WATCH: Washington candidates clash over Trump endorsement for House

By Carleen Johnson
The Center Square

As Central Washington voters begin filling out primary ballots as soon as this weekend, some may be a bit confused about who President Donald Trump actually endorsed in the District 4 contest to be U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse’s successor in Congress.

Ballots were mailed out this week and are arriving in mailboxes soon, if not already received.

Yakima Republican Amanda McKinney and Prosser Republican Jerrod Sessler are both touting endorsements from Trump, and both are vying for the vote of Trump supporters in the Aug. 4 top-two primary.

Meantime, West Richland’s John Duresky, the sole Democrat in the race believes he will come out on top after the Aug. 4 primary results are tallied.

Top GOP contenders

McKinney is a known name in the upper Yakima Valley, as a Yakima County Commissioner.

In a Wednesday interview with The Center Square, McKinney said she’s not concerned that the controversy over who got the Trump endorsement will divide Republican voters.

“I trust very much that Central Washington District 4 has proven over and over again that they are a very smart, educated electorate and we are the MacGyver’s of the United States,” McKinney said.

“We figure things out. Nothing gets past us. And we people get down to the brass tacks of what actually makes sense and who do I think the President has endorsed, mine is the only story that makes sense, and I’m the only one who has proof of it.”

Sessler told The Center Square he has Trump’s signature to prove that he is the candidate the White House is supporting.

Sessler said after the 2024 election, when Sessler narrowly lost to incumbent Congressman Dan Newhouse, he sent a text message to Trump.

“President Trump and I exchanged a letter and in that letter he put his signature down for me saying that I was going to run again, that I thought the incumbent was going to retire, that I wasn’t giving up and we were going to disinfect the seat,” Sessler said.

Sessler contends McKinney fully supported Newhouse in his vote to impeach Trump, and that’s why he’s the real Trump candidate.

“There’s no way that in any truthful world, that she would have gotten that endorsement without a couple of things,” he said. “Number one, she had to pay their leadership $150,000 to go talk to the White House people to get the endorsement. If the President would have known that she was a full-on impeachment celebrator, she never would have gotten the endorsement.”

The U.S. Navy veteran, stage IV cancer survivor, and former race car driver told The Center Square he’s confident he will emerge in the top-two following the primary.

McKinney says she is convinced voters in District 4 will put her in the top two headed into November.

“Mr. Sessler is not being honest. I am the only candidate that has earned the President’s endorsement,” McKinney said.

“I am the only candidate that President Trump wants to see serving in Congress to help his administration advance our platforms of conservative values that are going to help make life better for our American kitchen tables, our budgets, our businesses, our agriculture….all of the advancements that out President has helped usher into our great Golden era….the President wants to have me by his side.”

In order to win McKinney will need to chip away at the support Sessler has built over his five years running as a congressional candidate.

He got 46% support from voters in 2024, barely losing to the incumbent Congressman, who lost favor with Trump’s MAGA base for supporting the Trump impeachment vote.

West Richland’s Duresky is the sole Democrat in the race.

With the two leading Republicans dividing GOP voters, he’s expected to advance after the Aug. 4 primary results are tallied.

“With what’s going on in the world, I just don’t think that Trump endorsement is the flex that they think it is,” Duresky told The Center Square on Thursday. “And past that, let them fight.”

Duresky said he’s been hearing support on the campaign trail from lifelong Republicans.

“I got a call the other day from a woman. She is mad about the Epstein files. You know what they did with the Epstein files? They released the names and numbers and personal information of the victims, and somehow protected the guilty, the people that were actually doing it. People are mad about that. Mad, mad,” he said.

“They were taught that this is a bad thing. And then they were promised that we’re going to release all those files, and the files haven’t been released. It’s really that simple. And people are mad about it.”