A large crowd packed into a Creighton University ballroom on a night with heavy competition for political attention.

Jim Esch and Lee Terry faced off in a debate scheduled for the same time as the presidential debate.

The Creighton Students Union organized it.

Out of the gate, the questions centered on the financial crisis.

"What I heard from area businesses," said Lee Terry, Republican Candidate for U.S. House District 2, "is if we didn't fix this problem, they weren't going to have the ability to get the money to succeed and may have to resort to layoffs."

His opponent, Jim Esch, blamed Congressman Terry for part of the problem for voting to deregulate banks.

"[Congress] decided to relax regulations and we said to Wall Street to do whatever you want and it's a free fall," said Jim Esch. "It's led to the crisis of today. The lack of oversight. You need to have regulatory oversight to make sure these things don't happen."

Terry dismissed the notion that he's to blame saying the Banking Reform Act of 1999 wasn't the problem.

Instead, Terry believes, Congress overreacted to the Enron collapse and created a series of misguided accounting rules that led to where we are today.

Violence in our neighborhoods was also a big topic mainly because of where the debate was held -- Creighton University.

Both candidates expressed their wishes for a speedy recovery to Creighton student who was robbed and shot this week.

The next debate is also scheduled on the same night as a presidential debate.