Brooklyn Civics Mayoral Forum: Your No-Fuss Guide

By Matthew Hampton

Look, let's be honest. These things are dry as a bone and have about as much flavor. We're just going to boil it down to the good stuff, by candidate, and then you can go back to watching cat videos at work like a normal person: 

John Liu

Party: Democratic
Current Job: City Comptroller
Forum Strategy: Smile through accusations of rank criminality.

Liu got the crowd warmed up using his opening statement to defend himself from his ongoing years of campaign-related legal strife, then just hammered Michael Bloomberg with some old favorites. Stop teaching to tests. The Mayor wants a nanny state, yada yada. Not his best night. 

Best Quote: "If they wanna investigate me, keep investigating. But at some point enough is enough."

Bill Thompson
Party: Democratic
Current Job: Former Comptroller, current rich person.
Forum Strategy: Mayor as Daytime TV host. 

Thompson sang another familiar tune, claiming he wanted to be mayor for "all five boroughs" and that kind of thing. He also earned some applause from the still-conscious crowd by insisting the city should "have an educator as schools chancellor again." Hard to fault him there. 

Best Quote: "If you enter into an agreement with the city and you don't live up to it? Then you owe us money." [followed by "oh-no-you-didn't" head nod]

George MacDonald
Party: Republican
Current Job: Head of the DOE Fund
Forum Strategy: folksy/crazypants

MacDonald kind of got the party started with a nice blend of cringeworthy crowd service and nonsensical dodges. He basically refused to answer any hypotheticals, rendering the many "What would you do in this situation as mayor" questions irrelevant. Finally he admitted he wanted the city to take control of the MTA, so he could study what would happen once the city took control of the MTA. He earned points for being the most Ron Paul-esque of anyone that came out. 

Best Quote: Tie — "Did anybody see Mad Men the other night?" and "[New York] State is like a slow-motion crime wave." 

Sal Albanese
Party: Democratic
Current Job: Most recently director of financial services firm.
Forum Strategy: Mayor as the dad from The Wonder Years.

Albanese went with the not-undelicious "Remember when things were way better?" political gambit that served Ronald Reagan so well in the 80's. To his credit though he also put his money where his mouth was in terms of tangible changes to the city's transit system and trying to reduce the outerborough dependence on automobiles. 
Best Quote: "I remember that wall. We used to play stickball up against that wall." 

John Castimatidis 
Party: Republican
Current Job: Grocery store billionaire.
Forum Strategy: I don't even...

Castimatidis edged MacDonald in the fight for "most instances of stifled audience laughter." He declared the Barclays Center a success because he enjoyed the Barbara Streisand concert he attended there, and said "we should not restrict the American people from having dreams," which is obviously something the other candidates are trying to do so bad.

His motto? "The definition of success is being able to look out and see what you have to do to succeed," which is like saying "The definition of a sandwich is going to the store to buy bread. "

Best Quote: "Success is good. God Bless America." 

Christine Quinn
Party: Democratic
Current Job: City Council Speaker
Forum Strategy: The compound sentence rope-a-dope.

Quinn basically steamrolled forum moderator Andrea Bernstein, (who, aside from a bizarre fixation on the firing of P.J. Carlesimo otherwise did just fine) earning herself the daddy portion of the forum's speaking time in the process. She went into some serious inside baseball, bringing up the lack of a ULURP [Uniform Land Use Review Procedure] for Barclays, among other things. She more or less lulled the by-then exhausted crowd into blissful quietude. She concluded by indirectly comparing herself to Bruce Springsteen, and I'm not totally sure how I feel about that. What would her Darkness on the Edge of Town be? Share your thoughts in the comments. 

Best Quote: "I'm tough and I'm pushy and I'm loud. I was pretty much born that way." 

Bill deBlasio
Party: Democratic
Current Job: Public Advocate
Forum Strategy: Mr. Home Field Advantage

Showing up last and earning the "tip your waitress" session at the end of the night, deBlasio had a hard time getting much of anything out of the crowd. He went with your boilerplate political meat and potatoes, spiced with the occasional jab at Bloomberg or Quinn. Honestly by this point I couldn't keep my eyes from crossing involuntarily.

Best Quote: "Sometimes you're going to be wrong, but that doesn't mean you don't have a clear vision of where you're trying to go." 

That was everybody. Mercy. I was going to make a video of this thing but I worried editing it would put me in a vegetative state. I'm sure they'll replay it on Brooklyn Public Access though.