HOT SPRINGS — Republican Jim Gilmore and Democrat Mark Warner clashed over energy policy and their respective records as governor Saturday in the first debate of their U.S. Senate race, a face-off that revealed differences in style and substance.

Gilmore lags well behind Warner in campaign funds and trails in public opinion polls, but he brought plenty of fight to a debate staged by the Virginia Bar Association as part of its summer meeting at The Homestead resort. Gilmore attacked Warner for raising taxes as governor and accused the Democrat of being difficult to pin down on the issue of offshore oil drilling.

Warner also went on the offensive, branding Gilmore as a combative partisan who drove Virginia "into the fiscal ditch" as governor in a quest to phase out the personal property tax on vehicles.

The former governors are competing for the Senate seat held by Republican John Warner, who will retire after three decades in office. John Warner and Mark Warner are not related.

From the outset of Saturday’s debate, Gilmore seized on the issue of rising gas prices and called for an aggressive effort to increase domestic oil production through drilling off U.S. coastlines and in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But Gilmore said the election will turn on the issue of trust, and attacked Warner for breaking a 2001 campaign promise not to raise taxes.

"The question is who do you trust —a person who sticks with it and delivers on the car tax cut and does what says he’s going to do, or a person who casually brushes aside those kind of fundamental commitments to the people of Virginia and raises your taxes anyway?" Gilmore said.

Warner steered a tax increase through the Republican-run General Assembly in 2004 after spending much of the first half of his term wrestling with budget shortfalls. Gilmore accused Warner of ignoring evidence of a rebounding economy to push a tax increase that was worth $1.4 billion over two years.

Warner said the tax package was necessary to shore up Virginia's finances for the long term and preserve the state’s perfect bond rating.

"It was about putting Virginia back on the path of fiscal stability," said Warner, who touted the endorsements he has received from the Republicans who chaired the General Assembly’s budget committees during his gubernatorial term.

Warner also accused Gilmore of using "budget gimmicks" in an effort to continue a car tax relief program that cost far more than Gilmore had predicted it would during his 1997 campaign.

Warner said his experience of building coalitions with Republicans could help change a rigidly partisan culture in Washington.

"Virginians want leaders who will bring people together," Warner said.

Energy was the debate’s dominant policy issue, with the two candidates offering different approaches to combating rising gas prices. Both candidates claimed to have comprehensive plans, but Gilmore said his push to increase domestic oil production could bring immediate relief to families stressed by gas prices.

Warner said he opposes drilling in the Alaskan wilderness but supports lifting the federal moratorium of offshore oil drilling. But Warner insisted that increased domestic production should be just a small part of a long-term strategy to reduce dependence on oil. The Democrat said he favors efforts to expand the use of alternative energy sources and expanding incentives for purchasing hybrid vehicles.