In a freewheeling, conversational and sometimes confrontational debate Monday night between Gov. Tom Wolf and challenger Scott Wagner, the candidates for governor butted heads over education spending, the death penalty, the state’s new congressional districts and more.

Moderator Alex Trebek, host of the television game show "Jeopardy!" often pushed back and challenged the candidates’ answers and parts of their monthslong campaigns — from Wagner’s previous desire to debate Wolf 67 times, to Wolf's harsh ads calling Wagner the "worst of Harrisburg."

“If we, and when I say ‘we’ I mean all of the voters in the state, were to believe everything you've said about each other, we’d have trouble voting for either one of you,” Trebek said at the outset.

The faceoff was the lone debate in this year's matchup, as the Democratic Wolf seeks a second term against Wagner, a former Republican state senator from York County and owner of trash-hauling companies.

Wolf, who maintains a comfortable lead in the polls and a larger campaign war chest, declined to participate in additional debates even though three debates has been typical of Pennsylvania governors seeking re-election.

Wagner originally proposed one debate in every one of the state’s 67 counties — a proposition Trebek said Wagner “knew that was not going to happen.”

“I'm sorry. It wasn't a game and it wasn't to be funny,” Wagner replied while saying he’s held hundreds of events across the state this year.

Wolf said he's visited every county as governor and continued to hold events, including 80 events to address the opioid epidemic since he took office.

On Wolf’s ads targeting Wagner as the “worst of Harrisburg,” Trebek asked how Wagner could’ve lived up to that statement after 3 1/2 years a state senator. Wolf said the governor should be someone who the people can trust and be transparent, noting Wagner’s refusal to release his tax returns.

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On other topics like redistricting, the death penalty and the history of education spending, the candidates sharply disagreed.

Wagner said he’d revoke the moratorium on the death penalty. “We’re going to get tough in this state,” he said when Trebek asked him about recent mass shootings.

Wolf, who set the moratorium in 2015, said he kept it that away after the recommendations of a bipartisan commission and that mass murderers should “rot in prison.”

On the controversial redistricting case earlier this year that redrew Pennsylvania's congressional map, Wolf said he approved of the new map, which has given Democrats a better chance at acquiring more seats in the midterm election next month. Wagner called the map “a disaster” and “corruption at its best” because the state Supreme Court ultimately decided where the lines would fall.

And on education spending — a topic that Wolf has claimed as his prime issue going back to his 2014 campaign — Trebek took issue with some of Wagner's campaign rhetoric.

“It seems to me you have done a full 180,” Trebek said, listing off times Wagner said the state didn’t need any new education money to his recent plan of adding $1 billion for public education without raising taxes.

Wagner, fighting back, claimed Wolf had not actually added education funds during the first three years of his term because he let the budget go into law without his signature. He also pointed to the public employee pension crisis which drew a hefty portion of new education dollars in recent years.

Wolf noted he did sign a bipartisan pension reform bill last year and got $1 billion in new education money during his term.

“We have a ways to go, but we are on the right track,” Wolf said.

And when Trebek asked Wagner to “show me the money” for his new $1 billion plan, Wagner didn't cite any specific areas but mentioned his plan for “zero-based budgeting” and “turning over every rock.”