HOT SPRINGS -- Former Govs. Mark R. Warner and Jim Gilmore clashed repeatedly yesterday over energy policy and

In the first debate of the U.S. Senate campaign, Warner described Gilmore as a sound-bite politician who will go to Washington and continue the partisan infighting that has characterized the federal government in recent years.

Gilmore described Warner as a politician who can't be trusted to keep his word.

Warner, a Democrat, and Gilmore, a Republican, are competing to succeed Sen. John W. Warner in the Senate. The Republican senator, no relation to Mark Warner, is retiring after 30 years.

Yesterday's debate lasted more than an hour before the summer meeting of the Virginia Bar Association at The Homestead resort here.

Gilmore, running a populist campaign, said "the people are hurting" because of high gas prices. He said the remedy lies in drilling for oil and gas off the coast of Virginia and in the Arctic. If the U.S. shows it's serious about finding domestic sources of oil, that will dampen oil speculation and push down gasoline prices, he said.

"You have to have a United States that has a decisive energy policy," Gilmore said.

But Warner said Gilmore's "drill here, drill now" policy is a bumper-sticker solution akin to Gilmore's proposal while running for governor in 1997 to abolish the car tax. Warner said it will take many years to increase domestic oil production.

He supports drilling off the coast if states permit it but does not want to allow drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"There is no silver bullet," Warner said.

Both candidates said they favor more energy conservation, greater reliance on alternative fuels and clean coal.

Gilmore repeatedly returned to the subject of energy, and he suggested that Warner has changed his position on the issue. It was not until a question from the audience of lawyers that the Iraq war came up.

Warner, running as a bipartisan consensus builder, mentioned Republican presidential candidate John McCain several times and never referred to the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama.

Warner was governor from 2002 to 2006. Gilmore preceded him, from 1998 to 2002. Both men cited their records.

Warner, who takes credit for straightening out a fiscal mess he says he inherited from Gilmore, asked in his closing statement: "Which governor left Virginia a better state? Which governor made the hard choices and brought the kind of fiscal discipline and management to the state that earned Virginia recognition as the best-managed state in the country?" He mentioned the latter three times.

Gilmore said he was proud of his record of cutting taxes, cutting college tuition, bringing 4,000 new teachers to classrooms and helping to create 250,000 jobs.

Gilmore said Warner went back on his campaign promise to not raise taxes and claimed that the Warner administration hid promising revenue figures to get the General Assembly to enact a $1.4 billion tax increase. He pointed out that Warner initially sought a $4 billion tax increase.

Warner said he did not hide the numbers -- they were readily available to General Assembly members. He said the tax increase helped Virginia keep its prized AAA bond rating, which allows it to issue debt at a lower interest rate.

In his closing statement, Gilmore said: "The issue is who you can trust and believe -- a man who kept his word or one who repeatedly broke it?"

Each accused the other of mischaracterizing their positions.

The debate began awkwardly. Gilmore was introduced and did not immediately appear. The audio being piped from the meeting room to Gilmore's campaign room did not work, although it did in the Warner campaign room. After a 15-minute wait, it was restored.

Campaigns use audio for sound bites and to try to pick out inconsistencies in their opponent's statements.

Afterward, Virginia Tech political commentator Robert E. Denton Jr. said the debate was "very lively. Mark Warner more than held his own."
Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or twhitley@timesdispatch.com.