'She would literally never pay rent.'

Eger also described her as a 'Portland dumpster diver' and alleged that she once decapitated a chicken while horrified roommates scrambled online to figure out a humane way to kill it. 

While serving on the Washington Democrats Executive Committee, she helped advance a platform that advocated for the decriminalization of sex work and narcotics. 

Gluesenkamp Perez did not rise as a conventional progressive. She rose by convincing skeptical voters that she was a practical, blue-collar Democrat willing to break with her own party. 

She later angered progressives by voting for a Department of Homeland Security funding package that included $10 billion for ICE. 

Defending that vote to fund ICE, she said: 'The Department of Homeland Security is extremely important to my community. I could not in good conscience vote to shut it down.'

That stance made her look independent but it also left her squeezed from both sides - never fully embraced by the left, yet still highly vulnerable to personal and cultural attacks from the right.

A Reed alumni profile once called her a 'thoughtful, creative student' with a 'reputation for being down for anything.'

Gluesenkamp Perez is currently locked in a brutal reelection battle against Republican state senate minority leader John Braun.

Having stunned the political world in 2022 by defeating Republican Joe Kent, she has since walked a political tightrope. 

Gluesenkamp Perez has not responded to a request for comment.