Second Time’s the Charm? Rematches Could Sway the Fight for Congress.

Joe Kent, a far-right Republican and former Army Special Forces officer, ran for Congress two years ago as a partisan warrior. He denied that President Biden had won the 2020 election, supported rioters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress and favored banning abortions nationwide.

He lost.

Now Mr. Kent is approaching a rematch against the Democrat who vanquished him in a competitive district in southern Washington, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, with a starkly different tone, emphasizing local issues and his personal story.

“My campaign and I have talked with local leaders, past volunteers and activists to seek their advice,” Mr. Kent said in a campaign video, in which he talked about what he learned during his first campaign and is doing differently this time. “I’m expanding my campaign’s focus to local challenges,” he adds, as well as doing “more outreach to a broader base of voters.”

His is just one of more than a dozen congressional races this year, some of them in critical battlegrounds, that will offer voters the same choices they had in 2022, featuring both Republican and Democratic challengers seeking to unseat an incumbent they’ve already faced and lost to at least once before.

These near miss contenders are returning to the campaign trail with heightened name recognition, established fund-raising networks, battle-tested campaign apparatuses and lessons learned from their failed bids that they hope will help them win this time. Their success or failure will help determine who wins control of the closely divided House in November.

In California, Representative John Duarte bested his Democratic challenger, Adam Gray, by just a few hundred votes two years ago in one of the closest House races in the nation. The victory was a key pickup for Republicans that helped them take power in the House. This year, Democrats are aggressively targeting the seat once again.