Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders engaged in another combative debate Thursday night, with the two candidates growing increasingly personal in their attacks as the Democratic race for president drags on well into the spring.

They bickered over regulating Wall Street, the consequences of a two-decade-old crime bill, the need to raise the minimum wage, even who is qualified to run for president.

The former secretary of state has amassed a nearly insurmountable lead over the independent senator from Vermont. But Sanders has vowed to stay in the race until the July convention, highlighting Clinton’s vulnerabilities in a surprisingly competitive contest where he has amassed hordes of passionate supporters.

The debate came five days before an important primary in New York, the most delegate-rich contest on the calendar between now and June.

Clinton, who represented New York in the U.S. Senate, is expected to win, but Sanders hoped a strong debate performance might cut into her lead. While Sanders grew up in New York, Clinton clearly enjoyed a home field advantage, repeatedly garnering enthusiastic applause when she mentioned her ties to the state.

MAIN TAKEAWAY

Sanders was expected to be aggressive in one of the final debates on the primary calendar as he tries to catch up to her. But Clinton was just as aggressive.

She may have a lead over him in the race for delegates and a massive advantage when counting superdelegates, Democratic Party leaders who can back any candidate regardless of how their states vote. But she is clearly still feeling the competition, with Sanders winning eight of the last nine state contests and leading in some national polls.

Both were equally confrontational from the start Thursday, interrupting and talking over each other and the moderators, repeatedly, something Republicans have done in nearly every one of their debates but that has been rare in the Democratic debates. Neither let up as the two-hour event went on.

Clinton and Sanders mentioned Republican candidates far fewer times than in previous debates as they set their sights on each other, not the other party.

Who’s qualified?

Sanders was immediately asked to clarify his recent remark that Clinton is not qualified to be president.

This time, he said she was qualified. “Does Secretary Clinton have the experience and the intelligence to be a president?” he asked. “Of course she does.”

But Sanders quickly said he questioned her judgment because she’d accepted millions in donations from Wall Street, supported the war in Iraq and voted for disastrous U.S. trade deals. “I do question her judgment,” he said.

Clinton pushed back, saying Sanders had shown poor judgment in not being able to answer questions about counterterrorism, Afghanistan and Israel in a recent interview.

“It is true that now that the spotlight is pretty bright here in New York, some things have been said and Sen. Sanders did call me unqualified,” she said. “I’ve been called a lot of things in my life. That was a first.”

Clinton said the “phony attack” was an attack not just on her but also on President Barack Obama, who was supported by a super political action committee.

Sanders explained that his recent comment came after Clinton gave a TV interview in which she repeatedly declined to answer a direct question about whether Sanders is qualified to be president.

After Sanders was accused of being sexist, he dropped his accusation that Clinton is not qualified, though he still suggests that her résumé may not be “enough at the end of the day.”

Wall Street

In New York, the home of Wall Street, Sanders again accused Clinton of being beholden to big banks.

He criticized her for taking millions of dollars in campaign contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs.

But when asked, Sanders was unable to point to a single decision she’d made as a result of those contributions.

“You can’t come up with any example, because there is no example,” Clinton said.

She said that she had stood up to Wall Street before and would again as president. “We can never let Wall Street wreck Main Street again,” she said. “I will move immediately to break up any financial institution.”

She said again that she would release the transcripts of her speeches only if all other candidates who had given paid speeches did, and she called on Sanders to release his tax returns.

She has released eight years of tax returns, but Sanders has not released any, despite saying repeatedly that he would.

On Thursday, he announced he would release last year’s tax return Friday. But, he cautioned, there would be no surprises. “There are no big speeches, no major investments,” he said, calling his tax document “boring.”

The 1994 crime bill

Clinton apologized for what she said were unintended consequences of a 1994 crime bill signed by former President Bill Clinton that has emerged as a flashpoint as both campaigns court African-American voters.

The former president clashed last week with protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement who charge that the legislation has led to increased rates of mass incarceration among black men.

Hillary Clinton said the measure had positive aspects, including measures to curb violence against women and community policing, but that she agreed with critics that criminal sentences had been expanded.

“I’m sorry for the consequences that were unintended and had unfortunate results,” she said, stopping short of saying she regretted her advocacy for the measure.

Sanders has criticized Clinton for supporting the crime bill – but he voted for the legislation.

He criticized her Thursday for using the term “super predators” in 1994 to refer to criminals at the time, calling it “racist.” Clinton has apologized for using the term.

Minimum wage

The two tussled over raising the minimum wage, with Clinton saying she’s backed raising it to $15 an hour, though she has previously said she preferred a $12-an-hour wage, saying she’s concerned that a higher rate would be too much for rural areas or smaller cities that have lower costs of living.

“I have supported the fight for $15 and I will work as hard as I can to raise the minimum wage,” she said Thursday in New York, which recently raised its minimum wage to $15.

That prompted skepticism from Sanders, who said when the campaigns began that he backed the $15-an-hour wage, while Clinton was for $12 an hour.

“I’m sure a lot of people are surprised to learn you supported raising the minimum wage to $15,” Sanders said, suggesting “history has outpaced Secretary Clinton” as several states have adopted the higher standard.

Clinton shot back that she’s stood on the stage for eight previous debates “and said the exact same thing.”

Sanders disagreed, strongly enough that moderator Wolf Blitzer had to interject: “If you both are screaming at each other, viewers won’t be able to hear,” he said.

[Get the political buzz every day from McClatchy.]

Guns

Clinton and Sanders have repeatedly sparred over guns, and she accused him of siding with the National Rifle Association – and not the families of the children who died in the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school shooting.

“Sen. Sanders voted against the Brady Bill five times,” Clinton said, adding that the Vermont senator also had voted to shield gun-makers and dealers from liability, “something that is at the root of a lot of the problems that we are facing.”

Sanders has a more moderate record on guns in part because he comes from a more rural state. He argued that that makes him “the best qualified candidate to bring back together that consensus that is desperately needed in this country.”

He confronted Clinton on why she said his state, Vermont, was responsible for some of the gun deaths in New York and she said it was true: “The facts are that most of the guns that end up committing crimes in New York come from out of state. They come from the states that don’t have kind of serious efforts to control guns that we do in New York.”

She accused Sanders of letting down the Newtown families who want to sue to curb advertising of the shooter’s weapon, the AR-15. One of them has said Sanders owes her and other families an apology for saying in a Daily News interview that he didn’t think victims of crimes with guns should be able to sue the manufacturers.

Sanders said he didn’t think he owed anyone an apology, noting that the families had won a preliminary court decision Thursday. “They have the right to sue, and I support them and anyone else who wants the right to sue,” he said.

Fracking

Sanders criticized Clinton for her support of fracking as part of a broader critique of her environmental record. The technique to extract gas and oil from shale rock was banned in New York in 2014 and is increasingly unpopular with environmentalists, but Sanders said Clinton as secretary of state had “worked hard to expand fracking to countries all over the world.”

Clinton has called on the campaign trail for more local control and tougher regulations on fracking, but said under questioning from a moderator that she hadn’t changed her views.

She said the administration had championed fracking as a “bridge” between coal and clean sources of energy.

“We want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible, because in order to deal with climate change, we have got to move as rapidly as we can,” she said.

Sanders accused her of not moving fast enough to address climate change: “This is a difference between understanding that we have a crisis of historical consequence here, and incrementalism. And those little steps are not enough.”