Storrs — After sparring over taxes, traffic and gun control for the better part of their hourlong debate Thursday night, Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and his Republican challenger, Greenwich businessman Tom Foley, got personal, significantly raising the temperature inside UConn’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.

Malloy, saying Foley had repeatedly attacked his integrity during the debate, charged that it was Foley who has been fined for elections-law violations and Foley who has long refused to come clean about his involvement in a traffic incident decades ago.

Foley was arrested in 1981 when he was accused of driving into some parked vehicles in Southampton, N.Y. Foley has been arrested twice but not convicted.

Malloy later insisted Foley, a former U.S. ambassador to Ireland, had been arrested and had lied to the FBI about it during a background check.

“I stood there and took it time after time after time,” Malloy said at a post-debate press conference. “I didn’t start it.”

Foley, who repeatedly questioned Malloy’s truthfulness in describing his record as governor, referred at one point to an investigation of whether city contractors received preferential treatment in return for doing work on Malloy’s house during his tenure as mayor of Stamford. Malloy maintained the investigation had cleared him and that he was thanked for providing the investigators with information.

“You’re trying to imply that somehow I’m corrupt,” Malloy said, looking at Foley. “I’m not.”

Foley dismissed the traffic incident as “something that happened 30 years ago — no charges were ever filed.”

“We can call a truce on this stuff, or keep it going,” Foley told Malloy near the end of the debate. “Or we can talk about your plan to cut spending ... to create jobs.”

Malloy asked Foley whether he would reveal more information about his tax returns, which indicated he paid an effective tax rate of zero percent in 2011 and 2012, a result of capital losses and alimony payments that left him with no taxable income.

Pressed on the point during the press conference, Foley gave no indication he intends to release more about his finances.

In another stunning moment, Foley said he would not seek the repeal of the gun-control legislation Malloy signed into law in the wake of the Newtown shootings. That seemed to contradict what he has said in the past.

“The legislature makes laws, not the governor,” Foley said. “What I’ve said is that I would not veto it (a repeal measure).” After the debate, he confirmed that he would sign a bill repealing the gun law, which imposes universal background checks on gun purchasers and places limits on certain weapons’ capacities.

The audience in the auditorium numbered about 1,100 people.

Early in the debate, which was sponsored by The Hartford Courant and FoxCT, which televised it live, Foley painted Malloy as a tax-and-spend Democrat whose policies have put the squeeze on families.

Malloy said his administration has created 60,000 private-sector jobs and grown the state’s economy at a faster rate than his Republican predecessors.

Foley called the 60,000 number an example of “Malloy Math,” contending that 25,000 of the jobs had been created under Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

“We lost 3,600 jobs in August alone,” Foley said.

The challenger also charged that the governor has neglected the state’s roads and bridges and underinvested in mass transit, all while “raiding” revenue from gasoline taxes “to pay for pet projects.”

While their exchange seemed tense at times, there was no indication that a question about the major influence in their lives would prompt Malloy to go after his opponent. Both candidates said their mothers were their greatest influences, after which Malloy cut loose during “rebuttal” time.

“Tom has attacked my integrity several times tonight,” the former prosecutor began.

“I guess you were a better prosecutor than a governor,” Foley said.

Before the debate, a lively crowd of supporters — students and non-students alike — lined opposite sides of Hillside Road outside Jorgensen, loudly expressing their preference for one candidate or the other.

Associated Press reports were included in this story.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Twitter: @bjhallenbeck