Incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and her Democratic challenger, Rev. Raphael Warnock, faced off Sunday night in the first — and potentially only — debate between candidates competing in Georgia’s two Senate runoffs, which will determine which party controls Congress’s upper chamber.

In the hour-long live event, which was hosted by the Atlanta Press Club and broadcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting’s studio in Atlanta, Loeffler was pressed on her acknowledgment that the Republican Senate majority is at stake, despite not acknowledging President-elect Joe Biden’s win. The two candidates also sparred over religion, policing and the coronavirus pandemic.

A young staffer working as a regional field director on Loeffler’s campaign tragically died in a car accident Friday, prompting Loeffler to cancel her attendance at a Savannah rally headlined by Vice President Mike Pence. However, the senator was back on the campaign trail Saturday night, speaking at the rally headlined by President Donald Trump in Valdosta, and did not cancel her appearance in the debate.

No other debates have been scheduled yet, and Sen. David Perdue, Georgia’s senior senator who is also facing a runoff, declared he would not participate in a single debate against Jon Ossoff when the Atlanta Press Club extended an invitation to him to debate his Democratic challenger Sunday evening as well.

While he refused to debate, the Atlanta Press Club chose not to cancel the debate. Instead, Ossoff spent his allotted 30 minutes criticizing Perdue and contrasting himself to the sitting senator. He repeatedly called out Perdue’s absence as he took questions from panelists while standing next to an empty podium.

Ossoff blasted Perdue as “arrogant” for not participating in the debate, saying the senator feels entitled to the seat he currently holds.

“I truly regret that we haven’t had the opportunity to debate the issues, because the people deserve it,” he said in his closing statements.

There are just 30 days left until Georgia voters will decide which candidates to send to Washington, and the debate fell on the eve of the voter registration deadline. But voting is already underway in the Peach State, with hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots already having been mailed out to voters, and over 40,000 of those ballots have already been returned and accepted by county election officials.

Here are the key takeaways from what may be the only debate before Jan. 5:

Loeffler won’t say whether she agrees with Trump that election was ‘rigged’

The president has repeatedly claimed that the election was “rigged” against him, and did so again during a rally Saturday night in the Peach State. Despite saying she supports Trump as he contests the election in states across the country, including Georgia, she would not repeat that the election was “rigged.”

Asked twice if she stood by and agreed with Trump’s “narrative,” she chose to point out the 250 investigations the secretary of state’s office has opened in the post-election period instead of answering the question.

“It’s very clear that there were issues in this election. There were 250 investigations opened… we have to make sure that Georgians trust this process because of what’s at stake in the election,” Loeffler said the second time she was asked.

She also would not say whether she supports Trump reportedly pressuring Gov. Brian Kemp to call a special session of the General Assembly to try to override the election results.

During the part of the debate where the candidates get to ask their opponent a question, Warnock followed up on this topic, asking plainly, “Yes or no, Senator Loeffler: did Donald Trump lose the election?”

Loeffler again reiterated her support for Trump to “use every legal recourse available.”

Later in the debate, she was asked about the president’s direct attacks on Kemp, who appointed Loeffler to the Senate. Trump has said he was ashamed to support Kemp’s campaign and suggested Loeffler’s former Republican opponent, Rep. Doug Collins, launch a primary bid against him in 2022.

Pushed into a box by one of the panelists, who asked whether her loyalty lies with the governor or the president, Loeffler chose option three.

“My loyalties are with Georgia,” she said.

Loeffler says Senate majority is at stake, even though she won’t explicitly acknowledge Biden’s win

While she did not explicitly acknowledge Biden won the election, Loeffler effectively did when she said, “What’s at stake is the Senate majority.”

She may say she supports the president’s legal challenges, but it cannot be true that Trump actually won the election — and will continue to be president — and control of the Senate has yet to be determined. The Senate majority is only at stake in these elections because if both Warnock and Ossoff win, Democrats will hold 50 seats in the Senate, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be the tie-breaking vote.

“(The Democrats) want to radically change our country… We know the direction the country would take, and we’re going to continue to make sure that Georgians understand that our very way of life here in Georgia and across the country is under attack by the left,” Loeffler said.

But the debate’s moderator pressed the senator on her dire characterization of how these races could impact the country, and how she can’t have it both ways.

“Not to belabor the point, but all those things that you’re warning about would not be happening, presumably, with President Trump as president. So, it almost sounds as though you’re conceding that that part of it has been settled, and now it’s important for the Republicans to keep the majority in the Senate, to have a divided government,” the moderator, WAGA-TV/Fox5 anchor Russ Spencer, said.

But Loeffler still wouldn’t explicitly acknowledge his statement, and again reiterated the importance of a Republican Senate majority.

“I’m fighting to make sure that the Republican majority is retained in the Senate, because we are the shock absorber for commonsense policies that bring Americans together, that lift everyone up,” she said.

It’s a line Loeffler has not been alone in toeing, but there’s only a month left until election day, and Republicans have both, directly and indirectly, raised concerns that Trump’s rhetoric about the general election could actually work against Georgia’s senators, and suppress GOP turnout for the runoff.

Warnock evades giving stance court packing, even as he denounces other liberal priorities

Following Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, and during the confirmation process for now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett, some Democrats in the Senate voiced support for expanding the court to more than nine justices.

But Democrats on the campaign trail vying to unseat vulnerable Republicans were not so quick to voice their support for what’s been called “court packing.”

During Sunday’s debate, Warnock wasn’t either.

He avoided answering the question altogether, saying it wasn’t top of mind.

“People aren’t asking me about the courts and whether we should expand the courts. I know that’s an interesting question for people inside the beltway to discuss, but they are wondering when in the world are they gonna get some COVID-19 relief?” Warnock said when he was first asked whether he supported this.

The panelist, Atlanta Journal-Constitution political reporter Greg Bluestein, pushed back and defended the premise of the question, saying it would have an impact on voters.

“I’m really not focused on it, and I think that too often, the politics in Washington has been about the politicians,” Warnock said.

But Warnock was definitive on other liberal priorities that dominated 2020.

Loeffler repeatedly said that Warnock, and Democrats in general, want to “defund the police,” but her opponent clearly stated he didn’t support that.

“I don’t think we should defund the police, but we certainly do need criminal justice reform,” he said. “We need to make sure that police and officers and departments that have a pattern of misconduct are held accountable. We can do that and celebrate police at the same time.”