By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA Staff Writer
roarty@politicspa.com

HARRISBURG — A Democratic gubernatorial debate held Wednesday  included some of the campaign’s biggest fireworks yet, with discussion that at times featured direct confrontations and answers that veered well away from the usual talking points.

Amid a sea of forums and debates already held this year, Wednesday”s event, hosted by WITF and the League of Women’s Voters, stands out as the most divisive and revealing.

Although the economy and government reform have been the campaign’s most prominent issues to date, Wednesday’s roughly hour-long debate, which took a much more conversational format than previous ones, focused on the candidates’ position on school choice. The starkest contrast was evident between Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel and state Senator Anthony Williams, although Auditor General Jack Wagner and Dan Onorato also weighed in with revealing perspectives.

Williams has made promoting charter and cyber schools, normally a favorite of conservatives, the centerpiece of his campaign, calling it a civil rights issue. At the debate, he said many urban school districts, despite receiving between $16,000 and $19,000 annually per student, produce poor results that doom the students attending them.

“For me, if you’re of poor or modest income, you should have the same rights as a person living in an affluent, suburban district,” the Philadelphia lawmaker said.

But that drew swift disagreement from Hoeffel, who has positioned himself as a champion of liberal values. Siphoning money from public schools to other education opportunities will cripple an already underfunded system, he said.

“I’m afraid Senator Williams, by allowing money to go to non-public schools, would undermine public education,” Hoeffel said.

The commissioner then took aim at contributors to Williams’ campaign. According to reports filed Tuesday, the state senator has received $1.7 million of the $1.6 million he raised from PACs, including a $750,000 contribution from a school-choice advocacy group.

“He’s supported by well-meaning billionaires who honestly believe the best way to go is through unfettered competition and survival of the fittest,” he said. “And that works for these guys in the financial markets, but it’s a disaster for public education.”

When Williams started discussing the issue later in the debate, Hoeffel interjected.

“What’s going to be left?” he asked. “What public school is going to survive?”

The senator, himself now interrupting Hoeffel, responded that he seemed to support the school systems and not the children.

“Fight for children and success, not systems,” he said.

The back-and-forth between the two candidates is likely symbolic of a battle between the two candidates for voters in their native southeast Pennsylvania. Both men, particularly Hoeffel, need success in the voter-rich region because success in western Pennsylvania, Onorato’s and Wagner’s backyard, is a long-shot. The commissioner, in fact, has built his entire campaign strategy around winning the area’s socially liberal voting bloc.

Onorato and Wagner, however, were also sucked into discussion about school-choice. The auditor general took a position similar to Williams, citing votes he made in support of the cyber and charter schools while a state senator.

“What we don’t talk about enough is the children,” he said.

Onorato took a slightly different tact, voicing support for the state’s costing-out study, which would dictate continued large increases in state aid to public schools. But he also said he would support choices for students in urban districts.

But school-choice wasn’t the only issue that sparked fireworks at the debate. An innovative idea to have the candidates ask one of their opponents a question of their own saw Williams, who seemed to dominate much of the discussion, ask Onorato to pledge not to allow any of their campaign contributors to receive campaign contributors.

The county executive responded that he would end no-bid contracts but said a competitive-bid process might be OK for campaign contributors.

“I’d have to think about that one, because I’m not sure legally that we’re allowed to do that,” he said.

Wagner said he any contributor that received a state contract should get their money back from the candidate.

“In government, as an executive you cannot be accepting a contribution in the right hand and actually issuing a contract in the left hand,” he said. “And if you are, you should be giving that money back.”

Williams, in another squabble with Hoeffel, then accused the commissioner of giving Montgomery County contracts to campaign contributors.

“And how would you know that Tony?” Hoeffel shot back. “You’re just making stuff up.”

The campaign for the Democratic nomination is still largely unformed. A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday, which mirrors all of the public polling on the race so far, found 47 percent of voters were still undecided, with Onorato the early leader at just 20 percent.