The candidates for the 13th Congressional District race squared off in a penultimate debate before the June 28 primary, this time focusing more on policy and staving off mudslinging.

The debate, hosted and televised on BronxNet, saw six of the nine Democratic candidates—Sam Sloan, Clyde Williams, Adam Clayton Powell IV, Suzan Johnson Cook, and Mike Gallagher–take prepared questions from Gary Axelbank, the moderator. Three of the candidates—Assemblyman Guillermo Linares, Senator Adriano Espaillat, and Yohanny Caceres–were unavailable. Espaillat said last-minute business in the Albany Legislature, particularly talk on mayoral control, compelled him to stay. Linares and Caceres did not offer an explanation on their absence.

The debate, the fourth so far, saw a return to a less combative setting instead, unlike the previous two debates where accusations of candidate suppression and heckling by members of the audience raged.

The answers saw a kaleidoscope of responses on questions ranging from the fight for affordable housing, economic development, student loan forgiveness and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s overall performance (not one gave him an A). The district, long held by soon-to-retire Congressman Charles Rangel, is unevenly split, with roughly 20 percent covering the Bronx, including Norwood. The rest covers Manhattan, particularly all of Harlem where a waning powerbase exists.

Many pegged themselves as always keeping the Bronx in mind, offering the chance to insert their borough connection and characterize the rest as just arriving. The borough link had many candidates vowing to open a district office in the borough, a promise unfulfilled by Rangel. The small portion has indeed put the Bronx on the political backburner, though a burgeoning Hispanic population in the district, has compelled candidates to go beyond Manhattan.

“What the folks in Norwood, what the folks in Riverdale, what the folks in University Heights want is exactly same thing as everybody: we want affordable housing, equal access to healthcare, (and) we want a good education for our children,” said Wright, the frontrunner.

Housing certainly remained at the forefront for Williams, warning if “we don’t do something soon the diversity that we see in this community today will not be here 10 or 15 or 20 years from now.”

While Sloan pushed for gentrification in the Bronx, Johnson Cook, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, said low-income housing is needed for Bronx residents who can’t afford to buy a home yet. “We’re going to make sure that there are levels for everybody so the playing field is even,” said Johnson Cook.

Immigration stood as a talked-about issue, with Sloan proposing a federal voter ID card for undocumented residents that can offer a driver ID component. “Unless you have a green card you can’t get an ID card,” he said.

Wright, meantime, called for a “real” federal DREAM Act that could decrease deportations of illegal immigrants while Gallagher, a former systems analyst and now stay-at-home father, said the immigration system is broken to point where Republicans are embracing reforms, notwithstanding the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

“The idea that we’ll be able to deport 12 million people the man, Trump, can talk all he wants like this,” said Gallagher. “But the Republicans are running away from that because they recognize that we’ll all in this together.”

The debate also saw a variety of strategies that painted the bulk of the candidates as outsiders to establishment politics or entrenched politicos with track records.

“People are tired of the same ways,” said Johnson Cook. “If you use the same people, the same ways, you’re going to get the same results.”

The subject opened the chance for candidate Powell, a former city councilman and state assemblyman, to call out candidates who’ve taken campaign contributions from landlords even as talk on housing affordability rages across the district.

“There are some candidates here who certainly don’t come in with clean hands. They’re in the pockets of every landlord, every slumlord that ever lived in northern Manhattan,” said Powell, whose jabs seemed to be directly at Wright, perhaps one of the more engrained legislators in the contest. Among his biggest endorsements was by Rangel himself.

“It’s very easy to criticize folks when you really haven’t been on the battlefield, when you’ve really been a spectator, when you haven’t been to a community board meeting,” said Wright, countering he would change the formula of New York City’s area median income, used to determine the rent price of housing.

Wright was also the target of Williams, a former White House aide under President Obama, discredited Wright for his victories in Albany pointing to an erosion in affordability in New York City.

“It’s a war he’s losing,” said Williams of Wright.