In their second and final debate, Virginia gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe (D) and Glenn Youngkin (R) faced off on health policy, public safety, abortion, and education. They also disagreed on strategies for creating more affordable housing in Northern Virginia and stopping a looming eviction crisis in the state.

Recent polls indicate that the race is extremely close, with Youngkin capitalizing on a renewed wave of Republican enthusiasm and McAuliffe attempting to enliven the Democratic base without now-former President Donald Trump to run against. While Youngkin has at times attempted to distance himself from Trump, the vision he presented in the debate — of an economically stagnant, crime-ridden state — echoed rhetoric from the former president. McAuliffe, by contrast, touted his economic achievements in his previous term as governor (from 2014 to 2018) and talked at length about how he would tackle the coronavirus pandemic in Virginia.

One of the sharpest disagreements came over vaccine mandates, which McAuliffe supports and Youngkin does not, though he encourages people to choose vaccination.

“He is going to send a child to a school where the teacher’s not wearing a mask and the teacher is not vaccinated,” McAuliffe argued. “That is disqualifying.”

Youngkin framed his opposition to vaccine mandates in economic terms, suggesting that such rules might discourage employees from remaining in the workforce.

“At a time when we are trying to come out of this pandemic, we’re ranked 44th in the nation in job recovery. We need those health care workers,” Youngkin said.

Some Virginia health care experts have said exhaustion and burnout, not vaccine mandates, are driving nursing shortages. The Virginia Mercury reported that at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, 90% of nurses are vaccinated, but the hospital is still seeing high turnover.

In Northern Virginia, vaccine mandates are fast becoming a fact of life, with most local governments and school systems now requiring proof of vaccination or regular coronavirus testing for employees and student athletes.

Recent polling from Monmouth University indicates that the pandemic is a top issue for likely voters, alongside jobs and the economy and education.

“It’s clear that just about every Virginian wants this to be over. It’s also clear that it’s not over anytime soon. And so the strategy forward is going to be a key thing,” says Stephen J. Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. “We really are talking about the biggest health care and economic crisis that this country, this world has faced in decades.”

Education — and the culture-war specters of transgender-inclusive school policies and critical race theory, both of which put Loudoun County into national headlines earlier in the summer — was another flash point. McAuliffe has said he would implement existing statewide guidance on gender-inclusive school policies, but in the debate, he suggested he was in favor of some form of “local input” on the issue. Currently, state policy dictates that Virginia school systems create their own transgender rights policies, and the state offers guidance on what those might look like.

Youngkin said the decision-making should be up to local districts, “but we must ask them to include concepts of safety and privacy and respect in the discussion, and we must demand they include parents in this dialogue.” In Loudoun County, parents opposed to the district’s transgender rights policy have sometimes cited religious objections and concerns about female students’ safety in sharing bathrooms with transgender students, though research has shown no link between inclusive policies and bathroom safety.

The two candidates diverged sharply on the teaching of race and racism in Virginia schools.

“I think it’s important that we send a message that our state is open and welcoming,” McAuliffe said. “We need to teach our children the full history of who we are as a commonwealth and who we are as a country.”

Youngkin acknowledged that educating students about race “is a real challenge,” and then suggested that educational standards were falling in Virginia.

“We don’t need to teach our children to view everything through a lens of race and then pit them against one another so that their dreams are, in fact, stolen from them,” he said. “On day one, we’re going to get education moving, we’re going to reestablish expectations of excellence.”

There were other moments where the candidates’ rhetoric was less markedly divided. Several times, McAuliffe appeared to walk back or couch previous support of more progressive ideas, like ending qualified immunity for police officers and rolling back Virginia’s right-to-work labor laws. In both cases, he suggested he would not bring forward policy proposals to make changes as governor, but acknowledged the interest in the General Assembly to address both issues.

In a year where some Northern Virginia localities have sought to re-envision — and sometimes cut back on — the role of law enforcement in communities and schools, both Youngkin and McAuliffe touted their law enforcement ties and support for continued funding of police departments.

“[The] law enforcement community wholeheartedly trusts that I will do the right thing. We’ll invest in law enforcement, we’ll protect qualified immunity, we’ll invest in a broken mental health system,” Youngkin said. “We’ll make our community safe again.”

The back-and-forth in the public safety portion of the debate paused after Princess Blanding, a criminal justice activist and independent candidate in the governor’s race, interrupted from the audience to protest not being included among the candidates on the stage. Blanding’s brother was shot and killed by a Richmond police officer in 2018 while experiencing a mental health crisis.

“Their censorship of my candidacy is racist, it is very sexist, it is very oppressive,” Blanding told media after she was escorted out of the hall by security, in a video posted on Twitter by a CNN reporter.

Both candidates on stage offered general support for welcoming Afghan refugees into Virginia, though neither provided specifics on actions they might take as governor to ease the resettlement process in the long term.

The debate came as the race — at least according to some polling — appears to tighten. The Cook Political Report switched the race from “lean Democrat” to “toss up” last week, and at least one recent poll put Youngkin leading McAuliffe.

That’s significant, Farnsworth says, in part because the off-year Virginia gubernatorial race is often seen as a bellwether for how the parties might fare in next year’s national congressional midterm elections.

“Both parties put a lot of money and a lot of energy into the Virginia campaigns a year after the presidential election,” he said.

National politics were front and center throughout the debate. Youngkin has tried to distance himself from former President Donald Trump while also flirting with issues central to the Trump Republican base, like election regulations and a strict stance against abortion. Asked on Tuesday whether he’d vote for Donald Trump if he were to run for president again in 2024, Youngkin said yes.

“If he’s the Republican nominee, I’ll support him,” he said.

In Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia, McAuliffe still enjoys strong support, leading Youngkin by 29 points among likely voters in a Monmouth University poll released Monday. But there are some indications that Youngkin may be more competitive than previous Republican candidates in the exurbs in Prince William and Loudoun counties. A September Post/Schar poll found Youngkin leading McAuliffe by 20 percentage points among likely voters in that part of the region — which Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam carried by 5 percentage points four years ago.

The debate was hosted by the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce and took place on Northern Virginia Community College’s campus in Alexandria. While discussion between the candidates mostly dealt with statewide and even national issues, like Congress’s handling of the beleaguered infrastructure bill, an exchange on affordable housing did focus on Northern Virginia.

McAuliffe said he supports state and local incentives for developers to build more affordable housing. He said he’d work with localities, state funding sources, and even private companies like Amazon to fill the need.

“Everybody here in Northern Virginia understands the desperate need. People who work here shouldn’t have to drive two hours to be able to work every single day,” he said.

In contrast, Youngkin said he’d like to see changes to permitting and other regulations for all housing types.

“We actually make it easier to permit, and we can bring down the cost of housing,” Youngkin said. “We need more supply.”

Both candidates, moderator Chuck Todd noted, live in wealthy neighborhoods in Northern Virginia — where there is often pushback to the idea of even so-called “missing middle” housing.

Early voting is already underway across the commonwealth. Residents have until October 12 to register to vote. Election Day is November 2.