Heather Bell
Editor
Congressman Morgan Griffith has declined an invitation by Democratic nominee for Congress Joy Powers to participate in debates in the Ninth Congressional District before November’s election.
In a letter sent to Powers’ office, Griffith thanked Powers for her letter requesting the debates but said he will not.
“The people of the Ninth District already know where I stand,” Griffith wrote. “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. You are welcome to discuss that record as often as you like. I intend to keep making my case the same way I always have: face to face, town to town, county to county.”
In a statement regarding her request to Griffith, Powers said she was “issuing the challenge as tens of thousands of Ninth District residents face the potential loss of health coverage under legislation Griffith supported in Congress. Nearly 37,000 people in the district are projected to lose coverage, more than in any other congressional district in Virginia, with most of those losses expected to come from Medicaid.”
“The people who will live with the consequences deserve to hear you defend that vote in front of them,” Powers wrote to Griffith.
Powers said the debates would give voters an opportunity to question both candidates directly about health care, data centers, jobs, agriculture, energy costs, education, Social Security and Medicare, and the future of Southwest Virginia’s communities.
“On the substance, since you raised it: I will not apologize for supporting a law that lowers costs, secures our border, unleashes American energy, and puts money back in the pockets of the working families of this district — rather than the tax increases, energy restrictions, and bigger government you would bring to Washington in my place,” Griffith wrote in his letter to Powers. “I do not need a jointly negotiated format to tell voters what I believe. They already know. I would rather spend the fall listening to them and fighting for them than trading rehearsed lines with you on a stage. I wish you and your team safe travels as you campaign across the district.”
Powers had proposed holding one debate in far Southwest Virginia, one in the New River Valley and one on the eastern end of the district.
