Battle Ground’s business, church and political networks overlap
Laura Oltmann, a 41-year-old Ridgefield dietitian and registered independent, said she ultimately voted for Marie Gluesenkamp Perez because the congresswoman seemed “pretty middle of the road,” the same place she puts herself. Oltmann had supported Perez in 2024 despite the congresswoman’s support for abortion rights, and she said abortion cannot be reduced to a simple political choice. “That’s definitely been a difficult conflict for me personally,” she said. “But I also feel that there’s just something about the power of choice and for a woman to be able to make that decision with her doctor.” Oltmann also questioned resistance to government programs for children and families. “You’re gonna be anti-abortion, but you’re not gonna support children’s programs, children’s nutrition, children’s schooling, the things that they need to function,” she said.
Her ballot choice also reflected her demand for compassionate politics. Oltmann said it was time for a female president and wanted a leader with empathy. “We need a leader who not only can lead and make decisions and communicate well, but can have empathy and see the problems,” she said. “Like, we don’t need a dictator.” As a healthcare professional, she had been troubled by Trump’s immigration crackdown and recalled concern that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could enter a hospital. “At one point, there was a concern that there was gonna be … ICE coming into the hospital,” she said. For Oltmann, the issue extended beyond immigration policy to how people should be treated regardless of immigration status. “I want people to be able to feel safe, to have access to healthcare. And to be able to thrive in their communities. And if you’re living in fear, how can you function?” She said that “to be honest, the person she was running against [before] came across this very Christian nationalist, and that scares me more than probably anything.”
In nearby Battle Ground, The Guardian met Oltmann at a new Italian pastry shop, where she expressed concern about religion’s growing influence in local politics and the treatment of immigrants under Trump’s administration. Oltmann grew up in a conservative Christian family where religion was often presented in strict terms of right and wrong. She studies the Bible, listens to morning devotionals on her way to work and attends a small church near Battle Ground. Oltmann estimated that the congregation had between 100 and 150 members and met in a school, where worshippers unpacked equipment each week before putting it away again. She said she felt called to mentor others and teach the Bible.
Oltmann said she had become uncomfortable with what she viewed as the increasingly exclusionary bent of the Republican Party and with the idea that being Christian required holding particular political beliefs. “I don’t really like that we’re conflating being Christian with being politically religious. Those are different things,” she said. She also rejected the idea that the United States has a special claim to Christianity. In the Christian-nationalist belief she opposed, proponents hold that the country was divinely chosen by God and founded to promote Christian values. “I don’t believe that America is, like, God’s kingdom on Earth,” she said.
In Washington’s third congressional district, Democratic incumbent Gluesenkamp Perez faces Republican John Braun in a neck-and-neck contest that The Guardian described as one of the nation’s most-watched House races. Both candidates have drawn on religion to connect with voters. Braun has defended expressions of religious and conservative speech on college campuses. Gluesenkamp Perez, whose father served as an evangelical pastor, attends a Capitol Hill Bible study and has discussed sometimes feeling that her Christianity has embarrassed her Democratic Party colleagues. Lok Darjee’s report for The Guardian focused on Christians in southern Washington seeking to vote their values, placed the contest within religion’s long role in American life and described evangelicals as having made the Christian right a political powerhouse. A photograph of the Heritage Bible church near Cathlamet accompanied the report’s observation that voters held diverse views on religion’s role in politics. Two campaign photographs showed Gluesenkamp Perez speaking to supporters during a canvass launch at Kiwanis Park in Battle Ground on October 10 and Braun greeting voters during the Round-up Days Parade in Rainier on August 22, 2026.
A few days before the Fourth of July, Ron Peterson, the 38-year-old pastor of Longview United Pentecostal church, stood beneath a large white tent in a parking lot in Longview, Washington. Surrounded by church members selling fireworks for a fundraiser, Peterson recalled watching area residents rally after an industrial accident at the local paper mill killed 11 people in May. “We can all come together,” he said. “There’s not going to be sections in heaven.” A Guardian photograph showed candles and flowers placed during a vigil after a chemical-tank rupture at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging pulp and paper mill in Longview on May 26.
According to Peterson, at least two-thirds of his congregation is Latino, Asian, Black or multiracial. He said that diversity complicates the political image often associated with evangelical Christians, a group The Guardian described as largely, but not all, white; the group overwhelmingly backed Donald Trump in 2024 and tends to support Trump’s immigration agenda. Peterson works full time in sales while pastoring. He sees the church as a place where people in his community, including families dealing with addiction or other crises, can come for support and succor.
Peterson grew up poor in an Oregon household he describes as more New Age than Christian. He believes people like him — white Christian heterosexual men — have become targets. “People need someone to blame,” he continued. “I think the ire is towards white Christian males. Now, they want to call them white Christian nationalists. But being white and Christian is actually, if you’re truly a Christian, a wonderful thing for society.” He recounted being called into a meeting with human resources after singing a Christian hymn at work. “I sang His Eye Is on the Sparrow. And because it said, ‘Jesus is my portion,’ I had to have a meeting with HR. Someone got offended,” he said. The Guardian could not independently verify his account. Peterson contrasted that response with what he described as greater tolerance for sexually explicit music.
Peterson gave Trump high marks even as he criticized the president’s lack of fiscal discipline. “From the standpoint of righteousness, he’s done more to help the country than any president, maybe ever,” he said. Peterson argued that Trump was not a true fiscal conservative and that “from the standpoint of fiscal responsibility, I think he’s probably done worse than almost any president.” Peterson said Trump’s shortcomings appeared to matter less because the president was willing to advance causes important to the pastor’s faith. Asked about Trump’s felony conviction in the New York business-records case, the civil jury’s finding that he was liable for sexually abusing writer E Jean Carroll, and his infidelity, Peterson brought the discussion back to the Supreme Court justices Trump appointed and their 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v Wade. “Allowing the supreme court to hear Roe versus Wade again, I think that was very important,” he said, before acknowledging that his judgment ultimately “comes back down to my faith.”
Daniel HoSang, a Yale University professor who studies race and conservative political movements, described two meanings of a Christian nation. “For some, the idea of America as a Christian nation means protecting their freedom to practice their faith in a country they believe was founded on Christian values,” he said. For others, the idea meant something more far-reaching and potentially dangerous: a country where Christianity occupies a privileged position in government and public life, at the expense of people of other faiths. “If it’s a Christian country founded by Christians for Christians, that then authorizes discriminatory treatment against members of other religions,” HoSang said.
Frederick Clarkson, a research analyst who studies Christian nationalist movements for Political Research Associates, said Christian localism emphasizes building influence within smaller communities, where religious groups may have greater opportunities to shape local institutions, businesses and government. “It’s easier to get theocratic control, the fewer [the] people in the territory [that proponents] are trying to control,” he said. The report also connected the campaign to Christian localism through Joe Kent, the Republican who lost to Gluesenkamp Perez twice and later served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. During the 2022 campaign, CNN and other outlets reported that Kent had ties to white nationalists, including an interview with a Nazi sympathizer. Kent denied the characterization and distanced himself from extremists. The Guardian could not reach him for comment. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, Kent appeared on The Battle Ground Project, a Christian localism podcast co-hosted by area pastor CR Wiley and an executive at the local electronic-equipment company Maddox Industrial Transformer.
An April investigation by Oregon Public Broadcasting found that Camden Spiller, Maddox Industrial’s co-owner and chief executive, was connected to more than a dozen corporations that purchased over 30 properties in Battle Ground in six years. Spiller has described his Christian faith as one motivation for investing in the community. In an opinion essay, he cited the biblical book of Jeremiah: “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you.” Some residents welcomed the investments as a revival of the city’s downtown, while others worried about religious influence on politics and the concentration of so many local businesses in the hands of a few. Spiller and his brother also own the city’s newspaper, among other interests.
Battle Ground Mayor Eric Overholser also works at Spiller’s company. On June 1, Overholser read two proclamations supporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement and another recognizing the federal designation of antifa as a domestic terror organization. Two weeks later, he signed a proclamation celebrating nuclear and traditional families, defining them as a husband, wife and children.
Spiller is also financing a new chapel for First Presbyterian Church of Battle Ground, where he serves on the board. Its pastor, Wiley, has longstanding ties to Doug Wilson, whom the report describes as a self-described Christian nationalist who has built a network of churches, schools and other institutions around his religious vision based in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson has advocated banning abortion and incorporating Christian religious principles into American law. His publishing house, Canon Press, has published several books by Wiley. The Guardian said it contacted Spiller and Wiley with detailed questions about their possible involvement in Christian localism but received no response by publication time.
Clarkson warned that efforts to establish religious authority through local institutions could pose a longer-term threat to democratic governance, although he cautioned against overstating the movement’s immediate influence. “It’s important to understand the severity of their ideas without exaggerating their immediate consequence,” he said. Clarkson’s greater concern was what could happen if one interpretation of Christianity gained the power to govern people who did not share its beliefs. “To the extent that it grows in influence and becomes synonymous with Christianity, to whatever degree, that’s a threat to democracy in the United States,” he said.