Republican Sen. Pat Roberts and independent challenger Greg Orman used their final debate of the campaign Wednesday night to launch fresh attacks on each other before a live television audience while making what may be their last direct appeals to voters before the Nov. 4 general election.

The debate at the Wichita studio of KSN-TV came on the same day that advance balloting got underway in county courthouses and other locations throughout Kansas.

Roberts continued to paint Orman as a “liberal Democrat” for his previous campaign donations to President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. And he launched a new attack, which his campaign has been stressing in recent email press releases, over the fact that Orman plans to attend a fundraiser Thursday night hosted in part by Jonathan Soros, son of billionaire businessman George Soros.

“And going with him is the endorsement of the AFL-CIO,” Roberts said. “So waving the AFL-CIO banner and going to a Soros fundraiser, I have never known the Soros family to endorse independents. They endorse liberal Democrats, and so does the AFL-CIO.”

Roberts made that comment during his closing statement, leaving Orman no opportunity for rebuttal. But Orman got in some fresh jabs of his own, criticizing Roberts for having being absent from about 70 percent of all meetings of the Senate Agriculture Committee and for missing a recent committee meeting to discuss the Ebola outbreak.

“This goes back to sort of a crisis in leadership,” Orman said. “Sen. Roberts has come back and made some very strong statements about Ebola when he’s back in Kansas, but it just came out the other day that when he was in Washington, he skipped a hearing on the Ebola virus.”

The two were asked familiar questions that have come up in previous debates about immigration, farm policy and the future of the Affordable Care Act. They were also asked foreign policy questions that had not come up before, such as whether the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were justified.

Both said they thought the war in Afghanistan was right.

Orman said he thought the war in Iraq was ill-considered, saying, “I think time is now suggesting we were not as thoughtful as we should have been before we went in there.”

Roberts faulted President Obama for pulling American troops out of Iraq too soon, saying, “When we left, it left a vacuum,” Roberts said. “And (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-)Maliki was not exactly the best with regards to leaving that country.”

Wednesday’s debate was also the first one in which both candidates were asked directly about abortion.

Orman described himself as pro-choice, but said America has spent too much time debating the issue.

“What I’d like to see us do is start focusing on some of the big problems that we absolutely need to get our arms around if we’re going to preserve the American dream and our financial futures,” he said.

Roberts became incensed at that statement, saying that he is solidly pro-life.

“I think you said that we have to get past this issue,” Roberts said, although Orman had not used those words in the debate. “Get past the rights of the unborn? Get past the guarantee of life for those at the end of life? I don’t think you can say that with any degree of conscience.”

The race has drawn national attention because the GOP needs a net gain of six seats to win a majority in the Senate, but few people had expected Roberts, a three-term incumbent Republican, to have a difficult race in a traditionally Republican state.

Although Orman has led in many polls since the Aug. 5 primary, recent polls have shown the race tightening, and some are showing the race as a statistical dead heat.

The debate was hosted by KSN-TV in Wichita, KSNT-TV in Topeka, the Wichita Eagle and the Topeka Capital-Journal.