Mayor Bloomberg and the four Democrats vying for his job joked with New Yorkers and answered questions last night about everything from education and affordable housing to bicycles and Wal-Mart at a televised town hall meeting at City Hall’s City Council chambers.

The two-hour event, during which the five major-party candidates took turns sitting in a director’s chair to answer questions about their accomplishments, goals, and beliefs, held few shocking disclosures. The mayor and his rivals stuck with the themes that they have been emphasizing throughout their campaigns.

With less than two weeks to go before the Democratic primary election, what might have been most telling about last night’s event was the Democratic candidates’ continued reluctance to say anything negative about each other during a group appearance. The City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, and a congressman from Forest Hills, Anthony Weiner, both, when asked directly, said they liked each other very much. When Mr. Weiner entered the room while the Democratic front-runner, Fernando Ferrer, was leaving the council chambers, Mr. Ferrer stopped shaking hands to applaud his rival.

When Mr. Bloomberg was asked what he thought about the Democrats who are struggling to take his job, he said: “I’m certainly not an expert in the political process. We continue to make this a city for everybody where people get along.”

As in the Democrats’ first mayoral debate, the mayor was the target of most of the attacks.

Mr. Miller said he likes the mayor as a person but blasted him for being “totally out of ideas” for how to govern New York City and assailed his record of trying to cut money from school construction projects, libraries, and senior centers.

The Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, criticized Mr. Bloomberg for dedicating too much of the education budget to central administrative costs rather than improvements to the classrooms.

Mr. Ferrer griped that the mayor seems to have confused “multimillion dollar condos with ‘affordable housing'” and said the mayor has approved sweetheart deals to help developers.

Mr. Weiner was the most complimentary toward the mayor, professing to “like” him and commenting that he would make “an excellent private citizen.” But Mr. Weiner didn’t hold back from attacking Mr. Bloomberg’s record on education and what Mr. Weiner sees as a failure by the Bloomberg administration to fight in Albany and Washington to secure aid and independence for the city.

During the town hall meeting, at which NY1’s Dominic Carter was master of ceremonies, each candidate had a chance to greet the audience informally before going live on cable television.

Most candidates bantered with the voters who packed the room, which is typically the site of council hearings and meetings.

Mr. Ferrer talked about his days serving on the council – on which Mr. Weiner and Ms. Fields also formerly served. Mr. Bloomberg gave a brief lesson in civics, explaining the blueprint of City Hall and the basics of the budget process. Mr. Weiner gave a brief history lesson, telling the voters that New York’s City Hall was the first seat of American government, and that President Washington was sworn in not far from where they were sitting. Ms. Fields took the opportunity to deliver what sounded like a formal stump speech, outlining her agenda on affordable housing and other policy proposals.

While Ms. Fields might have started out in a formal vein, she gave a few answers that moved off the beaten path of her campaign.

When Mr. Carter asked her if she was being marginalized as a candidate because she is the only woman in the race, she said gender is more important than race in the modern era, and she indicated that the press, if not the voters, have been paying less attention to her because she is female.

Referring to a report published yesterday in the New York Times, which briefly detailed each of her male opponents’ housing plans before saying simply, “C. Virginia Fields floated proposals of her own earlier this summer,” Ms. Fields said she put forward a substantive plan that called for 100,000 units of affordable housing to be built over 10 years at a cost of $10 billion. She implied that her ideas were being given less credence because she is female.

When Mr. Carter followed up, asking if gender discrimination was hindering her, even in 2005, she said, “In 2005, Dominic, surprise!” She continued: “In terms of how many people still look at women, whether women can govern in the same way.”

She said voters who look at her record of decision-making, back to her childhood in the segregated South, they should get a sense of her ability to lead the city.

“Sure, I can lead this city,” Ms. Fields said. “Men have led it all this time, and look at the shape it is in.”

In response to a timely question from an audience member about the rising cost of oil and whether New Yorkers should consider biking as a transportation alternative, she said biking was “a very healthy and important way to travel and keep pollution down” and boasted of her record of building bicycle lanes as borough president.

As the primary approaches, the many undecided Democratic voters will have a chance to see the Democratic candidates in their second and final official debate of the campaign Wednesday at 7 p.m. on channel 4.