In their first one-on-one debate, Eliot Spitzer and John Faso last night offered a contrasting picture of how they would govern New York, clashing over taxes, spending, gay marriage, abortion, and education.

The most striking difference emerged when Mr. Faso said he would fire the state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, for using a state employee as a chauffeur for his severely disabled wife for more than three years. Mr. Spitzer said there should be “consequences” for the comptroller’s actions, but stopped short of saying he should resign.

The attorney general pledged a sweeping reform of the Medicaid system that would lower costs and provide coverage to more than a million uninsured New Yorkers. He said he would pour billions more dollars into public education, while vowing to fire incompetent principals. He also promised not to raise taxes and to stand up to legislative leaders, whom he says should face term limits.

Mr. Faso, who is running out of time to cut into Mr. Spitzer’s commanding lead in the polls, told New Yorkers that he unabashedly favors deep business and personal tax cuts and is suspicious of spending more state funds on health care and education systems he says are too bloated.

While Mr. Spitzer flaunted the endorsement he received from the National Abortion Rights Action League and his support for gay marriage, Mr. Faso said he was opposed to abortions and that he wouldn’t “force gay marriage down the throats of many New Yorkers,” using a metaphor that drew boos from the studio audience at Cornell University in Ithaca and was mocked by Mr. Spitzer.

It was a tense hour-long debate that lacked a knockout punch, with each candidate giving a performance that seemed more stiff than usual. A politician who is more relaxed parsing a state budget than speaking before large crowds, Mr. Faso, particularly at the start, appeared nervous, as he found himself stumbling in his opening statement and pausing while he tried to recollect his thoughts.

Mr. Spitzer, a trained courtroom prosecutor, was more fluid but relied heavily on material from his stump speeches in his answers. In one instance, a questioner asked Mr. Spitzer if he would take on unions as governor. In much of his reply, Mr. Spitzer talked about how he would lower property taxes.

Mr. Faso, a former minority leader in the state Assembly from Kinderhook who ran an unsuccessful campaign for comptroller in 2002, tenaciously stuck to his pocketbook appeal to voters by contrasting his tax-cutting plans with those of Mr. Spitzer.

He repeatedly assailed Mr. Spitzer for not demanding that school districts cap their spending, an action that Mr. Faso favors to make sure school taxes don’t cancel out property tax relief. Mr. Spitzer said a cap would force schools to eliminate after-school programs and fire teachers.

The debate also saw each candidate trying to exploit an opponent’s weak spot. Mr. Faso tried to raise questions about Mr. Spitzer’s ethical standards, as he accused him of accepting illegal contributions from his father, Bernard Spitzer, in the 1994 and 1998 races, and of underpaying for a flight in a private jet of a lobbyist, Richard Fields, who is looking to get permission for an out-of-state Indian tribe to build a casino in New York.

Mr. Spitzer said he complied with the law in each case and pointed out that Mr. Faso has also taken rides in a private plane.

“If all you can do to try to tarnish me is dredge up that my family was supportive of me, that’s not so bad,” a grinning Mr. Spitzer said in reference to the millions of dollars that he borrowed from his father for his first two races.

Mr. Faso also accused Mr. Spitzer of letting Mr. Hevesi off the hook, saying Mr. Spitzer has “one set of standard for Eliot and his friends and another for everyone else.”

At the same time, Mr. Spitzer tried to portray Mr. Faso as a right-wing extremist who is shunned by his own party members. He quoted from a New York Sun article in which a spokeswoman for William Weld, a primary opponent of Mr. Faso’s and a former governor of Massachusetts, said that Mr. Faso marched to the beat of a “bizarre drum.”

Mr. Spitzer pointed to bills that Mr. Faso voted against as a lawmaker, including one that would allow alleged rape victims to refuse a lie detector test and a wage bill geared toward helping women.

Mr. Faso said Mr. Spitzer was twisting the legislation – the wage bill, he said, would interfere with the private sector and meant equal pay for “different work.”

The debate, which was televised on New York 1 news and other cable channels across the state, came two weeks after Mr. Spitzer’s 60-point victory against the Nassau County executive, Thomas Suozzi, in the Democratic primary. A final debate is scheduled for October 12 in Buffalo.

In a pre-emptive move, the Spitzer campaign yesterday began airing a new 30-second ad that recycled footage from previous spots, suggesting that it was assembled in short order. It showed the candidate in tight focus talking slightly off camera about his “to-do list” as governor. He concludes by saying, “Oh, there’s one thing we’re not going to raise: your taxes. You can take that to the bank.”