On Monday, August 24, 2026, Joy Powers wrote to the man she is running against and asked him to debate her three times: once in far Southwest Virginia, once in the New River Valley, and once on the eastern edge of the district. She proposed that the two campaigns jointly pick the hosts, the venues, the moderators and the format, with the questions coming from voters.

On Friday, September 4, Morgan Griffith wrote back and said no.

"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."

His campaign shared the letter with The Roanoke Times, which reported the refusal on September 6.

"They already know" is doing a lot of work

Griffith has represented Virginia's 9th District since January 2011 — fifteen years, and he is in his eighth term. His claim is that voters in Southwest Virginia already know where he stands, so a debate would add nothing.

There is a straightforward test of that claim, and Griffith has been failing it for a decade.

In March 2025, he told the Kingsport Times News, in writing, "I have not done brick-and-mortar town halls in more than ten years." He called in-person town halls inefficient and dismissed complaints about their absence as "Democratic talking points." He prefers telephone town halls — where constituents without a landline have to call a district office in advance to opt in.

His predecessor in that seat, Rick Boucher, told the same paper that "most years while I was in Congress, I held 70 or more in-person town halls across the district."

When constituents in Abingdon got tired of waiting, they held their own town hall in April 2025 and left a chair empty for him. He did not come. In February 2025, about 20 people turned up at his staff's monthly office hours at the Bedford Municipal Building to demand one in person. "He does not come to the district, he does not listen to his constituents," the organizer, Karen Nuzzo, told WSET. Griffith was in Washington; his staffers took notes.

So the record is: no in-person town halls for more than ten years, no appearance at the one his constituents organized for him, and now no debates.

He asked for details, then said no to them

There is one more piece worth putting in order, because it undercuts his stated reason.

When a reporter asked him about the debate challenge at a Virginia Tech event on August 28, Griffith said "one of the problems" was 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."

Powers' letter had already said the two campaigns "should jointly agree on hosts, venues, moderators, and format, with questions coming directly from voters across the Ninth District." That is an offer to negotiate exactly the things he said needed negotiating.

A week later he turned it down on the grounds that he did "not need a jointly negotiated format."

The safe seat is the point

The 9th is the most conservative congressional district in Virginia. Griffith won it in 2024 by 45 percentage points. He has also raised nearly six times more money in 2026 than all three of his Democratic challengers combined, the Roanoke Times has reported.

That is the actual answer. He does not have to show up, so he does not.

Powers, a 34-year-old cattle farmer from Bedford County who is new to politics, put it this way in her response:

"After 16 years in Washington, he should be able to stand in front of the people he represents and answer for his record. A debate is not a favor to me. It is something he and I owe to the people asking us to represent them."

Answering for the record is the part that costs something. In July, eight school-based health clinics closed across his district, and Virginia's community health centers wrote to him asking him to intervene — he chairs the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. We wrote about that letter last month. Those are the questions a moderator asks and a telephone town hall screener does not have to.

The short version

Morgan Griffith has told his constituents in writing that he has not held an in-person town hall in more than ten years, skipped the empty-chair town hall they organized for him in 2025, and on September 4, 2026 declined all three debates his opponent proposed. He has held the seat for fifteen years, won it last time by 45 points, and has out-raised his challengers by roughly six to one. His stated reason for refusing to debate is that voters already know what he believes.

Source

Rep. Morgan Griffith turns down debates with 9th District challenger Powers by Ben Orner, The Roanoke Times, September 6, 2026.