Adjunct communications professor Matt Barcaro moderated the only debate in the race to represent the 36th District in the Pennsylvania State Senate between incumbent state Sen. James Malone and state Rep. Tom Jones. The district comprises the northwest corner of Lancaster County, including Elizabethtown, and will be pivotal in deciding control of the state government in Harrisburg.

The Pennsylvania State Senate is currently divided 27-23 in favor of Republicans. Democrats are hoping to win control of the chamber for the first time since 1993. Should the party also maintain control of the state House and governorship, it would give them a trifecta in Harrisburg and enable them to pass their legislative priorities.

Democrats are targeting a few GOP incumbents who they believe are vulnerable. If they net a minimum of two seats, Democrats would win control of the Senate should Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis, who serves as tie breaker, also be reelected alongside Gov. Josh Shapiro. The potential stumbling block in their plan could be the Republican-leaning district currently represented by Malone the Democrat.

The debate between Malone and Jones aired during the Oct. 15 noontime news broadcast on WGAL-TV, where Barcaro serves as morning news anchor. For Barcaro, this was the first debate he has moderated.

“I was looking forward to it because it’s such a hotly contested race,” Barcaro said. “It has big implications potentially for control of the state legislature and it’s just a very high interest seat.”

Malone was elected by a slim 500-vote victory in a special election last year to fill the then vacant seat. Jones is a two-term Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives who currently represents the 98th district which includes Elizabethtown.

“Everyone wants to know did James Malone win in 2025 by accident or was that significant tea leaves that could tell us about Democrat enthusiasm in this year and potentially in the future,” Barcaro said.

The WGAL debate has been the only one between Jones and Malone after Jones pulled out of a League of Women Voters forum due to a family matter. Due to the contested nature of the race, residents of the 36th District have been flooded with a high volume of negative advertisements from both campaigns.

“The candidates are paying for ads against the other that have some pretty pointed criticism in it,” Barcaro said. “Going into the debate, I was expecting the potential for the candidates themselves to be pointing out differences on each other’s record.”

Despite the harsh rhetoric on the airwaves, neither candidate engaged in criticism at all during the 20-minute debate.

“To me, it was surprisingly civil,” Barcaro said. “The candidates didn’t mention each other at all.”

It’s unclear whether Malone and Jones’s calm demeanors were a tactic to differentiate themselves from the campaign rhetoric during their only recorded interaction during the race.

“Oftentimes in political campaigns, the people who are the ad makers and the campaign strategist are often very different from the candidates themselves,” Barcaro said. “This was my first time meeting both of them. They presented themselves as quite relaxed and quite agreeable.”

Barcaro asked both candidates about several of the most pressing issues in Lancaster County this election cycle, namely data centers, rising grocery prices, a potential gas tax holiday, the measles outbreak, the county referendum to create a tax to support libraries and where each candidate differed from their respective party.

Both said they support municipalities controlling data center zoning. They are both in favor of a gas tax holiday. Both support vaccination, but opposed mandates. They also said they will vote against the library tax referendum. Malone said he differs from the Democratic Party on gun control. Jones did not specify an issue he disagrees with the Republican Party.

Given the lack of a defining moment and overall agreeableness of the debate, it also remains to be seen whether or not this will impact the results. The only publicly available poll for this race puts both candidates neck-and-neck with Jones in the lead 49%-47%.

“I hope that voters were able to take away something from watching their responses,” Barcaro said.

Election day is tomorrow, Nov. 3. You can watch the debate here.