| PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY – Today, the Vega campaign is firing back at Abigail's desperate attempt to come up with excuses for backing out of the October 21st debate she had already committed to. "The Vega campaign has been nothing but accommodating as the Prince William Committee of 100 and League of Women Voters worked together with both campaigns to set up a debate. The Vega campaign has had only two requirements for any debate Yesli Vega takes part in. One, the debate has a live audience, and two, the debate must be televised so that all Virginians in the 7th have the opportunity to watch the debate and see both candidates discuss their stances on the issues. The Vega campaign recommended Channel 7, an ABC affiliate out of Washington, DC. At no point did the Vega campaign make any requests to change the moderator, who would select the questions, and as stated before, one of the campaign's only requirements was to have a live audience, proving that the Vega Campaign at no point wanted a debate in the studio. The Spanberger campaign immediately shot down Channel 7, calling them a conservative media outlet and comparing them to Fox News even though Channel 7 has a long history of providing non-partisan and fair coverage to political candidates. To appease the Spanberger campaign, the committee dropped Channel 7 and chose to use CSPAN instead. The Vega campaign happily accepted the change as long as it was televised. Following this agreement, the Spanberger campaign came out publicly announcing she was looking forward to a televised debate on the 21st. The Spanberger campaign also accused the Vega campaign of choosing Larry O'Connor as one of the debate moderators. At no point did the Vega campaign recommend or ask for Larry O'Connor to be a debate moderator. The committee chose O'Connor to be a second moderator after Lisa Desjardins, a former CNN host and left-leaning PBS reporter, contacted the committee out of the blue with an offer to moderate the debate. The committee chose O'Connor of their own free will to provide a right-leaning contrast to Desjardins which the Vega campaign had no knowledge of until the committee offered both to moderate together. Once again, the Vega campaign accepted. The Spanberger campaign then created additional excuses not to debate before backing out. These excuses included not having security for the debate, the Vega campaign offered to pay for security. Not having a ticket system in place for the live audience. Why does Abigail need tickets? Is she afraid the majority of attendees wouldn't support her radical policies and she needed tickets to ensure she could get her own campaign staff and volunteer's seats? And she took personal offense to the idea the committee would select one left leaning moderator and one right leaning moderator to run a fair and even debate. Because of these three reasons, Abigail chose to back out of the debate. The Vega campaign has accommodated every single one of the Spanberger team's requests as they have attempted to tie up and complicate the debate process from the very beginning to shift the balance of the debate in Abigail's favor. Then last night, Abigail chose to throw a temper tantrum at ten thirty at night over Twitter, hurling out misleading accusations and more excuses to hide the fact she's afraid to debate Yesli Vega. The Vega campaign is still prepared and ready to take on Abigail on Friday night with whatever moderator the committee would like. Until then, it's clear Abigail is afraid to debate Yesli Vega unless Abigail has done everything she can to tip the scales in her favor and it's disappointing she would back out of this debate that would've taken place on a level playing field." – Vega Campaign Spokesperson | 
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