Hello everyone and thank you for watching Northwest Public Broadcasting's vote .. coverage of the 4th Congressional District primary in Washington State.

That fourth district has been long held by Dan Newhouse, but after announcing in December he would not seek reelection that left a seat open for one of 11 candidates on the primary ballot.

My name is Matt Loveless.

Today we at Northwest Public Broadcasting in collaboration with AARP of Washington State and the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin Counties and the League of Women Voters of Yakima County are helping you get to know some of these candidates.

Some newcomers, some familiar challengers, and we have some questions for them.

This is not a debate nor a forum.

We have taken the opportunity to schedule time with the candidates one-on-one.

We'd like our viewers and listeners to consider this a bit of a video voter's guide where we've collaborated on a series of questions.

Each candidate will get all of these same questions and the same opportunity to answer.

We'll time the responses here in our NWPB studio on the WSU Tri-Cities campus.

We thank you for watching.

Well, let's get to know more of the candidates in Washington's 4th Congressional District primary as we turn our attention to John Duresky, combat veteran, lives in West Richland.

Retired Air Force, also retired recently said from Hanford.

So you've been around here.

We thank you for being here today.

Thank you.

Thank You.

Good to be here.

We're going to talk ab.. And number one, we want to talk about cost of living and affordability.

And I think that's top of mind for a lot of your voters out there.

Older adults facing rising costs for all sorts of essentials, healthcare, utilities, gas, groceries.

If elected, what federal actions do you think you would prioritize to be able to manage cost of living?

Yeah, I want to, I want to say I've been up and down this district.

You know, the district runs from Okanogan all the way to Klickitat County and everywhere in between.

And what I'm hearing from the voters is that this isn't a talking point.

This is the voter's lived experience.

This is our lived experience.

After all, I just retired.

I have a fixed income as well.

There are lots of things we can do right now to help start fixing this.

The first one is the tariffs.

The tariffs are causing damage.

They're hurting everybody in this district directly.

They're hurting the farmers.

They're hurting businesses.

And it is imperative that we get the tariffs gone and start building back our normal trade relations with our partners and being a reliable trade partner in the world.

But even more than that, the war in Iran has caused even more problems with our economics.

Prices of fuel are up on everybody.

Everybody sees the prices at the gas stations, but also input costs like fertilizer to our farmers.

So there's a ton of things that we can do on day one, but we also have a lot of work to do here because for years we have rigged the system in favor of the billionaires through the tax code.

And we've got a lot of hard work to do.

It's complicated.

It's hard to talk about it in a short TV interview.

But the fact is, is we have real work to do here and I'm ready to go to Congress and do it.

All right.

And then our second question, talking about mail-in voting, we're just having a conversation about when ballots go out.

And obviously Washington State has a history of offering mail-in and other options for people who want to vote.

But of course the topic of how we vote has become a national conversation here.

So if elected, how would you approach maintaining access while ensuring security and the public confidence in elections?

I've said this a bunch of times and I'm going to say it very clearly here.

A politician who stands in front of the American people and undermines the trust in that system is damaging our country.

It's on American and it's on patriotic.

In Washington, we have one of the best electoral systems I've seen and I've lived in several different states.

And so let me give you a very specific example here.

In Washington, we have had three successfully prosecuted cases of voter fraud since around 2000.

That's out of about 35 million votes cast.

So all of this voter stuff, all this, the SAVE Act from the Republican Party is a, uh, a solution looking for a problem.

And, and any politician who stands in front of the voters and disparages that system is damaging our country.

It's on American and I, I will do everything we can in Congress and here locally to protect our elections for, for everyone and make sure that everyone has access.

Especially people who've been underserved by this system.

We are looking to reach everybody and the system works very well.

Ballot comes right to your house.

We send you a, a pamphlet with all the information about the candidates.

Sort of what this is right here as well, Mr.

Duresky.

All right, next question.

And you sort of referenced being a retiree on a fixed income.

So let's talk about Social Security.

And if elected, how would you work to protect?

Would you work to strengthen Social Security and not just for this generation, but for future generations?

I absolutely would.

40% of the people in this district, in fact, 40% of the people on Social Security rely on Social Security as their sole source of income.

It is not an optional talking point to protect Social Security.

It is a moral imperative.

And so any politician that leads with, we need to make cuts or privatize, no, we had one of the best systems in the world and we need to restore it.

Now I have some tax changes I would like to see made.

One is the payroll is, the payroll tax is capped at 170,000 or 185,000.

I'm not, I'm not sure of the exact number right now.

But that, that, that needs to change.

Because what that means is today a guy that makes $50,000 is paying less of a percentage of his wage than the guy making $400,000.

And that's wrong.

So the system needs to be fair for everybody and everybody needs to pay their, their fair share of it because we live in one of the richest countries in the world and we have the money.

Everybody ha - We have the money in the system.

We could pay for this and we've got to make sure that we do.

It's, it's imperative.

Some other changes I'd like to se made to that system as well, just to make it easier, to make sure that the, it's funded.

I just read the other day that disability wait times for claims against social security have gone way up after the DOGE cuts, the Elon Musk cuts.

So we've got a lot of work to do there.

And similar topic when it comes to our region's elderly and that's caregiving and for people who are caregivers to maybe their parents as well.

What would you see as a way to save money and time for people like that and policy that could help?

So I've actually talked to a couple of different people about this.

I met with a group called Self Advocates and Leadership.

And one of the messages I get every day is we can give my child or this, this person the care that they need, but I would need an income.

And so we, the government, the typically Republican policy has instead demanded that we send that person off or pay someone else to do it.

And that makes the cost and the rules around it go way up.

What you get here is bad government.

We know how to do this right and we know how to get out of the way and it's time for government that does that.

People are ready to do the work in their family members and we just need to make sure they're compensated for doing so.

And it has the benefit of saving money.

Now I just want to add on this same topic though, that I publicly stated that I am for some form of universal healthcare.

And that of course would then lead... If that's a question that's coming later, sorry, but jumping the, jumping the shark a little here.

But we, it's past time to have universal healthcare in this country so that people aren't left in a lurch.

People aren't bankrupted by their, by their bills.

And also to unleash real prosperity and real opportunity for all Americans.

Well, our final question, we weren't going to get to that, so used your time how you wanted and we want you to do that.

But our last question is about tribal relations, especially in this district.

When it comes to government to government relations between a congressperson and tribal leadership particularly in this region, what do you see your role in that relationship with the federally recognized tribes in the state?

Yeah, we've actually tried to, we've actually have met with the Colville Confederated Tribes.

I've reached out to the Yakama Nation several times.

And so I heard a lot from the Colville Confederated Tribes about what kind of problems they face.

And a couple of things really jumped off, off the page to me.

They, they basically have flat budgets.

They don't get inflationary indexed increase in their budgeting every year.

They have a whole bunch of problems that that could be solved.

But the bottom line, the one that I heard from them loud and clear, and I'm sure this is true for the Yakama Nation, is they want sovereignty over their own tribal lands, certainly the reservation lands that have been dedicated to them.

And we, at minimum, we need to get out of their business and let them run their tribal lands as they seek to.

Now, Dan Newhouse actually did some work with some law enforcement parody pay act, which I would absolutely support.

It was an excellent bill.

He worked with the tribes to do that as I would as well.

This is part of the job.

Part of the job is to work with everybody in the district and represent everybody in this district and be their voice in Congress.

Not the voice of the billionaires, not the voice of the lobbyists, but to actually be the voice of the people living here and help solve their needs.

Well, Mr.

Duresky, thank you very much for this quick question and answer.

John Duresky, candidate for 4th Congressional District.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate the time.

Wonderful.

We want to thank everybody for watching these conversations with candidates in the 4th Congressional District of Washington.

And a reminder, ballots go out beginning the 17th of July.

That begins an 18-day period to vote.

We encourage you to vote early as the top two candidates in this primary will move on to the general.

The official primary election day is August 4th.

On behalf of the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin County, the League of Yakima County, and AARP of Washington State, we thank you for watching Northwest Public Broadcasting and our Vote 2026 coverage.