The two top-polling Democrats running for governor, former Houston Mayor Bill White and Houston businessman Farouk Shami, are expected to debate at 7 p.m. tonight in the studio of KTVT-TV in Fort Worth.

The debate, sponsored in cooperation with public television station KERA-TV in Dallas, will be televised on private and public stations statewide and streamed live on texasdebates.org, which has promised to carry a list of the stations airing the debate.

KERA chose to limit the debate to White and Shami, determining that the other five candidates on the ballot, Alma Aguado, Felix Alvarado, William C. Dear, Clement Glenn and Star Locke, would not get at least 6 percent of the vote in a nonpartisan poll done by an established company.