At Mayoral Forum, Hostility Toward Quinn, Even Before Her Arrival

Victor J. Blue for The New York Times Christine C. Quinn arrived late at a forum of mayoral candidates on Saturday. From left: William C. Thompson Jr., Sal F. Albanese, Bill de Blasio, John C. Liu and Ms. Quinn.

Members of the audience called her a “liar,” an opponent relentlessly attacked her, and the moderator at one point had to beg the scornful crowd to let her speak.

On Saturday, a forum of five Democratic mayoral candidates on the topic of public housing turned into a startling show of hostility toward the woman regarded as the front-runner in the race, Christine C. Quinn. The audience at the forum â€" which was sponsored by Teamsters Local 237 and the nonprofit Community Service Society â€" seemed to regard Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker, as a doppelgänger of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and directed their anger about his housing and policing policies toward her.

Under what appeared to be an arrangement with the organizers, Ms. Quinn arrived later than the other candidates â€" about halfway into the forum at the Salvation Army Centennial Memorial Temple on West 14th Street. When she took her place onstage, she was greeted with jeers that did not end even when she apologized, explaining that she had had a previous commitment to speak at an anti-bullying event.

Later, as Ms. Quinn was outlining her record of fighting for tenants’ rights on the City Council, the audience, made up largely of public housing residents and members of Teamsters Local 237, began heckling her. Some shouted, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” One woman stood up and began shouting a litany of accusations, most of them incomprehensible, ultimately drowning out Ms. Quinn. Security guards came over to silence the woman, and the moderator, the New York Times columnist Michael Powell, begged the audience to give Ms. Quinn a chance to be heard.

Through all of this, Ms. Quinn remained impassive, frowning and sitting with her shoulders slightly hunched, but not responding to the insults.

One of Ms. Quinn’s opponents, Bill de Blasio, who needs to draw some white liberal voters away from her if he hopes to make it into a runoff, took several opportunities to criticize her.

Before Ms. Quinn arrived, Mr. de Blasio responded to a question about the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy: “I know Speaker Quinn has chosen not to be with us yet,” then criticized her support of the current police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly.

“Unlike Speaker Quinn, I think we need a new police commissioner,” said Mr. de Blasio, the public advocate.

Later, he said that “we have Speaker Quinn to thank” for Mr. Bloomberg’s third term and twice accused her of being the preferred candidate of the real estate industry - a damning aspersion in a crowd of public housing tenants.

In the closing statements, after Ms. Quinn had noted her past as a tenant organizer, Mr. de Blasio said: “I’ve got to have a moment of truth here. Maybe 20 years ago, Speaker Quinn, you were a tenant organizer. But here, in 2013, you are the real estate community’s best friend.”

Ms. Quinn has received about $1.3 million from real estate industry donors, significantly more than any other candidate.

A poll released this week showed Ms. Quinn leading the pack of Democratic candidates â€" 26 percent of respondents favored her â€" although her support had declined somewhat from a previous poll.

All of the candidates criticized a plan, which has angered public housing residents, to raise money for the New York City Housing Authority by constructing luxury apartment buildings on housing authority parking lots and playgrounds. Ms. Quinn called it “a terrible idea” and said that “as mayor I would stop it.”

While Mr. de Blasio focused his attacks on Ms. Quinn, another candidate, John C. Liu, tried to earn a few points off Mr. de Blasio over the stop-and-frisk policy. After Mr. de Blasio said that he thought the Bloomberg administration’s use of the practice had made the city less safe, Mr. Liu, the only candidate who has called for its abolition rather than reform, interrupted to ask Mr. de Blasio why he did not support getting rid of it entirely.

“Let’s work together to make neighborhoods more safe â€" let’s just get rid of stop-and-frisk, Bill,” Mr. Liu, the city comptroller, said to cheers from the crowd.

“John, it sounds nice,” Mr. de Blasio replied, sounding irritated. “People need safety, and they need their constitutional rights and civil liberties. We need both. We owe our communities both.”

Asked later about the angry tone at the forum, a Quinn campaign spokesman, Mike Morey, cited what he called Ms. Quinn’s longtime support of public housing and pro-tenant legislation. “Christine Quinn shares the tenants’ frustrations,” Mr. Morey said in an e-mail. “That’s why she has worked so hard to deliver for NYCHA tenants and all other tenants throughout New York.”