5 takeaways from WA 4th District debate on immigration, health care, tariffs and Epstein
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Seven candidates attended the Yakima forum days before Aug. 4 primary.
- All candidates present except one supported a pathway to legal status for farmworkers.
- They agreed Congress members and cabinet officials should be banned from trading stocks.
Seven Central Washington congressional candidates duked it out Tuesday night in front of a packed crowd at the Fruitvale Grange just days before August primary election ballots are due to be mailed out.
U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, is retiring from Congress after serving the region for six terms. The two candidates who receive the most votes during the Aug. 4 jungle primary election, regardless of political party, will move on to the Nov. 3 general election.
The candidates who attended the Yakima forum were Democrat John Duresky of West Richland, independent Favian Valencia of Yakima, Republican Elpidia Saavedra of Toppenish, Republican Jerrod Sessler of Prosser, Republican John Hughs of Lind, Cascade Party Devin Poore of East Wenatchee, and independent Jacek Kobiesa.
The event attracted more than 170 voters and was sponsored and organized by Yakima Indivisible, League of Women Voters of Yakima County and the Washington Youth Alliance.
Here are five takeaways from the event.
1. Two seats left empty
Two seats were left vacant by leading Republicans running to succeed Newhouse.
Republican Matt Boehnke of Kennewick was to appear, but called a few hours prior to the event to say he had a conflict in his schedule.
Republican Amanda McKinney of Yakima – this race’s financial frontrunner who has earned President Donald Trump’s endorsement – also did not attend.
A spokesperson said she had a scheduling conflict with a fundraising event outside of Yakima County before the Indivisible event was confirmed.
Also, neither Republican Ken Vaz of Seattle nor independent Zac Rossi of West Richland were there.
Rossi is using his campaign as a de facto advertisement on the national debt issue, and Vaz has not been present at other campaign forums.
During his closing statement, Duresky said voters should “vote for somebody that’s in this room and bothered to show up.”
The comment dew a round of applause.
2. Candidates reckon with health care cuts, poverty
Last year’s passage of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act is expected to have negative impacts on health care in the Tri-Cities and Central Washington as patients lose access to Medicaid and health insurance rates rise.
Central Washington is the most impoverished congressional district in the state, with 300,000 residents, or nearly 40%, receiving free or low-cost care through Medicaid. Similarly, expiration of COVID-era subsidies to the Affordable Care Act have affected workers in the region.
Saavedra, Toppenish’s former mayor who has a background in health care, teared up when talking about the unaffordability of health care and medicine.
The entire system “needs to be revamped,” she said, and those who are able-bodied have to “go out and get a job.”
“Right now, our social system is imbalanced because there are people who have, for example, Medicaid and they get everything covered at 100%, limitlessly. How is that fair, when working Americans that are having to pay for their health care avoid going to the doctor because they’re afraid they’re not going to be able to afford it even if they have private health insurance,” she said.
Hughs’ got emotional, too. He says the health care system needs to be “streamlined” to be more efficient.
“It rips my heart out when I talk to people, particularly Hispanic people that don’t have any money. It really hurts. I’m very sympathetic about that. I think we could do more rather than having a war every other year,” he said.
Sessler, who was diagnosed with cancer 26 years ago, said he was “MAHA,” or Make America Healthy Again, before it was popular.
“The part that you might not like me saying, but I’m just going to suggest it, is I think we can do a lot more for ourselves in terms of the things we’re eating, the ingredients that are in our foods that we’re eating, the amount that we’re eating — all that kind of stuff will be very helpful,” he said, adding that they should cut red tape on funding new hospital facilities.
Kobiesa, whose wife and daughter have fought through cancer diagnoses, called hospitals “bloated bureaucracy.”
“Hospitals are refusing to publish pricing. We have to basically force them, and if I’m in Congress I will basically implement that you have to publish your pricing so that people can know and so that insurance companies cannot deny treatment just because of somebody’s (condition) or age group,” he said.
Duresky, Poore, Hughs and Kobiesa said they would support transitioning to a universal, single-payer health care system.
3. Some call for a pathway to citizenship
All candidates present except for Kobiesa showed support for creating a pathway to legal status for undocumented agriculture workers.
Valencia, who was born to immigrant farmworkers, stressed that the U.S. needed a “secure border,” while at the same time creating a “legal pathway” for undocumented law-abiding individuals who have been “in the shadows.”
“It doesn’t serve anyone. It doesn’t serve our economy. It doesn’t serve our community,” he said.
He also favors “retraining” Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to “do what they were created to do,” which is to go after cartels and drug lords instead of intimidating Hispanic communities.
Poore said he supports the Dignity Act, a piece of bipartisan legislation that would increase border security, provide agriculture reforms, and provide a path to lawful permanent resident status for individuals including those on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival status.
“We’ve seen American citizens targeted by ICE, we’ve seen homes entered without warrants. Obviously, there is a huge overcorrection towards punitive and aggressive action on the part of this administration that needs to be reined way in,” he said.
Kobiesa, who came to the U.S. from Poland on a visa in the 1980s, disagreed and said that there are already “laws on the books. We just need to enforce them.”
“I see no reason why we have to reinvent the wheel,” he said.
Duresky said the U.S. has a “right to control our border and who comes into our country.” He quibbles with the characterization that the country has an open border.
He’s spoken to someone who said it took 20 years and $100,000 to “immigrate the right way.”
“It has purposefully stayed that way because the Democrats offered the Republicans immigration reform, and they declined. They wanted this to be a partisan issue,” he said.
“In our last question, we talked about why Congress is so unpopular. It might be because there’s an asymmetry: One party wants you to think it doesn’t work, and the other party keeps trying to fix it. That’s what I’m here to do. Immigration should be fast, fair and affordable,” he continued.
4. No talk of Trump — and little of Hanford
While they spoke on topics that directly tied back to President Trump’s agenda, candidates at the forum spared name checking the MAGA president.
Sessler, who earned the president’s endorsement during a 2024 campaign, told the Tri-City Herald that the crowd was “very anti-Trump” and it would have “just gone south.”
“We knew that we were going into the lion’s den here. I mean, I’d be happy to talk about Trump — I certainly didn’t avoid it. There just weren’t any issues that came up that really merited talking about it,” he said.
Folks at the end of the day just wanted to hear about the solutions to issues, Sessler said.
Duresky, the lone Democrat among 11 candidates running for the seat, said he’s trying to “run for something.”
He was also the only candidate to mention the Hanford nuclear site, the largest and most complex environment cleanup effort in the nation that’s located in the Tri-Cities.
He said they shouldn’t be “cutting dollars that are going to the site,” and said it’s an economic growth area for the whole region.
“I just told somebody else Trump is doing my job for me. As long as he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’s helping me move people over (to my side),” Duresky said.
Duresky pitched the Democrat party in a couple of his answers to questions, but he said he was not stumping for the party, which has failed in recent elections to get even a third of support from general election voters.
“I’m trying to reform the Democratic Party to win back the trust of voters. I see where we are. Mealy-mouthed, triangulation, consultant-crafted messaging isn’t going to cut it anymore. We’ve got real problems and it’s time to go fix them,” he said.
After a pause, Duresky added: “And the Democrats are the ones that are going to do it.”
5. A bit of room to agree
While they jostled over the issues, there was some consensus that candidates were able to come to.
During a rapid-fire round of questions where they answered with “yes” or “no” cards, candidates agreed that:
- Members of Congress and the cabinet should be banned from making individual stock trades while they’re in office.
- They would advocate for federal investment in modernizing the Yakima River Basin irrigation infrastructure.
- They would protect agriculture producers from retaliatory tariffs.
- The remaining files pertaining to disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein should be released.
