If the gloves were off before, then the candidates must have slipped on brass knuckles last night.
Democratic gubernatorial rivals Dan Hynes and Pat Quinn engaged in a fierce exchange of accusations last night, questioning each other's honesty and competence.
Comptroller Hynes built on his latest television advertisement featuring the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, a risky spot that uses a dead man's image and words to cast insults on a sitting governor.
In response, Gov. Quinn accused Hynes of hypocrisy, recalling how his father, the longtime Chicago politico Tom Hynes, ran against Washington and tried to ruin his political career.
At one point, Hynes denounced abuses of the state's pension system, including picking up more than one public pension for positions held in different government agencies, a practice known as double-dipping.
Quinn fired back, saying that Hynes should start with his own father's pensions if he would like to end the practice. The senior Hynes served as a Chicago ward committeeman, Cook County assessor and president of the Illinois Senate.
Hynes diverted the statements about his father, telling Quinn that he is running against him and not his dad.
Hynes suggested that Illinois has lost jobs under Quinn's leadership.
Quinn then questioned whether, because national unemployment has risen under Barack Obama, Hynes would criticize the president's leadership as well.
It's a tactic Quinn has used before. During a previous debate, he brought up Hynes' unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid against Obama in 2004. The move came before Hynes unveiled the Washington ad, no doubt in part to damage Quinn's standing in Chicago's black community.
According to a recent poll by the Chicago Tribune and WGN, Quinn still leads the governor's race by four percentage points. But that lead is within the margin of error, and his anxiety was plain during last night's forum at WTTW's studios.
Quinn often interrupted Hynes and rolled his eyes, directly asking the comptroller pointed and caustic questions.
But Hynes also employed some sarcasm.
When Quinn produced a stack of press releases related to the comptroller's dealing with cemeteries, Hynes called the move a gimmick and asked Quinn if he would like to read from the documents.
In the end, however, Quinn was more flustered, a quality that is hardly becoming of an incumbent in the lead.
His fear of losing was palpable when he declined to state one mistake from which he has learned, then pounced on Hynes when the comptroller admitted he should have spoken out against impeached former Gov. Rod Blagojevich earlier in his term.
Hynes made the irony known, asking the governor to state his own mistake rather than capitalize on his.
Yet that is really the thrust of this race: The candidate who wins may very well be the one who best kicked the other when he was down.
For a more detailed dialogue from the forum, check out my Twitter feed, below, and the full video on WTTW's "Chicago Tonight" Web site.