Responding to a question about how to deal with city employee unions, Katz said he had been speaking to union leaders - "none of whom are supporting you," Katz said, looking at Street.

"That's because they have experience dealing with you - going to your office and making a deal and finding out what happens afterward."

Street, bristling, replied: "You've had the luxury of never having adopted a city budget, never having adopted a five-year plan."

When Katz responded that he'd been a consultant to other cities, Street shot back, "You have absolutely no government experience at all. . . . You have been a hired gun."

Ignoring the moderators, the two men began arguing and interrupting each other, with Katz at one point saying: "I tried to help governments lower taxes while you were raising them."

Getting back to the original question, Street, who continually emphasized his 20 years in city government, said: "I completely disagree with Sam when he says we don't have good relations with our unions. . . . I know what it's like to have to negotiate union contracts. . . . He's naive and unrealistic about what it takes to deal with very difficult problems of our city."

In response to a question about Katz' proposal to reduce the city wage tax to 4 percent by 2004, Street said: "My Republican opponent has a tax-reduction plan that, if implemented, would so scrap the city for money that it wouldn't have the ability . . . to implement these programs. He's painting an impossible scenario."

Retorted Katz: "Sometimes experience can be an advantage, sometimes it can be an albatross. You think the way you did it is the only way it could be done."

During an exchange about what needed to be done to improve the Philadelphia school system, Katz said that he was in favor of school vouchers but that he also was committed to getting more funding from Harrisburg.

"I want to ask when Sam Katz decided public education needs more money?" asked Street, referring to a plan Katz supported during a previous political race. In campaign ads, Street has maintained that Katz, when running for governor in 1994, supported cutting education taxes.

Wrong, Katz said: "When are you going to read the whole proposal? You always take out the parts you like."

And, Katz added, "I don't think you've answered the question, John."

"I'll get to it," Street said.

"In my lifetime?" Katz deadpanned.

And so it went, punch and counterpunch, on such questions and issues as racial divisions in the city, tax reduction, neighborhood improvement, welfare reform, the location of new sports stadiums.

The backdrop of the debate was the end-game strategies of the candidates.

Street, facing the possibility of being the first Democrat to lose City Hall in a half-century, is counting on eve-of-the-election appearances by President Clinton and Sen. Edward Kennedy to mobilize the party faithful and recapture those who have strayed from the fold.

Katz, a former Democrat who uses the word Republican as seldom and silently as possible, continues to position himself as a crossover candidate who's more democratic than the Democrat. So, last night, Street made a point to use the word. Katz repeated that he's "inclusive."

One of the nastier exchanges came during a discussion about the troubled Section 8 subsidized housing program, which Street used to take a shot at John White Jr., one of Street's Democratic primary opponents who has endorsed Katz.

Katz said it was unfair to criticize White, a former executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, for problems with and caused by the Section 8 program. The federally funded program has been maligned by some as placing drug dealers and other unfit tenants in stable neighborhoods. The tenants, the critics say, destabilize the neighborhoods.

"It happened while you were vice chairman of the PHA," Katz said.

"I'm telling you your guy, John White, did a terrible job administering that program," Street fired back.

At the end of the hour-long debate, after Katz said to Street that "it has been a pleasure running against you," Street at first sounded like he, too, was ready to shake hands after a hard but well-fought fight. But then, in his final remarks, Street said he was the better man because "on the one hand I've had great experience and success in government and my opponent has had none."

The debate was the final hour of a three-hour block of programming titled Destination City Hall: The Next Mayor.

The first hour profiled the two candidates, chronicling Katz' middle-class upbringing and successful business career, and Street's climb up from poverty to the office of City Council President.

After the hourlong WHYY-TV/Fox Philadelphia Live Roundtable Forum, voters got their shot at an hourlong "electronic town meeting" called Your Choice, Your Voice.

A panel of voters and e-mail questioners gave their reactions to what they'd seen and heard. Their responses pointed up the closeness of the race.

One of those on the voter panel who has been present at other debates said there was no question that this was the most acrimonious.

"It was the first time it was such a fierce manner," one woman said. "It was quite heavy."

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