Like an older brother ignoring the punches of his younger sibling, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul mostly ignored his Democratic opponent, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, as the two spoke on the lawn of the Daviess County Courthouse Thursday afternoon.

In a preview of what is likely to come when the two square off for their first and only debate Monday night on Kentucky Educational Television, Gray came out punching and Paul stuck to his stump speech.

The Red, White and Blue forum, hosted by the Owensboro Chamber of Commerce, marked the first time both men appeared at the same event since August.

The candidates only spoke for a combined 10 minutes, it provided a window into the topics they’ll likely address on KET’s “Kentucky Tonight” at 8 p.m. Monday.

Running for president

Gray opened his speech with a theme that he has emphasized throughout the campaign: Paul’s presidential aspirations.

Gray’s most recent attack has been a television ad showing Donald Trump criticizing Paul, suggesting that the people of Kentucky could do better and that Paul was using Kentucky.

This time, Gray attacked the issue by contrasting his Kentucky roots with Paul’s ambitions. Gray talked about his family members involved in politics, such as a great aunt who ran for county clerk in 1920, saying, “not all of them ran for president all the time.”

Paul didn’t take the bait, and hasn’t throughout the campaign.

Not everyone in the audience appreciated Gray’s line of attack. Matt Purcell, a 35-year-old small business owner in Owensboro, said it doesn’t really matter to him if Rand Paul wants to be president.

“That’s not a problem for me,” Purcell said, adding that he wished Gray had talked more about his proposals, rather than criticizing Paul.

Regulations

Paul’s biggest ideological fight in Congress is against regulations, a hallmark of his libertarian philosophy of smaller federal government.

“There’s not only a war on coal, there’s a war on the family farm, there’s a war on the local banks, there’s a war on the local hospitals,” Paul said Thursday. “It’s a regulatory war and its coming against us in an unconstitutional way because the president is doing it through executive order, by regulatory fiat.”

While Paul has made many attempts to draw attention to Obama’s use of executive actions (through Oct. 20, Obama has issued fewer executive orders than former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan), he and Congress have little authority to curb executive orders or federal regulations.

Gray takes a more nuanced stance on regulations, saying he would consider their necessity on a case-by-case basis. At a candidate forum hosted by the Kentucky Farm Bureau this summer, Gray wouldn’t denounce a portion of the Clean Water Act that defines the “Waters of the United States” in a way that has angered many farmers in Kentucky.

“There’s no one size fits all on those kinds of questions,” Gray said at the time. “You don’t say carte blanche that we’re going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Coal

During his speech Thursday, Gray mentioned a retired coal miner in the front row who had recently received notice that his pension would be reduced. He used that to attack Paul on his failure to support legislation that would shore up the pensions of members of the United Mine Workers of America, including 9,500 people in Kentucky, using Abandoned Mine Reclamation Funds. It would cost between $2 billion and $3 billion.

“Sen. Paul has had a chance to rectify that situation but he said he is against the Miners Protection Act,” Gray said.

The act never made it to the floor of the Senate, and Paul stated that he had issues with the bill as it was written because it didn’t do enough to help all coal miners.

The main way Paul has said he wants to support miners is to eliminate regulations the Environmental Protection Agency has placed on the coal industry in order to combat climate change.

“When we look at ‘how are we going to help miners,’ the first thing we have to do is stop hurting miners,” Paul said. “The war on coal has killed the coal industry.”

Experts say regulations are one of several factors, including a poor global market and the low price of natural gas, that have contributed to the decline of the coal industry.

Gray supports stimulus packages for coal communities proposed by the Obama administration and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Eastern Kentucky received nearly $14 million in August as part of Obama’s stimulus.

Paul has offered a proposal to create “economic freedom zones” by drastically reducing taxes and regulations in struggling communities. His bill has not passed the Senate.

Debt

Paul repeated his claim Thursday that the nation’s $19 trillion debt is the greatest threat to American national security. Paul has crusaded against the debt throughout his tenure in the Senate, with little success.

After being elected in 2010, he proposed a budget bill that would cut $500 billion in spending in one year. It did not come up for a vote.

Gray said in September that he is not opposed to the government taking on more debt right now because the interest rate is extremely low.

“Debt is not a bad thing,” Gray said in September after releasing his economic development plan. “It has to be understood, it has to be measured and the investment needs to make sense, but debt on its face is not a bad thing.”

Both Paul and Gray have proposed cutting extraneous spending in order to reduce the debt. On Thursday, Paul went a step further, calling on an end to foreign aid in order to spend money domestically.

“The debt does matter,” Paul said. “If we want to provide for our country, we have to look for ways to provide that money.”

Compromise

Gray opened a new line of attack against Paul Thursday, criticizing him for his hard line approach to politics.

“You cannot filibuster yourself to success,” Gray said. “There is no philosophy or there is no theory that is going to build you a bridge or a highway or a road. You have to work together with people.”

During a campaign fundraiser in October, Paul said he thinks compromise is sometimes overrated — especially on issues of personal privacy and the Second Amendment.

According to his 2015 report card on govtrack.us, a non-partisan site that tracks the legislative records of members of Congress, Paul was ranked third-lowest among Republican senators for writing legislation that had a Democratic cosponsor.

Gray has painted himself as a politician willing to compromise. A frequent line in his stump speech is “not every Democrat idea is a good idea and not every Republican idea is a bad idea.”