Brian Moran, Sen. Creigh Deeds and Terry McAuliffe took the stage in Blacksburg to debate last night in an event hosted by a handful of prominent national and Virginia liberal bloggers.
Once again there was plenty of agreement on central issues including closing the gun show loophole, growing the economy and creating green jobs.
But it was the personal shots between Moran and McAuliffe that raised the most eyebrows. Moran went after McAuliffe for the ad Hillary Clinton ran questioning if Barack Obama was prepared to answer the red phone at 3 a.m. McAuliffe said that he wasn't in charge of the approving every ad.
Moran also questioned McAuliffe's record running the Democratic National Committee - especially because Democrats lost seats in both chambers of Congress and also the White House to George W. Bush.
"You continue a tradition of running a negative campaign," McAuliffe replied.
(Fast forward to the 54 minute mark to see one tough exchange or skip ahead to the 1 hour 36 minute mark for another back-and-forth.)
As the Democrats stressed the importance of winning the House of Delegates - Deeds related a story that the very first time he met McAuliffe was when Deeds was chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and asking McAuliffe for money for House campaigns.
"And you said no," Deeds said." "That was the first time I met you until last fall...you didn't help them and we lost 13 seats that cycle."
McAuliffe countered that he didn't give money to individual states opting instead to give lots of money through the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee - which doled out money to the states.
"My record stands intact," McAuliffe said.
Here's the video - what do you think.
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