Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., defended their respective presidential candidates Wednesday night in what was a relatively civil debate that contrasted the presidential debate a week before.

It was the first and only debate between the candidates, and the first debate since President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19 Oct. 2. 

Pence set out to defend the actions of the Trump administration regarding COVID-19, climate change and the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, while Harris gave a scathing review of the Trump administration, claiming he misled the public on the scope of the virus and failed in his pandemic response.

While the debate had heated moments and Pence often spoke over his allotted time, it was a stark departure from last week, when Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden engaged in a fiery exchange that ignored the rules of decorum.

Iowa politicos said Wednesday night that the vice presidential candidates largely following the rules made the debate easier to watch. 

Trudy Caviness, the chair of the Wapello County Republicans, said the format of the presidential debate was designed in a way to create conflict and arguments between the candidates. In contrast, she said this debate allowed each candidate to portray their goals and make their case to voters.

“This obviously was much more controlled, which has a chance for more issues to come out, and so I preferred the more controlled thing,” Caviness said.

Kurt Meyer, the chair of the tri-county Democrats in northeast Iowa, said that while Pence made much of the same points and arguments as Trump, he did so in a less inflammatory way.

“He overspoke his time allotment but at least he was playing the game by the rules set out in advance, as opposed to Trump, who basically brought his pea shooter last week,” he said. 

Pence, the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, repeated several of Trump’s main talking points in response to questions about how the administration has handled the coronavirus pandemic, repeating the unsubstantiated claim that Trump’s partial travel ban from China early in the pandemic saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

“The reality is when you look at the Biden plan, it reads an awful lot like what President Trump and I and our task force have been doing every step of the way,” Pence said. 

Harris said the administration was slow in its coronavirus response and withheld critical information from Americans — referencing details from journalist Bob Woodward’s interview with President Trump in which he said he knew in January the deadliness of the coronavirus and was intentionally misleading the public. She said Biden’s plan would ramp up contact tracing and testing to contain the virus. 

Meyer said Pence did a poor job of defending Trump’s response to the pandemic.

“Mike Pence had what amounts to an impossible task, he had to defend the indefensible Trump administration… he had a mighty hill to climb, and I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that he didn’t climb it,” Meyer said. 

The vice president defended the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court, which Republicans are trying to fast-track before Election Day. He said he was concerned about attacks being made on her faith, and accused Harris and Biden of planning to pack the court if elected. 

Harris avoided answering whether Biden’s administration would add justices to the Supreme Court. She said because the election is currently underway and millions of people have already voted, the vacancy on the court should be filled by the person elected in November. 

“We are 27 days before the decision about who will be the next president of the United States,” Harris said. “…We’re literally in an election. Over 4 million people have voted.”

Caviness said she thought the debate was good overall, but she questioned how many people were persuaded by the candidates’ arguments.

“Did it change any minds? I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know how many people are really undecided out there. I think there were several things that were brought up that made people think, and pointed out the differences between the two main candidates.”

In a statement after the debate, the Iowa Republican Party called Harris’ agenda radical, and said Iowans had already rejected her in the Democratic caucuses. The California senator dropped her bid for the nomination Dec. 3 ahead of the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

“The Trump-Pence Administration has put America First since day one, and even in the face of Democrat resistance and obstruction, they have gotten results for the American people,” Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann said in the statement. 

The Iowa Democratic Party claimed victory for Harris in a statement, saying Harris spoke directly to Americans about the Biden administration’s plans to help the country recover.

“Kamala Harris clearly and resoundingly won this debate because she focused on the issues that matter most to Iowa families: expanding access to affordable, high-quality health care, giving working families and small businesses a fair shot, and tackling the COVID-19 pandemic,” Iowa Democratic Party Chair Mark Smith said in the statement.