Topeka ? Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and Democratic challenger Paul Davis attended get-out-the-vote efforts Tuesday as they entered the last hours of what has been a tense and tight election campaign.

Brownback was hoping that enough Kansans would validate his conservative tax-cutting experiment by giving him a second term, while Davis tried to win over GOP moderates and unaffiliated voters by persuading them that Brownback’s tax cuts went too far and have not boosted the economy as much as the governor predicted.

Davis shook hands with volunteers at the Kansas Democratic Party’s headquarters in Topeka, where several dozen people made phone calls to prospective voters. He repeated his promise that if elected, he’d have a bipartisan administration and would be able to work with a GOP-dominated Legislature.

“You’re seeing just a whole new coalition of Democrats and Republicans, so many Republicans who are putting their political party affiliation aside,” Davis said.

Brownback said Kansas is a center-right state and that voters are responding to his policies and the agenda he laid out during the campaign, including a promise to create a 100,000 new jobs.

“This is about a choice,” Brownback said while meeting with volunteers at the state GOP’s headquarters in Topeka. “If I get a second term, we’ve laid out an agenda for that.”

The 58-year-old governor and his allies painted Davis as a liberal and sought to tie him to Democratic President Barack Obama. Davis, a 42-year-old Lawrence lawyer and the Kansas House minority leader, ran as a centrist who would have a bipartisan administration.

The race remained close because of doubts about tax cuts enacted by legislators in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback’s urging. The state has dropped its top personal income tax rate by 26 percent and exempted the owners of 191,000 businesses from income taxes altogether — and future cuts are promised.

Tonya Schwensen, a 43-year-old home-school teacher from Topeka, voted for Brownback, largely because of his economic policies. She was unmoved by criticism of the tax cuts, saying she doesn’t believe government spends money wisely.

“I like the way he’s cutting taxes,” she said. “It’s helping my attitude toward the government, that’s for sure.”

But Verla Herschell, 64, an artist who designs covers for a yearbook publisher, said she voted for Davis and that Brownback “didn’t do right by us when he reduced taxes.” She also said that as a former teacher, she is concerned about school funding and doesn’t like that teachers often have use their own money to pay for classroom supplies.

“Education should be the priority,” she said.

Republicans enjoy a 20 percentage-point advantage among the state’s 1.74 million registered voters, but the state has a recent history of electing Democratic governors when GOP incumbents grow unpopular. Democrats won five of the past 10 governor’s races.

That philosophy was represented by Barbara Edwards, a 67-year-old retiree from Fairway who described herself as a RINO, or Republican In Name Only. She voted for Davis.

“I am tired of the cuts that Gov. Brownback has made in educational costs, and I just think we need some new blood. I am a registered Republican, but I just couldn’t vote for him.”

Tax-cutting cemented Brownback’s reputation in national conservative circles, and he said repeatedly that Kansas was setting an example for other states and, ultimately, the federal government. But the Legislature’s nonpartisan research staff predicts that Kansas will face a $260 million budget shortfall by July 2016, and the state’s credit ratings were downgraded.

Davis suggested that the tax-cutting came at the expense of restoring past, recession-driven cuts in state aid to public schools. Brownback and his allies pointed to data showing that total per-pupil spending on schools has increased since he took office, but Davis and other critics noted that aid for daily classroom operations hasn’t kept up with inflation.

Facing skepticism and a public revolt from GOP moderates, Brownback turned partially to the playbook that allowed him to sweep into office in 2010, invoking Obama. Davis was a delegate for Obama at the 2008 and 2012 Democratic National Conventions.

The governor also roused core supporters among conservative Catholics and Protestant evangelicals by promising to defend the state constitution’s ban on gay marriage after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider appeals from other states seeking to preserve similar bans. Davis voted as a legislator against adding the ban to the constitution and said the matter was in the hands of the court.