When Virginia’s congressional candidates don’t debate, voters get sound bites instead of substance

The day after the Aug. 4 Democratic primary to choose a congressional candidate in Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, the Williamsburg area chapter of the Virginia League of Women Voters invited Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman and Democratic challenger Shannon Taylor to a joint appearance at a candidate forum.

Taylor’s campaign declined, said Denise Koch, co-chair of the local league’s voter services committee. Wittman’s campaign acknowledged getting the invitation, Koch added, but never provided an answer.

With US House control hanging in the balance, Wittman faces Taylor in contentious VA-01 race

You might think, as I did, that face-to-face appearances would be mandatory to win voters’ support in a campaign deemed critical to control of the U.S. House of Representatives at a pivotal moment in American history.

If so, like me, you would be wrong.

The League of Women Voters wasn’t the only Virginia organization to be turned down. The Chamber of Commerce for the Richmond metro area, ChamberRVA, is not doing a candidates debate or forum because it was “unable to get any traction with the candidates,” said vice president for government affairs Demas Boudreaux. 

I asked the Taylor and Wittman campaigns whether their respective candidates would be willing to debate face-to-face. I asked the same thing of the campaigns of incumbent 2nd Congressional District U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Republican, and Democrat Elaine Luria in another Virginia race of national importance. 

No one bothered to answer me.

Incumbents usually have more to lose than to gain in appearing face-to-face in debates, William & Mary professor and political expert John McGlenon told me.

In this election, Wittman and Kiggans risk much more than usual because they have aligned themselves with President Donald Trump, whose approval ratings are in the toilet. 

In a recent telephone rally the president endorsed Wittman and Kiggans as “spectacular warriors.”  No questions were taken from listeners and the program appeared tightly scripted.

In a public forum, Wittman and Kiggans could be asked about the unpopular war with Iran, which sucks up $3 billion taxpayer dollars a month and has led to $4-a-gallon gasoline and $6-a-gallon diesel fuel.

They could be asked about tariffs imposed by Trump that have been passed along to American consumers and inflation that has raised grocery prices and made home mortgages and car loans more expensive.

They could be asked to explain the federal budget cuts that cost 6,300 federal civilian jobs in Hampton Roads in 2025, where Kiggans’ district is anchored.

Taylor and Luria face nothing as serious. But to beat incumbents in districts gerrymandered to favor Republicans, challengers must control their narratives. With both races being neck-and-neck, it is easier to do so without hostile questions in debates or forums. 

As a result, the 1st and 2nd Congressional District campaigns in this high-stakes election season have devolved into self-serving platitudes on candidate websites, curated social media posts and attack ads. 

With traditional journalism stretched thin by the decline of local news outlets and personnel, interviews have turned into platforms for candidate talking points that often go unchallenged. 

Basic civic literacy, much less the kind of education the League of Women Voters and Chamber of Commerce try to promote with candidate forums, is not even an afterthought. It is given no thought at all.

“It used to be that candidates expected to participate in multiple debates,” Larry Sabato, founder of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told me.  “All that’s gone. All people have to judge on are TV ads and little sound bites from the media that’s left.”

This is not simply an indictment of power-hungry political parties and greedy politicians. It reflects Americans’ dangerous indifference to the representative democracy that has protected their ability to speak their mind and make a decent living. 

Politicians need a reason to self-regulate. An educated electorate can provide both the carrot and the stick. An uneducated electorate, one that can’t – or won’t – demand enough information to separate lies from truth, has no one but itself to blame for its exploitation. 

Even when the public demanded candidate debates, not many people watched them, Sabato said.

Meanwhile, Federal Election Commission records on the four candidates in the 1st and 2nd Districts show they have collectively spent millions of dollars to craft their narratives in ways meant not to educate or inform constituents, but to favor individual candidates.

Those candidates will spend millions more in the run-up to the Nov. 3 vote. Virtually none of that money will go to educate voters. Too little of it will be used to try to change minds. 

Donald Trump created an “us v. them” mentality among Americans in 2016 when he won the presidency. Americans started alienating each other more after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack at the Capitol by Trump supporters who tried to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss to Joe Biden, who won the presidential election that year. 

The estrangement deepened when Trump pardoned 1,500 of those traitors upon his return to office in 2025. Since then, Trump’s increasingly autocratic and megalomaniacal behavior and his disastrous policies have driven the wedge deeper. 

At this point, Sabato and McGlennon agreed, too few voters look at candidates’ policy ideas and philosophies, only at the letter behind their names.   

It is hard to make anyone change their mind about Trump, George Mason University political science professor Jeremy Mayer told me. Lines have been drawn. 

“The hate is so deep,” he said. “Why bother to have a debate?”

The congressional elections in Virginia’s 1st and 2nd Districts and others  across the country will be a referendum on Trump. And the winners will be determined by an enthusiasm gap.

“We are so polarized,” said Mayer, “the facts don’t matter.”      

Early voting is underway and Election Day is Nov. 3. Read The Mercury’s voter guide to learn more about the congressional candidates and stakes of the races. Take our reader survey to share the issues that will motivate you to vote this fall and inform our elections reporting.