What good are mayoral forums? Ask the leading candidates who haven’t been to any

They’re scheduled every other night for months leading up to the election. They draw crowds of varying sizes, candidates of varying viability and varying degrees of press attention. Candidate forums are undoubtedly a fixture of the New York City mayoral campaign cycle. But so far, the leading candidates are skipping them.

Neither incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams  – who has not set up much of a campaign operation and faces unusual headwinds in what would normally be an incumbent’s race to lose – nor former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is so far polling well ahead of the rest of the field, has attended a forum yet. Neither of their campaigns commented for this article. Cuomo only officially entered the race a week ago, and skipped a forum held by the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund. 

Last month, Adams was supposed to attend his first candidate forum hosted by the politically powerful public sector union District Council 37, but dropped out at the last minute. 

For two candidates with name recognition like theirs, the calculus makes sense. “No one has ever written a campaign plan where they said, ‘This is how we're going to win. This is how we’re going to be mayor,’ and then the first thing on the top says, ‘Go to every forum,’” said Democratic consultant John DeSio.

But while they can be repetitive and sometimes even a little painful,  forums offer candidates an opportunity to talk to distinct populations, whether that’s Democratic clubs on the Upper West Side, churchgoers in southeast Queens or the city’s public sector workforce. For attendees who don’t tune into every development in the long mayoral race, a 90-minute forum on a Thursday night might be their first chance to hear a candidate’s position on whether they’d freeze rents for stabilized tenants or support an increase in police officers. 

Fairly regular attendees at forums so far this campaign cycle include Comptroller Brad Lander, state Sens. Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie, Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani,  former Comptroller Scott Stringer and former Assembly Member Michael Blake. Whitney Tilson, a Democratic candidate, and Jim Walden, an independent candidate, have also attended forums. City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams entered the race last week. A spokesperson did not respond when asked whether she planned to participate in upcoming forums.

Candidates for mayor who meet certain criteria are required to participate in mandatory debates held by the city’s Campaign Finance Board closer to the election. The board has not publicized those criteria yet.

Some of the campaigns in regular attendance believe strongly that the often policy-driven forums are useful and important parts of campaigning, giving candidates facetime with engaged Democratic bases and time to hone their message.

But there are some feelings that the candidates running around to forums across the city – sometimes to multiple events in one night – contributes to a perception of a stratified race, with those hustlers on the bottom level. “I think that there’s a view that we can be perceived as the undercard,” said one campaign communications strategist who was granted anonymity to speak openly. “At the same time, I do think that for a lot of people, and in the aggregate, being seen as being attentive towards those issues rather than someone who's above it all is probably going to be good.”

Campaigns that do attend them regularly have sharply criticized the candidates who skip them. Myrie’s spokesperson called them an important opportunity to engage New Yorkers and hear their concerns, adding that a candidate too scared to face voters “doesn't deserve to represent them.” “You're asking people to support your vision, and that means that you have to be willing to explain to them and take the time to tell them what your vision is,” Ramos spokesperson Astrid Aune said. 

Advocates also see value in the forums for voters, but with two major candidates absent so far, there’s a sense of a giant hole where the biggest story in the race should be. “There’s a set of candidates who keep showing up for these forums, and we can take that as an indication that they'll show up for us once they're in office,” said Alicia Thilani Singham Goodwin, political director of the progressive organization Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. Without Adams and Cuomo participating, however, Singham Goodwin said there’s a risk of losing sight of their task at hand, which is defeating those two candidates. “Sometimes I worry that the forums are leading us to focus on like the primary within the primary, drawing attention to the small differences between the candidates who do care enough to show up.”

When it comes down to it, can forum fealty help a candidate win a key endorsement? In the end, long-term relationships with labor unions, for example, may be more meaningful than what’s said at one of their candidate forums, DeSio said. “This is politics. It's not a perfect attendance, like, elementary school competition. It's hand-to-hand combat.”