- Well, hello everybody, and thank you for watching us on Northwest Public Broadcasting in collaboration with AARP Washington and the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin Counties, and the League of Women Voters of Yakima County.

Tonight, as we approach the midterm election, we're gonna get a chance to hear from candidates in Washington's Fourth Congressional District, John Duresky and Amanda McKinney.

We'll introduce them in just a moment, but first I want to set the stage for today's program.

And a major part of our mission here is to provide a fair, nonpartisan, and hopefully quiet environment for our candidates to speak on issues and to inform the public about those seeking their votes.

So here we are in the WSU Tri-Cities television studio in Richland with just a handful of our partners, media, and members of the candidates' campaigns.

And I'll tell you, we can't do this without our partners and collaborators, so I want to thank AARP Washington and our local Leagues of Women Voters.

Those chapters have worked on connecting with candidates as well as providing today's questions, so we thank them for their time.

So we do have some rules set up for tonight's debate or forum, whatever you'd like to call it.

And for fairness, this program has been carefully structured to make sure our candidates get the exact same amount of time and opportunity to answer our questions.

These questions created and collected by our partners.

More than 120 came in.

To answer all those would take about 10 hours.

So we've told candidates the plan for this one-hour program.

We're going to give them 90 seconds each for opening statements.

After that, we'll get into those questions, an even number of them since each candidate will go first an equal number of times.

There will be no rebuttals and no closing statements tonight.

And I'll add, interruptions by either candidate or anybody off camera is not something we'd like to tolerate today.

I also may adjust response times and add or remove questions based on time needs for this one-hour program.

A lot of rules there, but I want to get to the candidates now, the top two out of a primary that had 11 on the ballot in our WSU Tri-Cities studio tonight.

Amanda McKinney and John Duresky, thank you so much for taking out time to come to Richland today.

And this race, by the way, replacing Congressman Dan Newhouse, he's not going to occupy this congressional seat for the first time since 2015.

Frankly, this is the first time we've had both Fourth District candidates in this studio for a general election.

So Ms.

Duresky, Ms.

McKinney, we really do want to thank you for your time and your willingness to debate in this sort of forum.

We'll get to those questions we mentioned in a moment.

Before we start, I want to acknowledge the wonderful support we got from voters in this area.

We did our best to narrow it down to just a handful of topics, topics very relevant, especially to those in Congress.

Before we get to those, we have given our candidates 90 seconds for opening statements.

Mr.

Duresky, just by virtue of being first alphabetically by last name, we'll have you go first here with your opening statement, sir.

- Thank you very much.

Great to be here.

First of all, I want to thank the League of Women Voters, and, of course, PBS for having us here.

It's great to have this opportunity.

My name is John Duresky, and I'm asking here for your vote in November.

I'm a 24-year Air Force veteran.

I've got a combat deployment to Iraq in 2006, as well as deployments all around the world.

After my Air Force career, I did civil service for 13 years, including at United States Strategic Command and also right here at the Hanford Field Office, where I performed oversight for the Tank Waste Retrieval Mission.

I'm excited to talk about the issues tonight, but one of the issues I want to start out right from the beginning is my oath of office.

When I was 19 years old, I raised my right hand and I swore an oath.

And I want you all to know that that oath is not to a political party.

It is not to the president of the United States.

It is to the Constitution of the United States, and it is to the people of this district.

I am ready to continue serving as I have served these long years.

I've got the track record, we've got the message, we've got the team, and we're ready to go win in November.

Thank you.

- [Matt] Mr.

Duresky, thank you very much.

Ms.

McKinney, 90 seconds for your opening statement.

- Thank you.

I also would like to thank AARP, the League of Women Voters, and this wonderful campus and everyone who put this together.

It is an honor to be here and be able to stand by Mr.

Duresky's side.

And thank you, sir, for your service.

I am genuinely grateful.

Everyone watching live and everyone who will be watching later after work and school and everyone gets down to the dinner table, I'm Amanda McKinney.

I am the Republican candidate for Congress in Central Washington.

I am incredibly proud to be before you today, one of the only candidates who's actually grown up in agriculture, and now on your primary ballot, or, excuse me, your general ballot, I will only be the only one who's actually from the community who's actually been raised in agriculture.

So my family has been farming in the beautiful Yakima Valley and Kittitas Valleys for many generations.

And I have been serving my community through Rotary and many other philanthropic organizations and, through graduating from Central Washington, went into finance.

And I have been very blessed to have a career that helped me to help our local community members achieve the dream of home ownership and pass on generational wealth.

Through all of that, I gained a lot of experience into how government impacts every aspect of our lives.

I was asked to run for county commissioner by many people in the community six years ago.

It's been an honor to serve.

My husband and I, with our two children, are really looking forward to the excitement and the joy of continuing our service to the community as we go to Congress in November.

And I look forward to earning your vote tonight.

Thank you.

- All right.

Thank you both once again for being here.

Let's get to those questions gathered throughout the past several weeks from various groups and interested citizens.

And we want to thank those out there who participated in the process.

Truly, you have played a key role in adding value to tonight's program.

So we're setting our timer for responses to two minutes for these first set of questions.

We'll alternate which candidate responds first.

And our first question, let's talk about affordability.

This is on everybody's minds right now.

And we know rising prices putting pressure on households across generations.

AARP gave us a little bit of research on this, found that 94% of adults 50 and older say prices have risen for them in recent months.

Many are cutting back not just on discretionary spending, but essentials like groceries, of course.

So what specific actions would you support in Congress to help people keep up with the rising cost of living and protect their financial security?

Mr.

Duresky, with the questions, we'll go to you first.

- Thank you very much.

First, I want to be clear.

Affordability is not a buzzword.

We've been all over this district, and we've talked to voters up and down the district, and we know how hard it is.

One of the candidates last night was talking about his full-time day job and his job as a PUD commissioner.

You hear that all the time in rural America, people working two jobs and a side hustle.

We have seen grocery prices rise and rise.

On the way up the mountain the other day, I saw diesel at $8.50 a gallon.

Fixing this is an immediate necessity.

The tariffs and the trade war have a lot to do with how we got here.

We built a model of prosperity over the last 80 years with our trade regime, and in the last two years, it's been broken.

Now, I would be willing to have a conversation with anybody who would have that conversation about what our trade practices should look like going forward, but what they should not be done is set by an executive.

They should be set by Congress, as Article I of the Constitution states.

Finally, the war in Iran has led to the fuel prices, inputs to fertilizer, inflation, and, indeed, even our mortgage rates that are ticking up are a result of instability in our financial markets.

I don't want to go down the rabbit hole too far on the war, but I will say that we have got ourself in a situation here that I don't quite understand the way out.

The American way of fighting is to build, first of all, support at home and then build support with the international community.

We did none of that, and we are paying the price today.

There doesn't seem to be any way to open the Strait of Hormuz, and now the Red Sea transit is in danger as well.

We have a duty to work with our allies, get the strait open, get oil flowing again so that we can afford to fill up our trucks.

- Mr.

Duresky, thank you very much.

Ms.

McKinney, your response.

- Yes, well, I'm the one who does the grocery shopping, so I know about affordability.

I've also had, as I said, a career in finance, and I can tell you that I have tracked affordability through my clients for many decades.

And when we talk about fuel costs, one need only look at the inflationary addition to the Obama and the Biden administration to see that the average fuel prices now were exceeded even back then when you account for inflation.

The reality is that there is prosperity outside of the four corners of Washington State, and we are not experiencing it because of our state policies.

So, number one, energy.

I agree.

Huge problem.

In Washington State, we found a way to ban natural gas.

We've relied on solar and wind.

We've got pockets of our community who are anti-nuclear, and we don't want to have the clean hydro power that is absolutely abundant and what makes our community so great.

So what I want to see is a continuance of the Trump administration's energy independence and domination.

We had a wonderful announcement by the president today.

We are going to see eight new nuclear reactors being built.

We've got a massive pipeline from Alaska that's gonna go in.

I want to make sure that everyone in Washington State, and especially here at home, knows that we can have affordable energy prices, and energy does drive up input costs across the board, but it's going to be by embracing the energy policies of the Trump administration, not the Ferguson administration, which is a carryover of the Jay Inslee administration.

The other thing is regulation.

I have seen overregulation drive up the costs, and it's false to say that the tariffs and the war in Iran are why we're having a problem with diesel and farming.

And anyone who's listening knows this because if you have generational farmers in your family, you know this.

This has been death by a thousand cuts.

We have overregulation for environmental regulation, everything from land use to grazing, the closing of public lands, labor costs.

All of it is because of overregulation.

And that's one way we're gonna cut back and get us going again and get this engine going.

- Thank you very much, Ms.

McKinney.

We'll get a chance to elaborate, as you may guess, on a few of those topics throughout the course of this program.

And this next one, let's talk about agriculture.

We've already talked about it a little bit here.

A recent headline from NPR reads, "American farmers are hurting and worried about their futures."

And there's a list of concerns.

We talked about the diesel prices, a forecast of more increases on the way, availability and cost of farm workers, even prices of things like fertilizer for those farms.

Some we've spoken with in the district tell us entire crops are going unpicked.

And ultimately, the concern for non-farmers is how it's going to trickle down as things that they buy affect prices on store shelves.

So what actions, Ms.

McKinney, first, could you take to address farmer concerns about all of the rising costs they're experiencing?

- Well, increased competition for those places that provide us what we need for farming.

So that's fertilizer, that's seeds.

It's also making sure that we have the space to regrow our cattle herds.

And again, that's increasing the areas that we can actually go grow in our herd and making sure that we can actually have common-sense practices on the farm that let us deliver the food to the table.

So deregulation is going to be key there.

You can no longer field-dress any cattle, and you wonder why we have increased cost to beef.

Grazing lands are taken away.

The H-2A worker program is an absolute godsend to our community.

We have used it abundantly, more proliferation of the H-2A program than any other community.

I am supportive of expanding that so we can have certain parts of our agriculture sector that actually can benefit from them, which presently could not, such as dairy, and having greater seasonality.

So allowing them to go around, for example, all over Congressional District 4 from crop to crop and expand that.

But they must go home because we want people to be in our country legally, and that way we can bifurcate this issue from immigration.

I know we'll probably get an immigration question, but I do believe very strongly that there is bipartisan support that's been demonstrated, which I will continue in the path that Congressman Newhouse has forged in the way of expanding H-2A workers.

But the way to success is to bifurcate the issue completely from immigration.

When it comes to regulation from the state, I think that the federal government has a role, but I am a very strong proponent of states' rights, which is why I have committed to coming home every single week, flying here to make sure that I am home, to continue to listen to everyone in the community so that the solutions are coming from within.

I don't have to drive around to learn what our district looks like.

I haven't lived here just five years.

It's been a generation of institutional knowledge that has been put in me from loving family and friends.

And a lot of the issues that I know that are gonna be solved are because of their ideas instead of coming from top-down government.

So I don't go to Congress with the answers.

The answers are right here in the district, and I'm gonna find them from talking to our friends and family.

- Thank you very much.

Mr.

Duresky, same question to you.

Any actions that you could foresee taking to address concerns of farmers in our district?

- Yeah.

Well, we have a lot of work to do here.

And part of doing this job is building networks and talking to people and building relationships.

That's a big deal because these markets are very complex.

I talked to some growers who were explaining to me that they wanted the regulations to be just a certain way so that it guaranteed the produce got there to the destination at the quality that they wanted.

Now, I do want to say, I haven't talked about my resume very much, but, you know, I hoed beans when I was a kid, so I'm not unfamiliar with agriculture.

We've lived in rural America my whole life.

And matter of fact, I have family members who own 2,000 acres of soybean and corn land in south-central Nebraska.

But I don't need to be that expert.

It's not my job as a congressman to know everything.

My job is to get the people on the team that can do the work.

That's what leadership's about.

And I've got the experience from being a major and solving problems on the E-4B to running complex oversight out at Hanford.

So I know how to build those networks.

I know how to get done what needs to be done, and there's a lot that needs to be done.

The tariffs have genuinely damaged our export markets.

I've heard from a lot of things, though, about the places where government does intersect.

And I heard something interesting here.

I keep hearing that it's Washington State's fault, it's the Democrats in Olympia's fault, but then I also heard about states' rights.

And so I guess we have to have both, really.

Washington makes laws.

Sometimes they don't work out for the agriculture, and I understand that.

So we've got to have the right laws for everybody.

I certainly agree that the H-2A program needs to be refined and needs to be easier to implement, especially for the smaller growers.

That's what I'm most interested is helping those small growers.

Thank you.

- All right.

Thank you both.

Hang on to a couple of those thoughts, for sure.

Our next question, question three.

The 2026 Trustees Report projects that, unless Congress acts, Social Security's combined trust funds will be depleted in 2034.

At that point, ongoing payroll tax revenue would be sufficient to pay about 83% of scheduled benefits.

What specific solutions would you support to close that program's long-term financial gap.

Mr.

Duresky?

- Thank you.

It's a good question.

And I want to say this is one of those areas that I hate the politics involved with this.

I hate that there's always a partisan element to this because this is very serious.

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

Protecting Social Security is not a nice-to-have.

It is a moral obligation.

The first thing that we have to do right away is we have to remove the payroll tax cap.

Right now, if you're a normal guy making $50,000 a year, you pay 6.2%.

But somebody making $500,000 a year pays 2% because that's the way the tax is set up.

That seems backwards to me.

I think that everyone should pay 6.2%.

And so that's the first change I would make on day one.

We've got other work to do here.

A lot of times, when we are working on these programs, the instinct is to spend $100 to prevent $1 of fraud.

That's the kind of government we don't need.

A lot of people right now that are using the disability function, and they depend on that as well, they have severely disabled children, and they're depending on Social Security.

And what they're getting now is work requirements, or we're literally taking money away and forcing them to put their children or their loved one that they're caring for in an institution instead of just paying them.

So we got real work to do to fix Social Security, and what I am absolutely sure that we don't want to do is privatize it or put Wall Street in charge of it.

We've got to keep Wall Street out of our Social Security.

I just have no doubt about that.

And so a lot of work to do here, and I'm ready to go do it, ready to make the hard decisions.

Thank you.

- [Matt] And Ms.

McKinney, same question about Social Security.

- Well, my folks are all receiving Social Security, and it's been something that even my generation has talked about, you know, are we going to see it?

Promises made and promises kept.

I think that it's very clear, and I do hear a lot of bipartisan commitments about this.

Nobody wants to see or will vote for diminishing of benefits.

We must look for fraud.

I was involved in county government still during COVID.

I will tell you that we received millions and millions of dollars from the federal government direct to the county.

One of it was for rental assistance, and we had six providers in our community.

And I was on a Zoom call with the Inslee administration, and I think there was a Biden administration official on, and I asked a simple question.

I'm a banker.

(chuckles) How do we prevent someone who's a bad actor from going to all six of our providers and committing fraud and receiving funds more than they have coming to them?

And the response was, (gasps) "How dare you look for fraud?

Surely nobody would commit fraud during a global pandemic."

No, I'm a banker.

I know that fraud happens in every industry, and I also know that under condensed timelines, overworked people, and a large amount of money to get out the door, you're gonna see more of it.

And so I enacted the only kind in Washington State of fraud detection.

And, you know, the newspaper articles said, "Well, we didn't get $1 million over $20 million out the door because we took too long to detect fraud."

And I asked for an audit.

And what happened?

Over $6 million in fraudulent applications.

244 applications just to Yakima County were fraudulent, and we didn't pay those.

And when you look for fraud, it means that the money actually goes to the people who deserve it.

That's how we continue to make sure Social Security is solvent.

And another thing about the tax that comes, it's a direct benefit.

It is not a shift.

You don't earn more and give more to other people.

It is a direct benefit.

We have to adhere to that.

- All right, Ms.

McKinney, thank you very much.

All right, moving on to our fourth question.

We have many to go here.

Take a breath.

In rural Central Washington, there are many family caregivers facing limited access to services and support while also balancing work and caregiving responsibilities, certainly in the purview of AARP Washington here, and, according to some reports from that organization, caregivers spend an average of about $7,200 of their own money every year just providing care to their loved ones.

So what federal action would you prioritize to help make caregiving more affordable and manageable for families in rural communities?

Ms.

McKinney.

- That's a great question.

You know, I've got a family member, or a friend of a family member, a close family friend on our street, on our neighborhood, who is right now receiving 24-hour care.

I see the caregivers coming in and trading their times and being able to greet them with a smile and know that they're doing so much to make sure that that loved one is being well cared for while the family is away at their job and at school.

But I think it's important, as you mentioned, how can the federal government help?

Again, it's similar to how President Donald Trump has taken away the tax on Social Security, taken away tax on tips.

I think there's an opportunity there to look at, you know, mileage deductions.

How can the federal government provide incentives and tax benefits for people who are providing that care, especially in rural areas?

You know, we all know that we have to drive a further distance to get where we're going.

We don't have mass transit, and so I do think there's a role for the federal government to participate in that, but at the end of the day, we want to encourage more people to go into that type of caregiving, and whatever we can do as a federal government to incentivize that in a way that doesn't cost our taxpayers' dollars, I'm in favor of.

- [Matt] Mr.

Duresky, same question.

- Yeah, thank you.

So I actually just covered this question actually in my last answer.

I've actually talked to a bunch of people.

I've met a group called Self Advocates in Leadership, and I've listened to disabled people talk about their struggles and their challenges with getting the appropriate care.

And I heard some genuinely heartbreaking stories where a caregiver was taking care of their disabled child, and instead of being able to get, they were asking for a small amount of money to get paid for the value of caring for that child, the government, the federal government and the state government together said, "No, no, that has to happen in a care facility."

And so for literally triple the cost that they could have done by caring for them at home, we sent them to an institution instead.

That's government we don't need.

And I am definitely part of the party that wants to fix that kind of thing.

We want to make it easier for caregivers to care for their children, to care for their loved ones in their own home, and make it so that we... By the way, it's a win-win because we get the benefit of getting good care for them at a lower cost to the government.

That's the kind of government that I'd really like to see more of.

There's a lot of things we can do if you put politics aside, if you put ideology aside, and you look for real improvements that you can make by just paying people to take care of it.

And so I think there's a lot of work to do there, and I look forward to doing it when I get to Congress.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

And there's a reason we posed that question in terms of rural communities and rural voters, and this next question addresses it in a similar way, but not the at-home care.

It's where they go if they don't have the at-home care.

And according to several reports, one submitter who sent in this question cited the University of North Carolina's Sheps Center for Health Services Research.

It says, "Cuts to Medicaid in the One Big Beautiful Bill put nine of the 12 hospitals in Washington's Fourth District at risk of closure."

Do you agree with that study, that projection?

And secondly, do you have a plan for protecting healthcare access, Mr.

Duresky?

- Yeah.

Yes, I absolutely agree with that.

And I've talked to the hospital administrators, and I've heard from the individuals.

I talked to a guy who said, "Well, I almost had to have my toe amputated because there was no podiatrist in town, and I almost didn't get to the facility down in Wenatchee fast enough."

So we got a lot of work to do to get the right accessibility and the standards of care in these rural communities.

And again, I have to be clear about what's at stake here.

If a hospital leaves one of these small local communities, that local community is gonna dry up.

Those communities could die because their hospital had to close.

Now, it's kind of technical and stuff, but the short answer here is reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare in Washington are among the lowest in the nation.

That has to be fixed.

That's a federal government thing.

The subsidies for the Affordable Care Act were cut, and now people's premiums are going up double and triple.

And on January 1st, you're going to start to see the work requirements that are going to push people off of insurance.

That is going to mean that those rural hospitals that are already under that strain are even more strained.

Fixing that on day one is going to be the biggest job when we get there, finding a solution for that so we don't go back to the bad old days of personal medical bankruptcy and people using the emergency for care, which costs a lot more money.

Again, I'm looking for solutions that both make sense for individuals and for our people, but also are financially sound.

And the Big Beautiful Bill broke a lot of that, and it's time to undo it.

Thank you.

- Thanks, Mr.

Duresky.

And Ms.

McKinney, same question.

And it was sort of a two-parter.

I'll just restate it quickly.

Do you agree with the sentiment or the forecasts that nine of 12 hospitals in the Fourth District are in fear of closing in direct result to the One Big Beautiful Bill?

And what relief, or what would you tell the hospitals and the people who live in the rural district about that problem?

- Well, I would agree in part.

So it is very clear that our hospitals are under duress.

What I would disagree with is that it's because of the One Big Beautiful Bill and only because of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

We have actually had a rural healthcare issue, not only here in Central Washington, but across America, building and building for several decades.

Actually, it worsened since the Affordable Care Act.

We saw government get more involved in our healthcare, and the result is higher costs, lower quality of care.

And I think it's safe to say, listening to the explanation, that the last thing we should do is give the government more control, which is universal healthcare, which is what Mr.

Duresky is an advocate of.

Not only will it ruin your ability to actually get good quality care, but it is going to drive up costs even more, to the trillions, potentially.

And so what we need to do is, from the ground up, look to each individual community.

I am very proud to be from Yakima, where we had private citizens look around and say, "How do we solve our own problem?"

We don't have rural caregivers.

People don't want to go into general practice anymore.

They don't want to serve their rural communities.

So Pacific Northwest Health Science University was started, not by the government, but by private citizens who wanted to encourage people to come to rural America, learn how to be doctors, and go out and serve their rural communities.

Another issue that I've dealt with as a county commissioner is the public defender issue that we have here.

I think that's a great example of one of the solutions that we can use for rural healthcare and keeping providers here.

And one of the things that we've done is offer up incentives to pay down student loan debt.

I think a lot of providers would want to come to communities if they knew they didn't have a huge expense waiting for them and they're needing to go to a large metropolitan area for a big career.

I think the other thing we have to do is address the fact that there are a lot of people who are using our services and abusing them, and thankfully, technology is going to allow us to cut through that.

So, as I said on a previous answer, for every dollar that we find of fraud, it means that that dollar's gonna go help the people who need it, and those are the people who are citizens of Central Washington District 4.

- Ms.

McKinney, thank you very much.

Our next question has to do with the SAVE Act, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, well-publicized proposal to have people in the US prove citizenship in order to vote.

Within that bill, we're hearing from a number of people who submitted questions among the millions of citizens who say maybe documents aren't readily available, they're from a rural community, married women who've taken their husband's surnames, two-thirds of Washingtonians who lack enhanced IDs.

So the question is, how do you respond to concerns that this requirement imposes unnecessary burdens on eligible rural mail-in voters who like the system we have in place?

- Well, I would challenge you that most people like the system we have in place because I think, especially in Central Washington, there are a lot of people who are dissatisfied.

Trusting our election system is vital to the continuancy of our republic.

People in Washington do not trust the mail-in voter system as we have it.

There are other states that do it, but they do it much differently.

Now, being in banking, I can tell you that the banking industry learned how long ago and far away to protect your bank account.

We do it through multifactor authentication.

Think of what you have to do to log into your computer at your employer.

There are many things that we all do to access tobacco, alcohol, go to get on an airplane where it requires identification.

We know we can do these things.

I think it's kind of offensive to suggest that many people in rural America aren't smart enough to figure out how to get an identification.

I think that's terrible that you would say that.

And at the end of the day, our voting system should be protected.

And what I can tell you is that I want my vote to be as secure as my money.

So the question I pose is, if I opened a bank and mailed a prefilled withdrawal slip to the address on file, and all it took was to drain that bank account was someone showing up at the counter and giving the clerk the pre-signed signature, would you bank with me if anyone could forge your signature?

Because there are a lot of really great volunteers across Washington State who are verifying signatures, but they're doing it with their human eyes.

Human error is real.

We should want our vote to be as secure as the bank account when we log on and the money is still there.

I want to see greater security in our voting, and the best way to do that is valid ID and proof of citizenship.

- Thank you, Ms.

McKinney.

Mr.

Duresky, same question.

- Yeah, thank you.

So since about the year 2000, there have been three or four verified cases of in-person voter fraud here in Washington.

Out of about 35 million votes cast.

It's an error rate, it's a fraud rate, if you will, of one in 10 million.

This has always been a solution looking for a problem.

Now, I've voted in many different states, and I've seen how either hard or easy it is, and I am shocked at how well the system works here.

The voter pamphlet lets me sit down with my laptop and actually look at and look for the candidates and understand who I'm voting for in a very deliberate way.

And then I can have a discussion with my family and talk about who we think the best candidate is.

It's literally the best possible outcome with the most informed voters.

And I think that that's very good for America.

But I want to go a little deeper on this because trust in our institutions is absolutely critical.

And this is an issue that a group of people decided was going to be an issue.

And if you're going to stand in front of the American people and talk about the issue, an issue like this, and damage the very trust, the very foundation of our republic, then you have a duty to be right on the facts.

You have a duty to be honest and forthright.

And the fraud has never been there.

People have looked at this over and over again, and they've never found the kind of fraud that would throw an election.

Now, the elections are close, make no doubt.

I just talked to a guy who won his election by 49 votes.

The votes matter.

But we've got to be honest about what the problem is, and the problem is people damaging trust in our institutions.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

Next question.

This is a district with more than two million acres of reservation land.

And so the question, first part of the question, simple, do you recognize tribal sovereignty and treaty rights?

And second, what would meaningful tribal consultation and partnership look like in practice when interest might come into conflict and a question such as energy development on lands that are sacred to the region's tribes?

Mr.

Duresky.

- Yeah, this is a hard question, actually.

I've actually had an opportunity to meet with the Colville Confederated Tribes twice and with the Yakama Nation twice, and actually, I'm meeting them again next week.

I absolutely respect the sovereignty.

The message that came clear, very clear from them is, "Hey, you've given us this land."

We didn't give it to them, that's the land that they have.

"And we want our sovereignty respected on that land."

Now, the other person, literally two days ago, one of the woman was talking about, you know, building renewable power on some of these traditionally held lands or traditionally ceded lands.

And that's a tough issue because some of that land's private property, or some of it's maybe state land or federal land.

And so there really is a conflict there, and there are multiple stakeholders.

So we absolutely owe all of the tribal members here in this district.

We've already kind of said we will have a dedicated staffer to tribal issues to make sure that we're carrying their message forward to DC.

I've learned from them that their budgeting has been flat.

They don't get an annual cost-of-living adjustment to their budgets, and they're pretty dependent.

So not only are we messing with their sovereignty and telling them what they can and can't do on their lands, but then we're not making good on our own commitments to them.

And so we got a lot of work to do here.

And again, every time you dip a fingernail in this stuff, I am shocked at how complicated it is, how many layers it is, how many different stakeholders there are.

And that's why I always say this: it's time to send adults to Congress, and I'm ready to go make those hard decisions on behalf of the people of this district and on behalf of the tribal nations.

And I made it clear to them that I will be back to hear from them and hear their issues and understand what they need in DC.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

Ms.

McKinney, same question.

- Well, I have been very honored to be the active member representing Municipals Yakima County on the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan.

You know, I was raised in this district to hunt and camp and fish and to enjoy all of the outdoors.

The greatest stewards of the land are the people whose livelihoods and lives depend upon the success and vibrancy of that land.

And through the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan, we've worked on the most complex issue to our district, which is water.

And water scarcity, legal availability, and certainty is the most pressing issue.

We cannot have agriculture, and we can't have a vibrant environment, we can't have municipal development, and we can't have energy production without water.

And what's unique about the integrated plan is that it is stakeholder-led.

And so as a group, including the Yakama Nation, our state, federal conservation partners, our irrigators, we have developed plans to conserve water, but also find ways to restore habitat, to respect those culturally sensitive lands.

And the most important thing to learn from that and what can be replicated across the American West is that the most important issue, the scarcity of water, is something that most people are suing each other for.

Now, that did happen for a long time, but we set the stage.

This is the golden standard for resource management.

So I would apply that in the same way as land use for water.

The best solution is always one that involves the stakeholders who are actually impacted.

And when you're actually around a table working together and truly respecting that we're trying to do no harm to any party, you end up with an alternative.

And I've seen it happen well in our state.

I've seen it happen not so well.

The Horse Heaven Hills project that was put forward by Governor Inslee and the EFSEC council, a terrible, terrible situation where the Yakama Nation unfortunately has had to go through adjudication.

I think it's important to get all the stakeholders together because there's always a path forward if everyone can work to agree on it.

- All right, Mr.

McKinney, thank you very much.

All right, our next question, and this is a big one, and I don't mean to hype it up too much, but a quick story.

I was in my kid's room getting him ready for bed yesterday, and he had a little constitution there, just a little copy of it.

Read through the whole thing.

I don't know why I read through the Constitution yesterday, but it came in handy for today because many of us remember our grade school civics lessons, phrases like checks and balances.

You learned about the very limited scope of presidential power in that document and an important topic in a congressional race, congressional power over things like war, spending, any number of other things.

As our submitter posed, "It seems like Congress has given up their role."

That is a quote from the person who asked the question.

So if elected, would you be compelled to act to balance and check the executive branch, declare war, control the purse, or are you satisfied with the amount of power the executive branch has in the current system?

Ms.

McKinney.

- Well, I think that the American public is absolutely correct in always wanting to see the tensions between our three branches working together.

Now is not the first time in history that we have seen the judicial, the legislative, and the executive branch constantly pulling on that and testing.

I absolutely believe in the power of Congress and oversight, and specifically with what you just mentioned with regard to war powers, I think that's where this question comes from.

And I think that there are folks, of course, anytime there's a conflict across the globe and there is a prospect of war, American citizens want to know the justification.

They want to know why is it that we decided to do that.

I think the job of congresswoman is to come back home and, without divulging state secrets, make sure to convey the information that they are hearing, that I would be hearing, either supports continuance or not.

And at the end of the day, if you're upset because you don't think that Congress has acted in this particular case, I would simply say that so far, every member of Congress has been put in a SCIF.

They're receiving information that is, unfortunately, you know, Americans can't know everything in advance because it could pose threats to our brave men and women who are fighting, but we have to make sure that the ability is there.

That hasn't been removed.

So an inaction by Congress right now is not, to me, a judgment that they are inept.

It simply means that the information they've been presented continues to convince them that they should continue to support the president's actions thus far.

- Ms.

McKinney, thank you very much.

Mr.

Duresky, you talked about affordability in the first question, and I wrote down the quote, "That should be set by Congress," knowing this question was coming up in this program.

I turn the response to you.

- Right, so for many, many years, when I was a young airman, I felt like I was getting beat over the head with those pocket constitutions.

I worked with a lot of very conservative people, and they have shaped a lot of how I kind of come to view the world and what is possible.

That's why I'm so shocked about what's happening right now.

We see an executive that has gotten loose of any checks and balances.

This last weekend, our executive branch spent, I think $400 million, no, not $400 million, like something like $400,000 on TV ads that played during the commercial, during the football games.

Now, that's a black-letter violation of the Hatch Act.

And in a normal world where Congress was working effectively and providing proper oversight, they would say, "Hey, you can't spend the money that we appropriated on that."

There was also a whole bunch of pocket rescissions just this last weekend, and those were nearly $1 billion.

Again, Congress has the power of the purse.

The Constitution was designed that way on purpose.

Congress has the power to set tariffs.

The Constitution was set that way, again, deliberately, to declare war.

These are Article I powers in the Constitution.

But if that were the end of the story, it wouldn't be enough.

I think one of the problems here is we have too many people that are putting party ahead of country and of Constitution.

That's why I took the Take Back Congress Pledge.

Take Back Congress Pledge has five parts, includes term limits, a ban on stock trading by sitting congressmen, a moratorium on lobbying by departing congressmen, overturning Citizens United to get unlimited money out of politics, and, finally, an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.

We think that helps fix Congress.

So when people go to Congress, they go to serve your voice, to serve your interest, and do their Article I job.

Time to send adults to Congress.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

I'm gonna build on that, and we're gonna reset the clock now to 90 seconds.

We won't call it a speed round, but we'll shorten the time a little bit to get through this program.

And I want to talk about those tariffs.

Mr.

Duresky, I'll just turn it straight you a two-part question about how you define them.

Ms.

McKinney, you sort of suggested this earlier, so we'll get a chance to expand on it.

The first is about how you define a tariff.

Do you consider a tariff a tax on the citizens of the country importing the goods?

And two, where do you stand on the way they're being used right now?

- Well, the tariff, simply put, is going to get passed to us.

It's a tax.

It's a consumption tax on the middle class.

We are all paying those tariffs right now.

What was the second half of that question?

Sorry.

- [Matt] Where do you stand on how they're being used right now by the government?

- Yeah.

So there's obviously times when tariffs do make sense, and that's kind of a complicated issue, but the one thing I want to be clear about here is if we find an emergency power in the code of law that gives emergency powers to the president, I would strongly suggest that it is time to remove those powers.

And not just for this president or for any other president, but for bipartisan, because, you know, the Democrats might win the White House back someday, and you will want that president to also be checked.

So these are for all of us.

Congress can go make that hard decision.

They have committees on all of these things.

And if there is a need for an emergency tariff power, then the committee can go do that.

The people in the committees wield enormous power, and it is time for them to do their job instead of being so worried about being reelected that they can't ever make a hard decision.

That's not what they were sent there to do.

Government is about making hard decisions, and politics is about making all of you believe you never have to make those decisions.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

Ms.

McKinney, same question.

- Well, tariffs are absolutely something that Congress, it's the power of the purse.

I will say that there are many examples of presidents using tariffs as a way to bargain and as a tool to get fair trade agreements.

Our president and executive do act on our behalf to execute trade agreements with our global trade partners.

It is obvious to anyone who's been following, especially agriculture, for the last many decades that we have already been suffering from unfair trade agreements, access to market, having markets flooded with outside, with deals that came in.

I mean, you should be asking, why is it more cost effective for beef to come across the ocean and end up in your grocery store than getting beef from the cattleman that lives down the road from you?

That is exactly what President Trump is fixing.

And the reality is that we were not having fair trade agreements, and we had different bad actors across the globe who were absolutely take advantage of our American consumer.

And there is a cost that is passed on, but is it greater than the continuing of the relationship that was unfair to see skyrocketing costs?

We saw during COVID, if we don't have control over manufacturing lines, whether or not it's our vaccines and things that we are dependent upon, we have to control those and have better fair trade agreements.

I agree that Congress should and can and has stepped in when they felt appropriate.

And I might add, I think it was President Biden who actually kept Trump's tariffs in when he took office after Trump's first administration.

So even President Biden seemed to agree with Trump's methodology.

- Thank you very much.

I'm gonna ask the next question quickly and a little bit of a change in topic here as we talk about immigration enforcement.

Probably anticipated a question about ICE enforcement here.

What specifically do you agree with and disagree with, with the current administration's approach to immigration, and how would you go about making changes to the things you do disagree with?

- Well, I would say that I agree with them actually enforcing the law.

We have had lawlessness and a lack of enforcement on immigration, and no one knew that better than people who were living not only on our southern border during the Biden's porous border on our southern border, but our communities have suffered with the trafficking of drugs, fentanyl that is killing our children, criminal gangs that had cartel systems.

And now those women and children who are victims of trafficking, those are the ones who are now here.

And that is why immigration enforcement is so important, to not only catch the people who are here illegally, who are taking advantage of women and children, but who are actually trafficking them and causing crime to occur in our communities.

One thing that I would really support, and I'm very grateful for the Trump administration for highlighting, that Washington State sanctuary policies are putting the communities and our law enforcement officers at risk.

My father is retired law enforcement.

I have a county jail.

It is absolutely the most dangerous thing for any law enforcement agent to do is to go search for someone who is a felon or criminal, because when they are out in the community, that is the most dangerous time.

Now, our sanctuary policies do not let jails talk to federal law enforcement so that those criminals can be kept in a secure area, which is safer for our law enforcement, safer for the community, and instead they are released, and all that does is put our community at risk.

So I am a strong advocate for cooperation to make sure that those hardened criminals who are in county jails across Washington State can finally be removed and make our community safer by actually enforcing the law.

- Thank you.

Mr.

Duresky, same question.

- Thank you.

The current deportation regime that is happening right now is both immoral and deeply un-American.

This country was built on immigration, and right here in Central Washington, we have built so much prosperity from immigrants.

They've contributed so much to our rich agricultural legacy.

They have contributed so much to our culture and our economy.

I know people who've been here for 10 years, paid taxes for which they will never get the benefits for, worked hard, helped the community.

They are undocumented.

They're not criminals.

They got here however they got here.

And listen, nobody should be for open borders.

We have a right as a sovereign nation to control who comes into and out of our country.

But I want to take a couple of very quick issues here.

One, I've actually talked to some immigration lawyers up and down the valley, and what I'm hearing is is that ICE has taken people off of the human trafficking enforcement to put it on looking for people going in and out of Walmart.

Now, that's enforcement that we don't need.

That's people going about their daily business trying to help us harvest our fruit, grow our agriculture, and instead they're getting picked up with... And the rules are changing as they go because maybe they were legal yesterday, or they're picking them up at their immigration appointment, immoral and un-American, and it needs to change immediately.

- All right, moving on to question number 11, people in the Fourth District watching local governments make decisions on data centers with concerns over land, natural resources, some with transparency on how the governments approve these.

There would be agricultural impacts, the scope of which farmers say they don't have a lot of information.

This spring and summer alone, governments here in the Tri-Cities negotiating four separate proposals and sales of almost 2,000 acres of land.

The city of Pasco recently put a moratorium on approvals of data centers.

So a lot in the news about these things.

What's your position on the need for AI data centers in the Columbia Basin and other areas in the Fourth District and their effects on the environment?

Mr.

Duresky.

- Thank you.

This is a big issue right now, and I've certainly heard from the voters on this.

So let us be clear.

Local communities should absolutely get to decide where those data centers go if they're welcome in their community.

Those data centers should also come with their own power generation.

Now, I learned recently that some of the PUDs told me they had to bring their own power, but then I learned that that just meant they had to buy it on the market.

That's gonna drive all of our electricity rates up.

We should not be having to pay more for electricity to build more AI data centers.

Finally, you already mentioned transparency in the question, and I've also heard, in fact, Benton REA, my REA, as I understand it, signed non-disclosure agreements with the people building the data centers.

I don't know if Congress can fix that or not, but that is on-set.

That is not acceptable.

Nobody in a public utility, public in a commission or a city council should be signing non-disclosure agreements with these companies.

Finally, I said in an interview, I think there are places that this could be helpful, and also there's some power things that we could do that I'm really excited about.

We are building, apparently, a fusion reactor in Malaga, just south of Wenatchee.

If they can build that and we can power these AI data centers with that, that would be kind of awesome.

But I do want to be clear about AI.

We need real guardrails around AI.

This is dangerous stuff, and it is not clear what kind of protections we need, and I don't know today, but I'm ready to go find out.

And again, soft hands with the government to do only what is necessary.

So it's a complicated topic.

Thank you.

- Yeah.

All those complications, I try to add all that context for you.

Effects on the environment, the need to support AI.

Ms.

McKinney, what's your stance on data centers?

- Well, I've got a track record of working on land use issues and voted on that and have actually made it a priority as a county commissioner, which I will continue to do as congresswoman.

I have always been clear that local communities need to decide.

Our local ordinances across Central Washington have been violated intentionally by our state because they wanted solar and wind.

Absent of community benefit requirements, no surprise, there's no community benefit, only harm.

So when it comes to land use, for me, it's irrelevant.

If it's solar, wind, data center, it could be a cancer treatment facility that we knew was guaranteed to cure cancer, which we could all agree would be amazing, but there still cannot be harm to a community.

They have to follow the same rules.

That's not what happening in Washington State.

So as a congresswoman, I want to make sure that states and local governments require the actual local community on the ground to not only have a say, but they have the final say.

When it comes to siting and the energy, what's interesting is that the PUDs will tell you that, yes, it is true that they have to come up with their own power.

And it's not because, yes, they have to go buy it, but the power doesn't exist.

There are already contracts for the power, which is why it's important for us to look for new power sources.

And newsflash, you're not gonna run a data center on solar and wind and gerbils, which is basically our Washington State energy policy right now.

It's going to have to be from nuclear.

I'm a huge proponent of nuclear proliferation, but we have a site here, and what makes us so special in Central Washington is Hanford.

We have a monumental opportunity to bring massive job and infrastructure into our community by siting on that federal land nuclear power, and the data centers are a perfect opportunity to be placed there.

They have their own power production, but ultimately, it's going to be the community that gets to say, and I've always supported that, and you don't have to guess because I voted on it.

- Thank you very much.

All right, we're down to a few minutes left in this program, and I'm actually gonna ask our timekeepers, let's do one minute for this final question.

Now, that sounds like a big curveball.

Speed round, like I said, but this was a great question and one that avoids, in my opinion, talking points and anything else that we maybe have talked about before, especially since you're both seeking this seat for the first time, curious about your priority list.

What congressional committee do you feel like you'd be best suited to serve in Congress and why, and what would be your plan to put that into action?

Ms.

McKinney?

- Thank you.

I really appreciate that question.

You know, I've had the opportunity to advocate for not only Central Washington, but all counties in Washington State and really rural communities and counties across the United States already in Congress.

I've been able to testify, be part of the farm bill, and comment on endangered species, our forestry and mismanagement there.

So there are a lot of things that I've been able to not only glean from my professional experience and my background in agriculture and living in a rural community, but because of my budgetary and financial experience and running county government, I know how county governments do and do not play well with the federal government.

Newsflash, less government and more local control.

But at the end of the day, I have expertise in so many of the important issues that actually matter to Central Washington, whether or not it's water, agriculture, energy jobs, healthcare, running a landfill.

There are so many things, which is why I want to carry on in the good tradition of Central Washington and be an appropriator.

It's a way for me to actually put my fingers in policy of all the things that actually impact our district, and I am incredibly excited about the prospect of carrying on the long tradition of having an appropriator from CD4.

- [Matt] All right.

Thank you, Ms.

McKinney.

Mr.

Duresky, a committee you would want to join.

- Well, agriculture, to start with, because this is an agricultural district, and we've been talking about kind of agriculture all night, and it's a big part of what happens here in this district.

The energy, because of the Department of Energy, I kind of already have experience with that, and so I would like to get back into that again.

And then, of course, something near and dear to me, which is, of course, Veterans Affairs.

We have Veterans for John on the website.

It's a very big deal, and I know how lacking, how poorly we have taken care of some of our veterans, and I would like to be able to move that forward.

However, I do want to say that the most important thing here is I believe with my Take Back Congress Pledge that on day one, we're going to have the most leverage we will have the entire way as we will have to vote for a new speaker.

And on that day, we're actually gonna tell the speaker, "If you want a vote, we need to ban stock trading by sitting congressman, and we need a moratorium on lobbying by departing congressman, as a cost of getting our vote."

Just failed today, by the way, to pass the Senate, but I think Congress can enforce that on itself.

Thank you.

- Thank you very much.

Well, that does it for tonight's debate.

Pencils down.

I want to, again, thank those who sent in questions for tonight, and I really do want to thank John Duresky and Amanda McKinney.

Thank you so much for taking the time out today.

It's really hard to get candidates to agree to debate and talk to each other on a stage like this.

At NWPB, we believe this is critical for civic engagement, so we really do appreciate your time.

- [John] Thank you so much for having us.

- And I want to use some of our closing time to address some key dates, deadlines ahead of this election.

October 16th is the beginning of Washington's 18-day voting period.

If you still need to register for mail-in voting, that deadline is October 26th.

You can register in person through Election Day.

That is on November 3rd.

Polls close that day at 8:00 PM.

And if you missed anything from tonight's program or want to find a link to share it, go to Northwest Public Broadcasting on YouTube.

We'll have more Vote 2026 coverage coming your way.

We've also heard from candidates in the Fifth Congressional District, and keep a lookout for upcoming coverage of races happening in Benton and Franklin County.

For more coverage of your communities and some stories we referenced here tonight, head to nwpb.org.

Tonight's program is possible in part thanks to funding support from AARP Washington and from viewers like you.

And to the crew who made this possible, the League of Women Voters of Benton and Franklin Counties, and the League of Women Voters of Yakima County, the WSU Tri-Cities, and those who took time to be here tonight, we thank you.

Have a good night.