MEDFORD - In their final campaign debate, Republican gubernatorial challenger Ron Saxton promised a housecleaning of the state bureaucracy and Gov. Ted Kulongoski said his first priority would be to shift more money to schools and children's health programs.

With polls showing Kulongoski and Saxton in a virtual tie, the contenders used Tuesday night's debate to reinforce the central themes of the campaign.

Saxton charged that Kulongoski just wants to raise taxes while Kulongoski retorted that Saxton's campaign is long on rhetoric but short on details about how he would reform government.

Asked by one of the debate panelists what his first focus would be if elected governor, Saxton said removing low-performing state agency administrators would be at the top of the list.

“We're going to change some of the people on the bus,” the Portland lawyer said.

Kulongoski, in response to the same question, said he would lobby the 2007 Legislature to approve his plan to dedicate a larger share of the state budget to education and push a hefty cigarette tax increase to pay for health insurance programs for uninsured children.

“Every child will have access to health insurance,” the governor said.

The two clashed on other issues as well, including the long-standing shortage of Oregon state troopers.

Saxton said Kulongoski is at least partly to blame for the problem, because he didn't work hard enough in the Legislature to find ways to restore 24-hour, seven-day-a-week patrols on Oregon's roads.

Kulongoski responded that he's offered several proposals to the Legislature to do that, including his most recent plan to raise auto insurance premiums as a way to boost patrols.

On another issue, Kulongoski touted his administration's move to adopt tough new tailpipe emission standards for cars and light trucks as a way to combat global warming. Saxton had earlier indicated that the global warming issue should be tackled at the federal level, not state by state.

Kulongoski, however, said global warming is one of the most urgent issues facing governors. “This is real. It is not junk science,” he said.

Saxton, for his part, advocated more logging of fire-burned areas as a way to create more jobs in Oregon's timber industry.

Kulongoski said he supports such logging when it can be done in “environmentally appropriate” areas.

The hot-button issue of the state's policy of issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants also was raised. Saxton criticized Kulongoski for not pushing hard enough to join other states that require U.S. residency to get a license. “The truth is, we got to get serious about not issuing driver's licenses to people who aren't entitled to them,” the GOP contender said.

Kulongoski said Oregon is moving in that direction. But in the meantime, he said, the state “can't ask if a person is a citizen or not” in issuing licenses under current law.

Toward the end of the 90-minute debate in the KOBI-TV studios in Medford, Kulongoski said he's “not the flashiest politician around” but that his administration has helped put Oregon's economy back on track.

Saxton said, however, that Oregon has fallen behind other states in key areas such as education, and needs a governor who will push for more efficiency and results without trying to raise taxes.