Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, left, and G OP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie, have a light moment on stage at the Omni Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, where they debated in July. (Bob Brown/AP)

RICHMOND — Ever since neo-Nazis and Klansmen descended on Charlottesville for a deadly August rally, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and other Virginia politicians have described them as out-of-state troublemakers who needed to "go home" and never come back.

On Thursday night, the Republican running to succeed McAuliffe said they did not even have a place in political debate.

"They called themselves the 'alt-right,'" former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie, a Republican said at an NAACP forum a month after the rally. "They are not on any legitimate political spectrum of left to right. If on a scale of one to 10 — one is the most liberal, and 10 is most conservative — these people are a yellow. They're not on the same continuum."

[Va. governor’s race gets a jump on Labor Day, stoked by statues and Trump]

Gillespie, who titled his political memoir "Winning Right," was not just defending his side of the political divide.

Through his remarks, delivered at a university created for freed slaves, just blocks from a boulevard with grand monuments to Gen. Robert E. Lee and other Southern Civil War figures, Gillespie sought to separate himself from President Trump.

The president's response to Charlottesville was criticized for not drawing a moral distinction between the white supremacist protesters and the counterprotesters who opposed them.

Gillespie, who needs both Trump supporters and moderate swing voters to carry purple Virginia in November, has tried to separate himself from Trump on issues without directly criticizing the president.

Gillespie appeared at the Virginia Union University forum immediately after his Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam. Both took questions for about an hour but were not on stage at the same time.

Northam drew warm applause as he recalled what he and McAuliffe (D) said after the violence in Charlottesville, where a man identified as a white supremacist plowed his car into a crowd, killing a young counterprotester. Two state police troopers patrolling the events by air also died in a helicopter crash.

"We told them in no uncertain terms to, 'Go back to where you came from and don't come back,'" Northam said.

The crowd applauded again when Northam noted Trump did not initially identify the hate groups by name.

"I regret that the president of this great country of ours did not call it out for what it was," Northam said. "I'm proud that Governor McAuliffe and Attorney General Mark Herring and I did."

Gillespie expressed eagerness to speak about Charlottesville, describing his revulsion at the white supremacists in visceral terms. He said they made him want to "throw up."

"If you believe that one race is superior to another or that one religion is superior to another . . . that is dehumanizing, and that is the presence of evil in our world and we have to reject it," he said.

Northam and Gillespie also used the event to reiterate their opposing stances on the state's Confederate statues — while also hedging a bit.

"I have said all along that these statues belong in museums," said Northam, a pediatric neurologist and former state senator.

[McAuliffe strikes softer tone on monuments, raising GOP hopes that Northam will be out on limb]

But Northam, who faces an electorate that favors preserving the monuments 51 percent to 28 percent in a recent poll, said he was even more concerned about "other monuments" to injustice — such as racial inequities in health care, education and the criminal justice system.

Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, lobbyist and adviser to President George W. Bush, said he would prefer to keep the statues up — in part because of the cost of removal, which has been estimated at $5 million to $10 million for the statues that tower over Richmond's Monument Avenue. "There's a lot more things we could do here in Richmond with $10 million," Gillespie said.

Gillespie also stressed that decisions about monuments "should be made at the local level" and encouraged communities to "have the conversation" about their fate. That is a softer tone than what he struck in recent campaign emails, in which he vowed to keep them up.

[Gillespie hires former Trump field director and sharpens tone on Confederate monuments]

The monuments were part of a broader conversation on racial equality at the forum, which was sponsored by the NAACP and several other groups.

Northam called for expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and expanding pre-K education to address inequities in health care and education. Gillespie said the way to lift people out of poverty was to stimulate the state's economy; he has proposed a 10 percent income tax cut but did not mention that at the event. He said public charter schools, which are privately run, would help empower poor parents whose children are in failing traditional schools.

Both men agreed on the need for criminal justice reform, including raising the felony threshold to $500 — up from the current $200, which is among the lowest in the country. Both also spoke of easing penalties for marijuana. Northam went further, with a plan to decriminalize possession. Gillespie offered a "three-strikes" approach for possession; the first two arrests would not carry criminal charges, but a third would.

Virginians will choose their next governor on Nov. 7.