John Duresky isn’t afraid of difficult conversations. He has driven hundreds of miles, trying to talk to everyone he can in the 4th Congressional District. After his success in the primary election, Duresky is taking a little pause to visit his family in Nebraska before he gets back on the road.
Duresky said in a phone interview on August 11 that almost everyone he meets has the same primary concern. “They want to feel heard,” said Duresky. “That's the biggest thing that, frankly, a lot of Republican politicians are really missing right now.” When Duresky visits people, he listens to their questions pragmatically and gives them well-considered answers about what some possible solutions might be. He said that a lot of voters don't feel represented. “They feel like politics is something that's happening to them instead of something that they get to participate in.”
A history of public service
Duresky spent 24 years in the U.S. Air Force. He moved to Eastern Washington about six years ago to work for the Department of Energy. On his website, Duresky said, “I’m not a career politician. I’m someone who served this country for 37 years and can’t sit on the sidelines while working families are being left behind.”
Duresky said his priorities in Congress are to:
- Protect working families and small businesses
- Keep healthcare affordable and rural hospitals open
- Defend voting rights and democracy
- Make government accountable again
- Put Central Washington first, not special interests
Duresky said that he knows the Constitution very well, and knows what Congress’ role in the co-equal branches of government should be. Congress’ main job is to make and pass national laws as the legislative branch.
Duresky said, “I lived [and] I served under oath. My first point here is that number one, that oath is not to the President. It’s not to a party. It is quite literally to the Constitution and the people of the United States. I’m not running to represent my interests or the party’s interests. I’m running for the people of this district.”
Duresky doesn’t describe himself as a moderate Democrat. He said, “I am pretty radical in my defense of both the Constitution and individual liberty. I grew up in a country that could do things. I remember Kennedy saying we do these things ‘not because they are easy, but because they are hard.’”
Working class in crisis
Duresky doesn’t see much conservatism in the current government. Having spent his working career with conservative people, Duresky said that what we are seeing now is NOT a conservative government:
We are seeing unchecked, unlimited power exercised by the government for the benefit of the very few. We are seeing radical trade policy … running through one man, unchecked by Congress — by anybody — that is imposing both tariffs and trade wars that are directly damaging our most treasured industries here, including our agriculture industry, and also hurting our people at Hanford with threatened budget cuts.
According to a news report from NBC Right Now in April, 2026, diesel prices in Washington State spiked to record-shattering highs of over $6.50 to $6.80 per gallon during the spring 2026 planting season, severely squeezing local agricultural producers. These prices far exceeded the last record-breaking gas prices in Washington.
The 4th Congressional District is large, spanning the counties of Benton, Yakima, Grant, Douglas, Okanogan, and Klickitat, with parts of Adams and Franklin Counties.
Agriculture and food production is the primary economic production factor in the 4th Congressional District. Across Washington State, farm production expenses have outpaced the national averages significantly. The Tri-Cities Journal of Business published a story this past June on the economic pressures that farmers in the region are experiencing. Franklin County farmer Jim Alford said that 2026 has been full of challenges “from soaring fuel and fertilizer prices, cuts in contracts, and rising labor costs paired with a growing shortage of workers.”
For a district that has mostly voted for Republicans in recent years, Duresky said that the folks most affected by these economic issues are ready for a change.
“I have a conversation [with] a Republican every day who either called me or emailed me to say, ‘Well, I had to get off the Trump train, and I'm voting for you,’” Duresky said. He understands that people are disillusioned right now. “But there’s too much at stake, and there are too many things that are broken to keep going like this,” he added.
The economic issues of the farming economy in the state are a direct result of many policies of the current administration, including the war in Iran. Duresky knows about war, and wrote a moving piece titled ‘Forgotten Sacrifice’ that was published in the Washington Post in 2006. In it, he said:
Many Americans feel strongly about the war one way or another, but they aren't signing up their children for service or taking the protest to the streets. What can they do? It is they whom we in the military trust to influence our leaders in Washington.
Today, as on every other day in Iraq, American servicemen are in very real danger. Our country is at war. Mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, and children are worrying about their loved ones in a faraway land. They all hope he or she isn't the one whose luck runs out today.
Duresky said that the current war “is a pretty plain-label violation of our Constitution.”
An article from the ACLU gives more context to this violation:
The Declare War Clause (Article I, Section 8) Separation of Powers: The Framers of the Constitution deliberately split war powers, giving Congress the authority to initiate or declare war, and the President the role of Commander-in-Chief to execute it once authorized. Legal scholars and advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, argue that large-scale, kinetic military operations and sustained airstrikes against sovereign military targets cross the threshold into ‘war’ and require a formal congressional vote.
Duresky is concerned about what the war is doing to the people in this district, especially in rural communities:
The consequences of the war have been dramatic — on fertilizer costs, on fuel costs that were already under strain … On top of that, you add 55 percent of the people in this district are on Medicaid or Medicare, so a large majority of people. The Republicans have no plan to fix that. As a matter of fact, everything that they’ve done is going to make those systems work worse and make it harder for our rural hospitals to operate.
So it’s time to send adults to Congress who are willing to put the people of this district first, and not put ideology [or] some radical belief system ahead of them. I'm here to get shit done.
Duresky did not mince words when it came to speaking out against the current government:
The real communists, the real people taking ownership stake in means of production in our country, is the Trump administration. Something a Democrat would never do. By the way, the tariffs also function as a control mechanism, allowing one man to command control of our economy. The radical people, when it comes to the economy, are the people in D.C. right now dictating to the rest of us our economic growth.
Duresky said he will continue taking long road trips to see people all over District 4. “We’re going to do it,” he said. “We’re going to keep taking it right to the voters. We’re going to keep making ourselves available in the public and having these hard conversations.”
Duresky said the next big events for his campaign will be at county fairs, starting with the Benton Franklin Fair Parade on August 22.
He has also signed on to a lot of pledges since he began running, including the ‘Take BAC Congress’ pledge. Duresky explained:
Take BAC Congress is a candidate-led group, and we signed a pledge — think of it as kind of similar to Contract with America from the ‘90s — and the pledge has five parts. The five parts include term limits, a ban on stock trading by sitting congressmen, a moratorium on lobbying by departing congressmen, overturning Citizens United, and finally [implementing] an enforceable code of ethics for the Supreme Court.
We see that our system’s broken, and it’s time to start offering solutions to start making it right. It’s time to stop saying, “Oh, we can't. That's too hard.” It's time to demand that people put the country first and do what’s right to start fixing these systems. It can start with Congress policing itself and making sure that it represents the interests of the people that vote for them, instead of the lobbyists and the billionaires.
Duresky reflected again on the words of President John F. Kennedy: “I remember him saying ‘We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard,’ and I don’t see any of that kind of leadership coming from people in Congress right now, from frankly either side. So it's time to do the hard stuff, make the hard decisions.”
You can learn more about John Duresky and the 4th Congressional District at https://www.johnduresky4congress.com. You can also follow his campaign on YouTube: @johnduresky4congress, TikTok: @johnduresky, Facebook: @JohnDuresky4Congress, and Instagram: @johnduresky4congress.
This interview was conducted because the candidate reached out to us for an interview. If you are running in the upcoming election and would like an interview, please contact editor@tumbleweird.org.
