HERSHEY, Pa. - Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee Scott Wagner had previously called on Gov. Tom Wolf to join him in a debate in each of the commonwealth's 67 counties. Instead, the two men settled on just one debate. That debate was Monday night in Hershey during the 2018 Pennsylvania Chamber of Business & Industry's annual dinner.

Wagner's challenge and so-called exaggerations by both campaigns highlighted early talking points by moderator and "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek, who urged the candidates to treat the 45-minute forum as more of a conversation rather than a debate.

But Wagner, 63, and Wolf, 69, each jabbed one another on the issues that have divided both sides during this campaign: education, spending, taxes and the clear, generally partisan differences each candidate has on those positions.

Trebek, who was well-versed on the candidates and their stances, pushed both men to answer and own-up to positions on issues that voters may not know as well or haven't heard about as much.

On pension reform, a program that was $61 billion in the red in 2015, Wagner pounced, slamming the Wolf administration for what he says was not enough to tackle the real problem. That, despite the Wolf administration reaching a bipartisan plan in 2017 that would place new state government hires and public school employees into a 401k-style system.

"Approximately $2 billion went into the education system in the last four years," Wagner said citing a Philadelphia Inquirer article. "$1.3 billion of the $2 (billion) went to pensions. We have a pension crisis"

"We here in Pennsylvania are doing something that most states are not and that is addressing the pension issue in a bipartisan way," Wolf said.

Wagner is a York County businessman who resigned as a state senator in June to campaign for this race; he is seeking to replace Wolf, who is seeking a second four-year term on Nov. 6.

Whichever candidate wins will have to address in 2020 what would be the second Congressional redistricting process in the commonwealth in the last two years. Just this spring, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court determined the current Congressional district map, drawn in 2011 by the Republican-controlled state legislature, was gerrymandered on partisan lines and deemed the map unconstitutional.

The governor, together with the state legislature, draws the map following the U.S. Census, which is conducted every ten years.

Trebek called PA-7 the "poster child" for gerrymandering in the United States; PA-7 lies in suburban Philadelphia, and looks like -- as some analysts have called it -- "Goofy kicking Donald Duck." Trebek pressed them on both the past and future redistricting processes.

"It was amazing what took place," Wagner said of ruling by the liberal-leaning state Supreme Court. "I personally think it was corruption at its best."

"In my view and the mathematician's view, the map that the Supreme Court picked was a fair and objective map," said Wolf, referring to the input by a Tufts University professor hired by the state to examine the process. 

The two also debated the natural gas tax severance tax, the death penalty and a slew of other topics, including the seemingly annual battle over the state budget. Wolf signed his first budget in four years in June; the previous budgets had lapsed into law. The budget was on-time only because this is an election year, Wagner insisted, a point Wolf refutes given the highly-partisan shape of the General Assembly.

The only debate of the fall campaign served as way for voters to best align with a one of the two major-party candidates. A Sept. 27 Franklin & Marshall College poll shows Wolf leads Wagner 52 percent to 30 percent, with 17 percent of Pennsylvanians undecided as the campaign heads into "Final Jeopardy," now just a little over a month out from the election.