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July 28, 2024
Editor, The News-Gazette: I am a retired union electrician, IBEW, Local 26, who now lives in Rockbridge Baths. Our nation learned a great lesson with the June 27th Biden-Trump debate. Americans are entitled to see and hear from both their elected representatives and their challengers in a debate format before every election. In fact, we should have, as President Biden and former President Trump agreed to, several debates between the political candidates.
We have a great congressional race here in the Sixth District between incumbent Republican Ben Kline and Democrat Ken Mitchell. Recently, I called U.S. Rep. Ben Cline’s office, as I have done many times before about important issues. This time I called to respectfully ask him to debate Ken Mitchell.
Now, in this letter to the editor, I call on Ben Cline to agree to several debates with Ken Mitchell. I bet many universities in our district would love to host these debates, just as Longwood University proudly hosted the Vice-Presidential debate between Mike Pence and our own Virginian, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine.
In addition I call on all of my fellow Republican and Democratic registered voters to call Ben Cline’s office to ask him to debate Ken Mitchell. I know Ken Mitchell would agree to a series of debates with Ben Cline and I hope Ben Cline will make the right decision, the American decision, to agree to multiple televised debates to help inform our voters regarding who should be our next representative. Debates help us all evaluate our candidates, and, as the Trump-Biden debate showed, they can change history for the better. ED PICKENS Rockbridge Baths
