There’s apparently no debate that Rep. Chris Collins will accept, not even the decades-long traditional forum hosted by a local Buffalo prep school.
The indicted congressman did not respond to St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute’s invitation and did not attend the high school-hosted forum — an upstate tradition for more than three decades.
“He has hidden himself the entire campaign. And we really want to come out and see what exactly is he standing for in the current year,” student Adam Kiedrowski — one of the event’s panelists and a senior at the prestigious Buffalo high school — told Buffalo public radio station WBFO.
Democrat Nate McMurray and the Reform Party’s Larry Piegza both showed up at the Tuesday debate.
The two stood at podiums on the stage in the school’s gymnasium with an empty mic and campaign sign marking Collins’s absence.
Collins’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
The debate-ditching Collins is under indictment for federal securities fraud in Manhattan, after allegedly dumping stock in a pharmaceutical company after receiving a tip about a failed medical trial.
He has refused to debate his opponents, but has mounted an active campaign for re-election after scotching GOP efforts to pull his name from the ballot following his indictment.
In March, Collins refused to attend a forum organized by local Buffalo public high school students on gun violence, calling the kids “radical partisans.”