A debate scheduled Tuesday between U.S. Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-Newport News and his Republican challenger in the 3rd Congressional District, Marty Williams, was canceled Monday after a disagreement over how questions were drafted.
The event will now be a town hall at Christopher Newport University’s McMurran Hall, in Room 210, where Scott plans to discuss the issues with students, according to a statement from his office. Williams said he was not invited to that.
The debate was going to take place at Thomas Nelson Community College’s Hampton campus. It was being organized by the Christopher Newport University Democrats student group, College Republicans of Thomas Nelson and the NAACP’s Hampton chapter.
The dispute started on Saturday, when both student groups and Rachel Bitecofer, a professor at CNU, devised the questions that would be posed to Williams and Scott, according to both Williams and Gaylene Kanoyton, president of the Hampton NAACP chapter.
Those questions were “inadvertently” emailed to Williams by a member of the College Republicans, according to Kanoyton. Bitecofer, who did not return a call for comment, later sent them to Scott after discovering what happened, Scott and Kanoyton said. Owen Haughton, chairman of the College Republicans group, declined to Monday to comment on what happened with the emailed questions.
Kanoyton said she was asked via text message on Sunday whether she wanted to add her own questions. Williams said Kanoyton wanted the NAACP to be involved in the drafting process. She acknowledged this on Monday, but said she quickly remembered that the original plan was to have just the moderator draw up the questions. She and Scott asked for that to happen.
“In order to ensure that voters of Virginia’s new 3rd Congressional District are not receiving overly rehearsed answers and to give all of the debate’s sponsors the opportunity to participate in the development of the questions, my campaign requested that the questions be redrafted and sequestered from the candidates before the debate,” Scott’s statement said.
Williams said he couldn’t agree to that because “there’s not enough time to re-prepare.” He also said the debate was now tainted because of Kanoyton’s involvement, given that she is also first vice chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia.
The moderator later dropped out, Haughton said.
Scott said he was disappointed in Williams for backing out and that he is “unfairly attacking” the Hampton NAACP.
“There are also going to be audience questions, still gonna be a lot of unknown in there,” Williams said. “Unfortunately now they’re not going to hear it. Of course it hurts the students, which is really disappointing to me.”
Amin can be reached by phone at 757-247-4890.