ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin bickered their style through the second and final debate of Virginia’s competitive governor’s race on Tuesday, trading attacks and accusations from the start of the hourlong meeting.

They called each other liars. McAuliffe accused Youngkin of skirting neighbourhood taxes by casing “fancy horses” on his Northern Virginia property and leading a company that played beginning canals on “babies.” Youngkin said McAuliffe would objective Virginia’s “right-to-work” status and endorsements President Joe Biden’s “failure of leadership” and “open borders.”

Beginning with an proof over vaccine mandates for workers — McAuliffe supports them, Youngkin opposes them — and terminating with hot-button national concerns, the two men contradicted throughout the debate. And McAuliffe frequently returned to his refrain in a state Biden carried by 10 points: holding Youngkin to former President Donald Trump.

“We need leadership as head , not trying to be a Trump wannabe and doing the talking parts, ” McAuliffe said while attacking Youngkin over inoculation mandates.

Youngkin has been endorsed by Trump and has accepted his promotion, but bristled when McAuliffe heightened the former president on the stage, accusing him of trying to take attention away from state publishes. “There’s an over and under tonight on how many times you are going to say’ Donald Trump, ’ and it was 10, ” Youngkin said Tuesday night. “And you exactly busted through it. You are running against Glenn Youngkin.”

The debate was held in vote-rich Northern Virginia, an range that would be key to any potential Democratic victory. The sprawling part is one that heavily favors McAuliffe and is emblematic of the transformation of suburban voters throughout Trump’s tenure in the White House.

And Democrats’ surrogates ahead of the debate too point to the type of voters they are trying to keep in their tent with Trump out of the White House — squishy suburbanites who interrupt away from the GOP due to Trump. The state party maintained a press accessibility ahead of the debate, flitting out onetime Republican state Del. David Ramadan and Bill Kristol, the longtime neoconservative never-Trump pundit, and McAuliffe roared out both men on stage.

“Northern Virginia, if not the territory overall, is still in my opinion, a third, a third and a third, ” said Ramadan, referencing a third for one of the parties and a third independent. “Both defendants are going to bring out their foundations, right? But what it comes down to here is, are the independents going to come out? ”

The question is, nonetheless, how much of that jive toward Democrats has stayed with Trump out of office. Public and private polling has suggested that this race will be closer than Biden’s blowout win in 2020. The recent indicate was a poll from Monmouth University released on the eve of the discussions held that had McAuliffe up 5 points over Youngkin among registered voters — a restrict hitherto stable produce compared against an earlier August poll from the university.

Republicans would prefer that with Trump gone, they can claw back some soil. And Democrats have relentlessly been trying to turn the November election into a referendum on Trump’s sway on the commonwealth of independent states, assigning Youngkin as an acolyte of Trump.

For his part, Youngkin — a former private-equity ministerial — tried to stick to his core meaning, focused on the economy and crime. He reached McAuliffe for saying he would support a legislation abolishing the state’s “right-to-work” law.

“This bill is going to come to his desk, and Terry McAuliffe will sign it. He said that, and the instant he said he would sign it, every organization in America endorsed him, ” Youngkin said. “It will be the extinction blow for Virginia’s business climate. This is why every business organization in Virginia that has offered an blurb so far has given it to me. Not to you, Terry, but to me.”

McAuliffe, who had previously said he subsistences repealing the right-to-work law, didn’t explicitly say again if he would or has not been able to back it, saying it has no political move in the commonwealth legislature.

On the airwaves, Youngkin has been focused on a letter circumventing law enforcement officers. Over the last week, practically 70 percent of his TV ad transmits in the hasten have been a variation of a smudge that has a former Richmond police officer talking about when she was shot, according to data from the ad tracking house AdImpact, assaulting McAuliffe over the state’s parole board and saying the government “won’t be safe” with him.

Youngkin’s campaign sought to drive that focus home before the debate, announcing the endorsement from the country Fraternal Order of Police on Tuesday morning, following earlier blurbs from the state’s Police Benevolent Association and a sheriff’s association. “Youngkin is the only gubernatorial applicant to sit down with the Fraternal Order of Police and synopsi his points as minister, ” Virginia FOP President John H. Ohrnberger said in a statement circulated by the campaign.

On the debate theatre, the two men also sparred over abortion: McAuliffe made Youngkin for supporting additional restrictions on abortion titles, while Youngkin called McAuliffe’s position “extreme.” And Youngkin spun a question about Afghan refugees being housed in Virginia into a lengthy and tireless review of the Biden administration’s handling of the unit pullout.

Near the end of the hour, the moderator, NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, sought to pin the candidate states down on national issues. Asked about Democrats’ $ 3.5 trillion reconciliation bill currently succeeding through Congress, McAuliffe said it was too costly. Youngkin, meanwhile, told Todd he would support Trump if the onetime director was Republicans’ nominee in 2024.

The debate was produced by Washington’s WRC-TV and aired on NBC affiliates throughout Virginia.

The next five weeks of the campaign are expected to attract a windfall of courtesy — and fund — from national organizations in an already incredibly expensive race that has saturated the airwaves and mailboxes of voters in the region.

The state has no contribution restrictions, and both parties’ national gubernatorial committees have given their candidate and state parties millions: $6.6 million from the Republican Governors Association, and $4.7 million from their Democratic copies, according to data from the Virginia Public Access Project. And strategists at the upper echelon of both parties have said they have no plans to shut off that flaming hose anytime soon.

The final unfold of the race is also expected to draw increased attention from the White House, POLITICO previously reported, which is fearful that a McAuliffe loss could kick off a cascade of second-guessing and nervousness from Democrat across the country.

And other groups are increasingly getting involved, as well. The Virginia branch of the Service Employees International Union will roll out a$ 4 million field, paid media and Get Out the Vote campaign on Wednesday morning. The project, shared first with POLITICO, includes $400,000 budgeted for English- and Spanish-language digital ads and direct mail.

Read more: politico.com