The debate lived up to expectations
Luria and Kiggans didn't pull any punches Wednesday.
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The rundown
Ranging coverage of the debate between Luria and Kiggans.
Kiggans would not directly answer if she believes Biden fairly won the election
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A House-aligned PAC released a new attack ad against Luria
The latest announcements from Youngkin’s office about new companies coming to Virginia
Coverage of the Luria/Kiggans debate
Virginia’s Luria, Kiggans clash in 2nd District debate - Associated Press
by Sarah Rankin
Luria called Kiggans “an election denier” who is “not fit to serve” because she has repeatedly refused to say plainly that President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election. Kiggans has answered questions on the topic — including during an interview with The Associated Press — by simply acknowledging Biden resides in the White House; she declined to answer questions about the 2020 election in a brief exchange with reporters after the debate.
Kiggans said Luria campaigns as a moderate but is actually unwilling to buck Biden or congressional leadership. She said “danger and insanity” in the halls of the Democrat-controlled Congress and what she cast as out-of-control spending have led to an economy “in shambles” and contributed to painfully high inflation.
In Virginia’s 2nd District, Luria, Kiggans meet for a fiery first debate - Washington Post
by Meagan Flynn
Kiggans repeatedly sought to tie Luria to President Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and what she called their failed economic policies in a time of high inflation, decrying what she called wasteful spending and noting more than a half-dozen times that Luria voted with Pelosi “99 percent of the time.” “If you take anything away from today, I want you to take away that statistic,” she said in her closing statement, adding that “the wasteful taxes and tax increases must stop” and new leadership in Congress was needed.
Luria, on the other hand, repeatedly assailed Kiggans for not offering solutions to the economic challenges she described, defending her votes for the Inflation Reduction Act as a major investment in clean energy that she said benefits the coastal district. She reserved her sharpest attacks on Kiggans for the issues of abortion and Kiggans’s reluctance to acknowledge that Biden was legitimately elected, invoking her vote for a $70 million partisan effort to audit Virginia’s 2020 election.
In first debate, Luria and Kiggans battle over elections, abortion and inflation - Virginia Mercury
by Graham Moomaw
The first debate in one of Virginia’s most closely watched congressional contests took a heated turn Wednesday when Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria and Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans were asked about the country’s toxic political climate and distrust of elections by both parties.
Near the end of an hour-and-a-half faceoff in the ballroom of an oceanfront hotel in Virginia Beach, Luria sharply rejected what she called a “both-sidesism” question and called Kiggans unfit for office for refusing to stand up to conspiracy theorists in the GOP.
Serving on the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Luria said, is probably the “the most important thing that I have done or that I ever will do professionally.” “It’s about laying things out and making sure something like Jan. 6 doesn’t happen again,” Luria said. “Yet Mrs. Kiggans will just go to Congress and vote for the people in leadership in her party who want to just ignore this and act like it didn’t happen and go kiss Donald Trump’s ring again. … She does everything she does for political expediency. … She’s not fit to serve in the United States Congress.”
