NEW YORK — Democrats brawled in Brooklyn while Republicans in black ties threw sharp elbows at a Manhattan gala in a rowdy New York night of politics ahead of the state’s Tuesday presidential primary.

As protests raged outside a state GOP dinner, Republican front-runner Donald Trump delivered an impassioned defense of the city he calls home. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, aggressively challenged each other’s judgment to be president at a raucous Democratic debate over Wall Street banks, minimum wage, gun control and foreign policy.

The Democratic fight Thursday night came at a pivotal moment in the party’s primary campaign, with Clinton leading in the delegate count but Sanders generating huge enthusiasm for his surprising candidacy. The debate also left no doubt that a rivalry that once centered on wonkish policy disagreements has turned strikingly personal.

The Vermont senator took a biting and often sarcastic tone as he sought to chip away at Clinton’s credibility on issue after issue. He went as far as to suggest that her labeling of certain criminals as “superpredators” when she was first lady was “a racist term and everybody knew it was a racist term.”