Update, October 15, 2026: Twenty-four. Sarah Sanders, who skipped a June debate, has come off the list: she debated both of her challengers on Arkansas TV on October 13.

• David Rouzer, North Carolina's 7th District incumbent, skipped a candidate forum at UNC Wilmington on October 12 and didn't return the questionnaire sent ahead of it. WWAY called his D.C. office repeatedly the next day and got voicemail. Organizers of another forum that weekend said he hadn't answered their invitation either. WWAY reports he hasn't held a town hall since 2017.
• Russell Fry, South Carolina's 7th District incumbent, was invited with Democrat John Vincent to a Georgetown NAACP forum. Fry's office emailed at 12:59 p.m. the day of the event — six hours before it started — that he wouldn't attend because of a "scheduling conflict." Vincent took questions alone for over an hour.
• Tom Cotton, already on the list, declined Arkansas TV's debate on October 12 and went to a family friend's birthday party instead. His one agreed debate, with the conservative Christian broadcaster Salem Media, fell through two days later, so he and Democrat Hallie Shoffner won't debate at all. He also won't attend an October 22 debate at Arkansas State University's station.

Update, October 12, 2026: Twenty-three.

• Keith Self, Texas's 3rd District incumbent, was asked on NewsNation's Morning in America whether he would debate Democrat Evan Hunt, who says he has been asking for over a year. Self said no "viable organization" had proposed one and didn't commit. Then, twice: "This is my seat. I'm going to win it," TX3DNews reported. More on Self's answer.

Update, October 10, 2026: The list has grown from sixteen to twenty-two.

• Cliff Bentz, Oregon's 2nd District incumbent, declined four debate invitations — from Jefferson Public Radio, the League of Women Voters, KTVZ-TV in Bend and KNDU-TV in Kennewick — against Chris Beck, the Democratic and Independent Party nominee, who accepted all four. His reasons, in a statement to the Rogue Valley Times: a debate would give his opponent "desperately needed publicity," accepting would suggest the challenger is credible, and "my Democrat opponent is neither."
• Jim Pillen, Nebraska's governor, explained to WOWT why he doesn't debate: "You don't need to get and have theater for an hour." He refused to debate in 2022 too, calling it "political theater."
• Julie Fedorchak, already on the list below, withdrew from Prairie Public's House debate on October 8. Her campaign said the station changed the format and the slate of participants. Prairie Public's CEO said there were "no changes made to the debate format, nor to Prairie Public's debate criteria."
• Stephanie Bice debated her opponent at least three times as a challenger in 2020. This year her campaign "declines to debate at this time," citing her opponent's campaign debt.
• Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton still hadn't agreed to a single debate five weeks before Election Day, and Tom Cotton is skipping Arkansas TV's debates for one hosted by a Christian conservative network.

The original post, from September 20, follows.

A debate is the only event in a campaign a candidate cannot control.

Everything else can be managed. A rally is filled with supporters. A press release is written by staff. A friendly radio hit comes with questions you already know. Even a town hall can be made safe if you pick the room and screen the crowd.

A debate puts you next to the person who wants your job, in front of voters who have not decided, answering a question you did not choose. That is the whole value of it — and it is exactly why so many incumbents have decided they would rather not.

Election Day is November 3, 2026. This week two more Republicans covered on this site said no.

Jeff Hurd showed up once, to the friendliest room available

Colorado's 3rd District incumbent, Jeff Hurd, declined televised debate invitations ahead of the general election, 9News reported.

What he did accept was Club 20, a Western Slope advocacy group, on September 19 at Colorado Mesa University. 9News called it "a 30-minute session before Club 20, a Republican friendly group in Grand Junction," and the only debate Hurd had agreed to. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel described it as what "might be their only debate of the election season."

So the voters of CD-3 get one debate, in one town, on one night, half an hour long.

His opponent Dwayne Romero used his cross-examination time on it directly:

"You've never held even one in-person, unregulated, non-curated town hall. You're oh-for-21. It's in the title: representative. Tell me, Jeff, what is it? Are you just not aware of the duties of the job? Are you just lazy? Do you lack the backbone, the courage and conviction to do the right thing for this district?"

Hurd's answer was that he had held "Coffee with the Congressman," which is "open to the public and announced in advance." We have written before about how Hurd handles the town-hall question — his position has been that the events his constituents ask for are political theater.

John McGuire wants an apology first

Virginia's 5th District incumbent, John McGuire, has attached a condition to debating former Rep. Tom Perriello.

Asked at the opening of a National Ground Intelligence Center expansion whether he would debate, McGuire told Cville Right Now:

"You can tell Tom Periello," McGuire said, "that when he apologizes to the people for lying, we'll talk about a debate."

The "lying" is Perriello's accusation that McGuire traded on inside information. Here is what the same article reports about that: two weeks after voting to pass the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, McGuire sold off more than $1,000 of BlackRock stock — one of the companies the legislation targets — three days before the bill became law, according to public disclosures. The disclosure itself is narrower than that: the periodic transaction report records the partial sale on July 7, 2026, two weeks after his June 23 vote, in a Merrill Lynch SEP IRA marked "Owner: SP" — his wife's account, not his. Every BlackRock line on every 2026 report he has filed is marked the same way. What is his is the vote, and the signature on the form.

McGuire's response was: "You don't have to be intelligent to do the research and realize I'm not that guy."

That is a claim about his own conduct, made to a reporter, with no opponent standing next to him to press it. A debate is where that gets tested. He has made the debate conditional on his opponent first withdrawing the question.

This is not his only disclosure story — we have previously covered the trades on his filings and a separate Nvidia trade.

The thirteen before them

Hurd and McGuire are not an aberration. They are the latest entries in a list this site has been keeping all year.

• Mike Rogers (MI), Mike Rounds, Tom Tiffany and Rick Jackson all turned down a debate or forum in the same three days in September. A Michigan Senate debate went ahead with an empty podium. South Dakota's public broadcaster aired its Senate debate without the senator.
• Tom Tiffany separately turned down the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association debate, which had been held every cycle since 1990. It was canceled. He said one debate was "sufficient."
• Harriet Hageman let Wyoming PBS's deadline pass without responding, and the station canceled its U.S. Senate debate. She had also skipped the 2022 general-election debate and both PBS debates in 2024.
• Morgan Griffith was asked for three debates across Virginia's 9th District and said no in writing: "I do not need a jointly negotiated format to tell voters what I believe. They already know."
• Julie Fedorchak debated five times in 2024, when she was trying to win the seat. In 2026, as the incumbent, she refused to debate her primary opponent and skipped her own party's convention.
• Marsha Blackburn, running for governor, skipped a public forum and would not say whether she would debate — then claimed she had done "lots of forums," until WSMV checked with her opponents and found it was not true.
• Mike Turner's constituents have asked him for a public town hall since 2017. He has called them a "fraudulent group." When his opponent asked him to debate, he changed the subject.
• Cindy Hyde-Smith has not debated an opponent since 2018. Asked to hold one town hall anywhere in Mississippi — "she can pick the reddest county in the state" — her campaign manager answered with a line about George Soros's apartment.
• Vivek Ramaswamy's primary opponent spent the race saying "Vivek won't debate me." There was no Republican gubernatorial debate in Ohio, and the Libertarian nominee says he is still waiting for a commitment.
• Tommy Tuberville was asked in August to debate Doug Jones and said no: "There's so much difference between us. I mean, there's no reason to get up there and argue about differences of opinion."
• Dan Meuser spent an hour explaining his 2020 certification vote to a closed meeting of about 40 people. WVIA and WGAL had invited him and Rachel Wallace to debate; she accepted both, and as of August 5 he had agreed to neither.

The excuses do not hold up together

Read the reasons side by side and they cancel each other out.

Griffith says voters already know what he believes. Tiffany says one debate is enough. Blackburn says she has done lots of forums, which was not true. McGuire says he needs an apology. Fedorchak, who debated five times when she was challenging for the seat, now finds debates unnecessary — which is the tell. Nothing changed about the value of a debate between 2024 and 2026. What changed is that she already has the job.

That is the pattern underneath all of them. Debates help the person who needs to be better known and hurt the person who is already ahead. An incumbent with a safe seat has nothing to gain from an unscripted hour and something to lose. So the calculation is easy, and the voters are the ones who pay for it.

They pay it in the specific way that matters: the record never gets tested. Hurd's Medicaid vote, the BlackRock sale McGuire is being asked about, Hageman's positions, Blackburn's forum claim — every one of those is a thing an opponent would raise and a candidate would have to answer on the spot. Skip the debate and the answer is a press release instead.

What the record shows

At least twenty-four Republicans covered on this site have refused a debate, a forum or both during the 2026 cycle — nine added since this post first ran on September 20, including Cliff Bentz, who turned down four invitations because accepting would suggest his opponent is credible. In the week this post first ran, Jeff Hurd declined televised debate invitations and agreed to one 30-minute Club 20 session his local paper called possibly the only debate of the race, and John McGuire made debating conditional on his opponent apologizing for raising a BlackRock sale that the disclosure records in his wife's retirement account. At least three debates were canceled outright because a Republican would not participate — Wyoming PBS's Senate debate, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association governor's debate that had run since 1990, and a second Wisconsin debate. Election Day is November 3, 2026.

Sources

9News and the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel on Hurd; Cville Right Now on McGuire, September 19, 2026. Earlier cases as linked above. October 12 update: TX3DNews on Self. October 10 update: Baker City Herald on Bentz, WOWT on Pillen, PBS NewsHour on Fedorchak.