What was the takeaway from the Washington City Paper/WPFW/Tom Sherwood at-large Democratic primary debate last night at the Black Cat?

A) Occupy D.C. protestors are the worst.

B) Candidate E. Gail Anderson Holness could be the most entertaining debater in the city.

C) A little bit more organization from debate organizers could probably have gone a long way. (LL is talking to you, editors.)

D) The four candidates—Holness, Councilmember Vincent Orange and challengers Sekou Biddle and Peter Shapiro— really don’t like each other.

All of the above! How did you know?

The gloves were off for much of the debate. The challengers hammered at Orange for accepting thousands of dollars of campaign contributions linked to Jeff Thompson, many in the form of sequential money orders, and not noticing until a year later that— surprise—there might be something fishy about them.

Orange fired back that Shapiro, a former Prince George’s County councilmember,  is a carpetbagging quitter and Biddle is no-record wannabe. Neither Biddle nor Shapiro indicated they planned on dropping out of the race, despite the fact that many of their supporters want one of them to so that the remaining one would have a fighting chance against Orange.

LL didn’t keep count, but remembers hearing the debaters accuse each other of “running” their mouths on more than one occasion. At one point, Orange told Shapiro: “You know nothing.”

(For a roundup of tweets about last night’s debate, Keith Ivey has you covered.)

With two weeks to go before the election and the Thompson affair only likely to heat up between now and then, be on the look out for more pointed attacks in coming days.

Photo by Matt Dunn