VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — In their first and only debate ahead of the 2024 general election in Virginia, incumbent Rep. Jen Kiggans (R) faced off against Democratic challenger Missy Cotter Smasal (D) vying to represent the Commonwealth's Second Congressional District.
The debate, hosted at Virginia Wesleyan University, comes less than a month ahead of Election Day, over a position with a history of back-and-forth. Congresswoman Kiggans, elected two years ago, defeated former Rep. Elaine Luria (D).
Here are a few of the questions and subsequent responses from the debate. Please note the candidates' responses below were edited only for copyediting purposes:
What is your message to business leaders here in the Hampton Roads region about the future of America?
Kiggans: What I hear just time and time again from business leaders, from business owners, from everyday hard-working families that live here in the second district, is about the economy and the lack of security that people feel.
You talked about the country going in the wrong direction, or just things going in the wrong direction, I think that’s absolutely led by our economy. We're looking at an economy where right now we pay an extra $1100 a month. I’ve got 35% of the people in my district that cannot pay their bills.
When I meet with people who work at the bank, they tell me about 50% of people who have mortgages are behind or having to make alternative payment plans. We know people are struggling, despite what we hear in the media, and the verbiage coming out of this administration. We know that our bank accounts don’t lie to us. We know those numbers, each and everyone of us feel it. When I go to the drive-through with my kids and it costs me over $30 to buy hamburgers for dinner, it never used to be that way. I'm paying more for groceries as each and every one of you are.
I will tell you, Republicans have put measures in place that have tried to decrease the spending, that is one thing that we saw overarching, just excessive spending coming out of the Biden-Harris administration. Trillions of dollars before the Republicans took the House majority. Our national debt is higher now than ever, we have a national debt that we pay interest on, and that interest is higher than what we pay for Medicare and it's more than what we spend on our military budget. We've got to reduce spending.
We also have to restore energy independence for our great nation. That's something that we've passed from the House, the good legislation that we've passed to reduce spending and restore energy independence, that's not been taken up by the Democratic Senate. My opponent would be a rubber stamp for all of those Democrat policy positions.
We've got to make sure we flip the Senate, we get better leadership in the White House, and we get our country back on the right track to restore economic security.
Cotter Smasal: I believe Coastal Virginia has a strong independent streak, and we reject extremism in all forms. We have a proud military tradition, and that means that we stand up for our beliefs in our values.
We don’t support when people go to Congress and threaten shutdowns, as Congresswoman Kiggans' party has continually done. We know that that has a chilling effect here on our Hampton Roads economy, and it is irresponsible.
We don’t support it when people like Jen Kiggans go to Congress and vote to increase prices on groceries, on energy and housing, things that people truly care about here in our district. And the most concerning thing I think for most of us, for business owners, for regular citizens, is the rise of extremism. I’ve been so disappointed to see Congresswoman Kiggans go to DC and become more extreme with every day, buying into the extremism. Calling people like Marjorie Taylor Green "her teammate," and falling in line with speaker Mike Johnson and his calls for national abortion bans.
She has been in Congress for two years. Your prices have only risen during that time, it's harder to stretch the dollar over these past two years. She hasn't delivered for us, but she did take the time to work to restrict your bodily autonomy. 13 votes to restrict reproductive rights, nothing to improve wages, to bring costs down, and to really provide for the small businesses, middle class people here in Coastal Virginia and the voters of our district.
What should the federal government do to address housing costs?
Kiggans: Housing is not just a important piece of economic security. It’s also an important component of healthcare, and we want people out there to have housing and we don’t have enough affordable housing.
I was at the Old Dominion University brief on Monday at the State of the Region, and they talked a lot about the problems with why we don’t have more affordable housing in this district, and they think the overarching theme was that it was because of the regulatory burden. He did a great job of explaining what that looks like, that four out of $10 of your building cost are actually weighed down in regulatory burden cost, the cost of the application to build to affordable housing. I had a builder one time show me, it was inches thick, and he had hired a lawyer to actually do the application.
I know that my office spends a lot of time liaisoning with developers, contractors and builders for places like the Army Corps because they’re having so much trouble with NEPA, with some of the environmental regulations put in place. They are stifling the progress that should be done here.
We’ve got a Governor that keeps inviting great businesses to the Commonwealth of Virginia, every groundbreaking I go to, Governor Youngkin says, we’ve got 1000 more jobs coming to Virginia Beach, and all I can think about is where are these people going to live?
I’ve got military housing that is inadequate for my military families. Not just the cost of rents and mortgages that have gone up with the families that are already struggling, but unaccompanied housing on base, insufficient. Less than 50% of my unaccompanied housing at Naval Air Station Oceana is actually livable. We send those military members out on base, the problems we have with inadequate spending with housing on the military side, but inadequate spending on housing in our district, and that’s because they can’t build. They want to build, people every day come to our office and say we want to build, and it's a result of the Democratic policies put in place. Again, would be a rubber stamp from my opponent if she sat in Congress.
We cannot have that, we have to make the lives for our construction, our developers and our contractors easier so that they can build that housing that we need so much in this district.
Cotter Smasal: Housing affordability is one of the biggest concerns that I hear from people across our district. I think that it's important that we make sure to incentivize first-time homebuyers, people who are going to live in their homes. I think that we should disincentivize large corporations from coming in and buying up a vast amount of housing stock, pricing the rest of us out of the market. Those are the kind of policies that we need to focus on.
I want to quickly address the veterans' housing and military families, because unfortunately Jen Kiggans has actually voted to cut funding for military housing construction, and that would set back the efforts to really provide for safer more quality housing, healthy housing for military families. She’s also trying to privatize that as well, which as we hear from military families, they don’t want that. They don’t feel that they get the services that they deserve with the privatization.
But going back to housing again, we live at sea level. You and I both know what is like, I walk my son to the bus stop through flooded streets. We need to make sure that we’re protecting our homes here, making sure that we’re providing for resiliency, and making sure the people can actually have insurance that covers the cost of flooding for their homes. One of my concerns with Jen Kiggans, she voted against the bipartisan infrastructure deal that provided funding for flood resiliency and flood prevention measures that would protect our homes and businesses.
So as we look at ways to try to make housing more affordable, we need to also make sure that we’re providing for resilient homes and protecting our homes and businesses here in Coastal Virginia.
Kiggans responded that she did not sit in Congress during the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill.
There are millions of people living in the country illegally. What should Congress do about that?
Cotter Smasal: I believe that we need to have strong borders. I served as an officer in the Navy. I deployed during the global war on terrorism, and it’s essential that we know who’s coming into our country at all times.
I want to be incredibly clear that the failure on border security and immigration policy is a bipartisan failure. I’ve seen people in the Democratic Party fail. I’ve seen Republicans fail, and I’ve seen extremists like Jen Kiggans fail to address this.
There is a difference, though, and I would like to be very clear, between strength and cruelty. We need a strong, secure border, but the extreme dehumanizing rhetoric that comes from Jen Kiggans and her teammates like Marjorie Taylor Green is dangerous. The cruel policies of family separation are unacceptable.
Let’s talk about the option that was on the table for the toughest bipartisan border security bill that we’ve seen in decades. Congresswoman Kiggans had the opportunity to vote and she opposed adding more border patrol agents. She opposed adding technology funding to detect fentanyl coming across our border. Congresswoman Kiggans opposed more barriers at the border and funding to address human trafficking at our border. All incredibly important things, and Jen Kiggans opposed it.
Why? Because she was told to oppose it by one person, by Donald Trump. Because he wanted the political issue and the political fight, instead of delivering results for us. She will sell out our national security in the interest of one person and continue to fall in line. She is also taken votes proactively that would harm the border. She has voted to take away funding from border patrol and from ATF, she has voted to take away funding from the FBI.
These are extreme votes. Jen Kiggans has chosen extremism. And it's bad for Coastal Virginia.
Kiggans: I'm glad we’re now talking about border security because this is probably the number two issue I hear when I travel around the district and talk to the people I represent.
I’ve consistently voted to secure our border, and the people in this district know my position. There were 94 executive actions taken by President Joe Biden when he took office that opened our border and allowed illegal immigrants to the tune of over about 12 million people to be in this country, including over 600 people on the terrorist watchlist and people that want to do our great nation harm.
I’ve been to the border, I’ve been to Texas, I’ve been to Arizona. I’ve talked to our border patrol agents who are overworked and underpaid. One of the first actions I had the privilege of doing in Congress was voting on HR 2, which is the strongest border bill that we have ever had come in the United States House of Representatives.
We passed multiple border bills since then, all of which have not been taken up by the Democrat Senate. Those anti-border policy positions all would be followed by my opponent, who again would be a rubber stamp for anti-border policies. We continue to pass strong border legislation that the Democrats do not entertain, and do not take up. And the border bill that was presented in the Senate, that never made it to the floor of the House, was simply an election year gimmick. You can look, it was a weak, water down version of what we had passed with HR 2, and did not provide that border security.
The amount of fentanyl that’s coming across our border, as a healthcare provider, as a mom, it scares me to death. I’ve had grown men come up to me at community events and cry because they’ve lost children due to fentanyl exposure. The humanitarian crisis of the cartels running human trafficking across the border.
The border has to be closed, border security has to be restored. House Republicans have put the strongest border legislation in place. The Democrats do not take this issue up and do not let us vote on it. It has to change. We cannot continue to go down this way. It's a national security issue, it's a border security issue, it's a humanitarian security issue, and we've got to change something and we have to do it fast.