The Birmingham News has a story this morning about State Sen. Vivian Figures challenging U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions to a debate.

Sessions’ campaign says in no uncertain terms that the U.S. senator has no plans to accept the state senator’s challenge.

About two months ago, Barack Obama declined John McCain’s invitation to participate in a series of town hall-style debates throughout the general election campaign.

At 22 debates, there had been enough opportunity to see the candidates together, Obama said.

That’s not the case here. Sessions and Figures have had EXACTLY ZERO debates. None. Nil. Zip-o.

But don’t think it has anything to do with avoiding debate, Sessions’ spokesman Chuck Spurlock said. It’s all about scheduling:

“Our schedule has been set since Labor Day,” Spurlock said.

Spurlock said that, if Figures wanted to debate, she should have made the offer months ago.

“We debated in 1996 and 2002 and in each case the details of those debates were worked out months ahead of time. This is something we’re not going to be discussing,” Spurlock said.

Yes, because having even a single debate isn’t something an incumbent legislator running for re-election should anticipate including in his schedule.

As I read this story, I thought to myself, “Hey, this sounds familiar ...”

And then I realized that I got basically the same line from U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers’ campaign last week as the Opelika-Auburn News sought to facilitate a debate between Rogers and his challenger, Josh Segall.

“We have moved forward in confirming the remainder of Mike’s schedule for the month of October,” campaign manager Tripp Skipper told me in an e-mail. And then, later, “We just cannot find a time to make an OA News debate work.”

In fairness, Rogers and Segall did have one debate—last Tuesday in Montgomery under the auspices of WSFA. (You can see it here.)

But I’m wondering whether the News’ Charles Dean is on to something when he observes that challengers who are behind in the polls and short on money usually challenge the incumbent opponent to debate, and incumbents ahead in the polls and flush with money usually ignore the challenge.

If that’s true, then you have to wonder: Why is it in incumbents’ best interests to limit debates with their challengers?

Is it simply because they don’t want to give their opponents a platform?

Or is it because they don’t think they owe voters an accounting of their past term—or that the voters are even worth their time?