On May 24, 2024, Julie Fedorchak stood on a stage at KFGO in Fargo and debated her Republican rivals for North Dakota's open U.S. House seat. She did three of the four primary debates that year. Then she debated her Democratic opponent twice more before November.
She won. She has been North Dakota's only member of the House ever since.
In 2026, running as the incumbent, she was asked whether she would debate her primary challenger. Here is her answer, given to the North Dakota Monitor in mid-April 2026:
"I don't intend to debate Alex. He hasn't laid out any real differences in his record with mine, and there's not a lot of issues to debate, in my opinion."
There's not a lot of issues to debate, in my opinion. That is a sitting member of Congress deciding, on her own, that her state has no questions for her.
Her opponent disagreed, and so did the people he'd been talking to
Alex Balazs is not a fringe figure in this story. He's the candidate the North Dakota Republican Party actually endorsed at its 2026 state convention. He told the Monitor:
"Everybody I've talked to wants a debate. Everybody wants us to get out there and discuss issues."
He said the invitation would stay open for any debate, at any time, and that he thought her choice was "the wrong choice." He also said public officials "should want to get in front of constituents to discuss the issues and make their policy preferences known."
Fedorchak beat him in the June 9 primary anyway, with 73% of the vote. She never took the stage with him.
She also skipped the convention where he was endorsed
Here's why Balazs got the party's endorsement without a fight: Fedorchak didn't go.
In March 2026 she and every other Republican statewide incumbent skipped the NDGOP endorsing convention and petitioned their way onto the primary ballot instead. Bob Harms, a former state party chair who has attended every convention since 1988, told the Monitor what that meant:
"It is absolutely unprecedented. It has never happened."
Fedorchak's explanation was one sentence: "I'm focusing the bulk of my time doing the hard work North Dakotans elected me to do."
Delegates responded by voting to strip the party's brand from candidates who skipped. Asked about it in April, Fedorchak said she'd spent 30 years building the Republican Party and that "our Republican brand has actually never been stronger."
Set aside who's right about the state party. Notice the shape of it: the convention where members of her own party ask questions, she skipped. The debate where her opponent would ask questions, she declined. That's two.
And she has never held an in-person town hall. Not once.
That's three.
Fedorchak has been in Congress since January 2025 and has never held a public, in-person town hall meeting. She holds virtual "Fedorchak Forums" and telephone events instead, and she defends the choice on reach:
"We get thousands of people on those calls at one time and much more than you'd be able to connect with in an in-person town hall."
Asked back in March 2025, at her very first tele-town hall, why it wasn't in person, she said: "I simply haven't found any other venue that allows me to talk to like tonight 3,000 North Dakotans."
By August 2025 she'd stopped hedging and started dismissing the format outright, telling the Monitor that in-person town halls are:
"a forum for political theater that has turned into yelling and screaming, and not a productive conversation about the consequential issues."
North Dakotans have been asking for one since her first spring in office. In March 2025 about 50 of them rallied outside the delegation's Bismarck offices repeatedly calling out "We want answers." A married couple, the Lebaks, paid for five digital billboards around Bismarck-Mandan displaying the word "MISSING" in reference to the all-Republican delegation — put up, Henry Lebak said, after several unsuccessful attempts to reach them.
Balazs, by contrast, committed to holding regular in-person town halls if elected. That contrast was on the table in the primary. She wouldn't debate it.
The "1,100 meetings" answer
Fedorchak's defense is that she's everywhere. She says she has held more than 1,100 meetings with North Dakotans in her first term — events in the state and in Washington, many with agriculture and energy producers and chambers of commerce.
The Monitor noted the obvious problem in the same story: some have criticized Fedorchak and other members of the delegation "for holding events that are open to invited guests but not the general public."
That's the distinction that matters, and it's the one every one of these choices protects. A meeting with the chamber of commerce is a meeting she agreed to. A virtual forum is a meeting she moderates. A telephone town hall with 3,000 people on the line is a meeting where she picks the questions.
A debate, a convention floor, and a room full of constituents with microphones are the three formats where somebody else decides what she gets asked. She has avoided all three.
What people would ask if they got the chance
It isn't a mystery.
They would ask about the 17,926 North Dakotans projected to lose health coverage because of the budget bill she voted for — and about the op-ed she published telling them the worry was about "cuts that simply don't exist."
They would ask about the 22,340 North Dakota households on SNAP. They would ask why the bill she introduced to end wind and solar tax credits makes sense in a state where wind generates more than a third of the electricity.
She is not the only one who has figured out that the safest room is the one you control. Jeff Hurd called a town hall 400 people showed up for "political theater" and has done telephone events ever since. It works — right up until enough voters notice that "I don't intend to debate" and "I've been really transparent about my positions" were said in the same interview.
Source
Rep. Fedorchak not planning to debate NDGOP opponent Balazs before primary — Michael Achterling, North Dakota Monitor, April 17, 2026. Photo by Amy Dalrymple / North Dakota Monitor.
