As the Democratic mayoral nominee, Fernando Ferrer, walked into the ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Hotel yesterday in Midtown with two of his most prominent Democratic backers, Senator Clinton and state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, they were greeted by a wall of flashing camera lights.

That promising start to the Democratic women’s luncheon faded fast for the candidate.

When Mr. Ferrer, who is nearly 30 percentage points behind in public opinion polls just three weeks before the election, spoke, he received only scattered applause compared to the hearty cheers received by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Spitzer.

Mrs. Clinton praised Mr. Ferrer as she introduced him to the crowd, saying he worked with her husband, President Clinton, in the 1990s to revitalize the Bronx and that he was “absolutely committed” to Democratic values as he “wages a campaign for the mayor of this great city.” She added, “Freddy’s values are not just his alone. They are Democratic values, and they are values of the Democratic Party of New York City and New York State.”

When she spoke of Mr. Spitzer, she called him the “best attorney general that our state or any state has ever seen.” That is high praise, especially in light of the fact that her husband was Arkansas’s attorney general before he was elected governor.

Mr. Spitzer, who was one of the first to endorse Mr. Ferrer, did not even mention the Democratic nominee by name and spent the majority of his 15 minutes on stage attacking the Bush administration.

One of Mr. Ferrer’s opponents in the Democratic primary, C. Virginia Fields, gave Mrs. Clinton an enthusiastic introduction but also failed to mention Mr. Ferrer. When she did mention the November 8 election, it was simply to remind the crowd to vote for the Transportation Bond Act, a proposition that will be on the ballot.

The crowd applauded Mr. Ferrer when he criticized Mr. Bloomberg, saying you “can’t be the biggest donor to the Republican Party and still say you believe in choice, in gun control, in fairness.”

When the women at the event filed out of the room, most were buzzing about Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Spitzer.

Mr. Spitzer attacked the administration for invoking an “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution, for choosing “activist” conservative judges, and for making states “jump through hoops” to enforce laws it doesn’t like.

Mrs. Clinton said the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast “ripped the mask off of compassionate conservatism.”

“We have to be prepared to field candidates, to stand behind those candidates, to work for their elections, because, in a democracy, it’s not enough to scream at your television set because you’re upset,” she said.

The only way to get “back on track,” she said, is to win elections. Mrs. Clinton endorsed Mr. Ferrer, but so far has done little campaigning with him. She is planning to headline a fund-raiser for him on Friday night as he struggles to raise money to compete with Mr. Bloomberg. According to a report in New York magazine, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers are in talks with the Ferrer camp about other joint appearances in the final weeks of the campaign. The magazine also reported that Mrs. Clinton’s staff helped Mr. Ferrer get invited to yesterday’s event.

The chairman of the state Democratic Party, Herman “Denny” Farrell Jr., dismissed the idea that Mr. Ferrer received a muted response from the crowd.

“I thought it was an exceptionally nice response,” he said. “He didn’t match Hillary’s response, but she’s the queen. He matched everyone else.”

A spokeswoman for the Ferrer campaign, Christy Setzer, said the audience response was “certainly enthusiastic, and we are certainly excited anytime we can have such a warm introduction from Hillary Clinton in a room full of enthusiastic Democratic women.”