Texas two-step out: This could be final debate for O’Rourke, Castro.

In what could be their final night on the national debate stage with other presidential contenders, the two Texans in the race for the White House took very different approaches.

While former Congressman Beto O’Rourke was more aggressive in trading blows with other Democratic rivals, former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro kept his aim almost entirely on President Donald Trump with some sharp one-liners.

Both O’Rourke and Castro have been in all four presidential debates, but tougher polling restrictions for the November debate in Atlanta have both on the verge of being eliminated from future debates. In November, debate rules will require candidates to register support from at least 3 percent of voters in four national polls recognized by the Democratic National Committee. O’Rourke has just one qualifying poll and Castro has none.

With that looming over both, O’Rourke joined with other Democratic candidates in the lower tiers in public polling to challenge Democrat Elizabeth Warren who has been surging in the polls. O’Rourke went after Warren’s approach to tax policy and taxing the rich.

“Sometimes I think that Senator Warren is more focused on being punitive or pitting some part of the country against the other instead of lifting people up and making sure this country comes together around those solutions,” O’Rourke said.

O’Rourke, 47, added that Warren had yet to describe her tax plan in detail and whether it will raise taxes on hard-working Americans.

That provoked Warren to say “I’m really shocked at the notion that anyone thinks I’m punitive.”

That exchange came after South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar targeted Warren even more aggressively for her Medicare for All plan that would end private health insurance for millions of Americans.

O’Rourke later found himself in another sparring match, but this time with Buttigieg over gun control.

Buttigieg took issue with O’Rourke’s earlier call to require people with AR-15s or AK-47s to sell those weapons back to the government. Buttigieg has called O’Rourke’s plan a confiscation of guns and said on Tuesday that even O’Rourke doesn’t know how he’ll get it done.

But O’Rourke said he thinks they should be fighting for something bolder than poll-tested ideas. That brought a pointed response from Buttigieg.

“I don’t need lessons from you on courage, political or personal,” Buttigieg said.

In the previous debate in Houston in September, it was Castro, 45, who was considered more of the aggressor. In that debate, he got blowback from Democrats after appearing to take issue with Vice President Joe Biden’s age and memory, something Castro said was not his intention.

Both O’Rourke and Castro know what they are up against. In emails to supporters, both have warned they are on the cusp of getting left out of future debates that millions of Americans have been viewing.

Castro was even more blunt about the situation, declaring in an email to his supporters: “If I don’t make the next debate stage, it will be the end of my campaign.”