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Morgan Griffith turns down debates in Va. 9th District race
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The incumbent says no.
After being challenged by his Democratic opponent to public debates in the race for Virginia's heavily-Republican 9th District, eight-term GOP congressman Morgan Griffith has declined.
"I do not need a jointly negotiated format to tell voters what I believe. They already know," Griffith wrote Friday in a letter to Joy Powers, which his campaign also shared with The Roanoke Times. "I would rather spend the fall listening to them and fighting for them than trading rehearsed lines with you on a stage."
Griffith also said in his letter: "I have spent years in this district, in person, answering to the people who sent me to Congress — not in carefully staged forums built around a single vote taken out of context."
Powers, a 34-year-old cattle farmer from Bedford County who is new to politics, is seeking to unseat Griffith, a 58-year-old attorney and former state lawmaker from Salem, in the district that includes most of Southwest Virginia outside Roanoke.
It stretches from Bedford County in the northeast to the state's southwestern corner.
The 9th is also Virginia's most conservative congressional district. Griffith won the 2024 election by 45 percentage points.
In a press release Friday responding to Griffith's letter and decision, Powers said that if the congressman "were actually listening" to voters, "he would know they have questions."
"After 16 years in Washington, he should be able to stand in front of the people he represents and answer for his record," Powers said. "A debate is not a favor to me. It is something he and I owe to the people asking us to represent them."
Powers made her challenge in a letter to Griffith on Aug. 24. She proposed three debates: one in far Southwest Virginia, one in the New River Valley and one on the eastern edge of the district.
When asked about the proposed debates during a Virginia Tech event on Aug. 28, the congressman said "one of the problems" is that Powers' challenge lacked specifics.
"Where are they going to be? Who is the moderator going to be? What's the format? What's going to happen? I mean, all of this has to be negotiated," he said then.
In Powers' challenge, she said the "two campaigns should jointly agree on hosts, venues, moderators, and format, with questions coming directly from voters across the Ninth District."
While Griffith's campaign was still considering her challenge, Powers said she didn't anticipate he would accept but would be thrilled to be wrong.
"Congressman Griffith can reconsider at any time," Powers said in her press release after he declined. "I'm ready."
Ben Orner (540) 981-3400
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