"I'm Just a Guy" - John Duresky is Building a Movement for Everyone.
At a candidate forum in Zillah, WA, fewer than a dozen people showed up to hear John Duresky speak. He stayed for all of them.
That's the type of campaign Duresky is running. Since our first interview with him this spring, he's been outspoken about his disappointment with modern government. “I think that government should be able to do things for people.” He’s equally critical of the Democratic Party, often observing that it has left voters feeling that the system doesn’t work. “We’ve lost the trust of the voters. It’s not enough to just be anti-Trump or anti-Republican. We have to stand for something.”
Tifa Jade
After his advancement through the primary, we reached out to Duresky to ask if we could follow his campaign along on the path to the general election, and he was more than accommodating. “The transparency is important,” he told us. “It’s the ball game. It’s how the system should work.”
As we followed Duresky to campaign stops, public forums, town halls, debates and door-to-door canvassing, what we saw was a man who is willing to listen to everyone. He considered no trip too small or too far. We followed him to a public forum in Zillah, WA, a town with a population of about 3,000, and he’s traveled from his hometown of West Richland, WA as far away as Omak, near the Canadian border, a part of Okanogan County within the 4th Congressional District. He's racked up over 30,000 miles on his truck, the campaign told us.
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The 4th District is Washington’s most conservative, and a Democrat hasn’t held the seat since Jay Inslee left in January 1995. The voters we heard speaking to Duresky are often conservatives who just want the government to support them. They want health care. They’re hurting from the affordability crisis. They feel the government is failing them, and they’re telling Duresky they're voting for change this year.
Part of Duresky's appeal is that he comes off as a regular guy, and he’ll tell you so himself. A volunteer for the campaign, door-knocking in Pasco, WA, told us he respects Duresky's 24-year air force veteran status, and says "he's very down to earth." In the Yakima Herald's endorsement, the editorial board said Duresky is "not a polished politician, but he wasn't born yesterday either." His campaign manager, Gabe Apodaca, calls the lack of polish a strength. “We just let John be John,” he told us. Apodaca first saw Duresky in Good Loser’s initial interview with him. “I watched that and I was like yeah, I like this guy,” he said.
Duresky knows he has to appeal to moderates to win the election. He’s actively listening to voters, on both sides of the aisle, and appealing to basic human decency. After voters told him they wouldn’t tolerate him taking money from AIPAC, he signed the Track AIPAC pledge. "They're furious that their taxpayer dollars are being used to commit genocide in Gaza," he said. Duresky does not accept any corporate PAC money, and his campaign is funded by grassroots donations.
Asked what he says to people who think their vote doesn’t count in a district like this one, Duresky said he’d once talked to an officeholder who won a statewide race by 49 votes. “Every single vote matters,” he said.
Ballots are due Nov. 3.
