The Democratic mayoral debate on Manhattan’s West Side may have taken center stage in the city’s political orb last night, but about 50 blocks downtown a group of presidential candidates were sparring over, or at least discussing, many of the same issues.

The nine Democratic candidates campaigning to become the next president of Manhattan sat side by side at a long conference table in a moot courtroom at Cardozo Law School for a debate that covered subjects including searching bags on subways, initiating tolls for cars entering Lower Manhattan, and the recent tax breaks the city granted the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs to move downtown.

Three of the candidates – Assemblymen Keith Wright and Adriano Espaillat, and City Council Member Bill Perkins – blasted the random bag searches, which were implemented by Mayor Bloomberg and the New York Police Department shortly after the bombings last month on the London Underground. Mr. Wright called them “unconstitutional,” while Mr. Perkins called the practice an “outrageous case of pandering.”

At least one of the candidates, Brian Ellner, a lawyer, proposed initiating tolls on the bridges coming into Lower Manhattan and at 60th Street to decrease downtown car congestion.

At one point, the candidates were asked to grade the current borough president, C. Virginia Fields, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor.

The grades ranged from an “A” from Mr. Wright, a longtime Fields ally, to “C-minus” from Mr. Espaillat, who said the office needed to be less “think tank” and more advocacy-oriented. He said he would “reorganize” the office.

Council Member Eva Moskowitz, who has made a name for herself as chairwoman of the council’s education committee, gave Ms. Fields a “C” and said the borough president has been “invisible” on some issues. Ms. Moskowitz softened it by saying she was a “tough grader.”

“If you compare her tenure with Ruth Messinger, Ruth Messinger had big policy issues … as well as a top-notch constituent service operation,” Ms. Moskowitz said. Ms. Messinger was Ms. Fields’s predecessor and lost to Rudolph Giuliani in the 1997 mayoral election.

Whether they criticized Ms. Fields or not, all of the candidates discussed tackling Manhattan’s problems in a new way and leveraging the little power the office has to maximize its strength.

Many of them continued returning to the theme of how they would tackle the “affordability” problem in Manhattan, saying they would make strategic use of their appointments to influence community boards and their role in land-use decisions.

“I do not want to see Manhattan become an outdoor mall for multimillionaires,” Mr. Ellner said.

Council Member Margarita Lopez defended herself last night against allegations that she inappropriately directed more than $600,000 of council money to a detoxification program that was co-founded by the movie star Tom Cruise, an active member of the Church of Scientology, and then took hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Scientologists.

Ms. Lopez, one of two openly gay candidates in the race, said that she had done nothing wrong and that the program was independent of the Church of Scientology, which has anti-homosexual views. She said she never asked campaign donors about their religion.

When asked about the issue, Mr. Ellner said: “As an openly gay person, I wouldn’t knowingly take money from the Church of Scientology, from an organization whose founder thought that I should be taken from society, and who preaches conversion.

“In my view, it’s a problematic cult, at best,” he said.

The other two significant issues discussed were the mayor’s plan for carting garbage out of the city and the candidates’ priorities for mass transit projects in the borough, including the construction of a Second Avenue subway line and the extension of the no. 7 train.

The candidates have plastered the city with campaign posters and are sending out direct mail in droves. And at least one, Assemblyman Scott Stringer, has television commercials running.

The other candidates are Carlos Manzano and a former City Council member, Stanley Michels.

The candidates, who collectively have about $4 million to spend, have the tall task of differentiating themselves from one other in the city’s most left-leaning borough, despite their agreement on many of the issues.

With three Hispanic candidates, two blacks, and four white candidates, ethnic support could be the key to drumming up enough votes to win. Because there is no run-off after the primary, the candidate who collects the most votes on September 13 wins the office.

The debate was sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the New York Daily News.