DES MOINES, Iowa — Candidates in the Des Moines mayoral election took part in a moderated public forum Wednesday night in front of dozens of residents at Grand View University.
The forum comes less than two months out from the November election.
Candidates included Connie Boesen, Denver Foote and Josh Mandelbaum who made their case to become Iowa's capital city's next mayor. As of the filing deadline on Thursday, Christopher Von Arx and Benjamin Clarke have joined the race.
The candidates discussed myriad topics, but focused the most on education, as they were at a university. All candidates had two minutes to answer pre-scripted questions, before opening it up to the public to ask questions for the forum's final 30 minutes.
Boesen has served as the at-large councilperson on the Des Moines City Council since 2021 and also has experience on school boards.
On Wednesday night, she mentioned the need for better city night life and expanded resources at food pantries for students of low-income families, more food options at school and the need to fund kids based on income.
"We tried for years to advocate for preschool," Boesen said. "For kids who live at 200% of poverty or more, all day preschool. And I have said before, it's an education and it's a workforce issue."
Josh Mandelbaum also attended the forum. He's served as a Des Moines city councilperson since 2021 for Ward 3, which covers southwestern Des Moines.
He talked about funding preschools better as well as teaching kids more about trade schools. Mandelbaum also said the city needs to build new housing for people with differing incomes.
"We've done great work to create six full-time preschool classrooms in Des Moines Public Schools using our ARPA dollars," he said. "Our American Rescue Plan dollars, we need to continue that and we should look at using local option sales tax dollars to continue that."
The third candidate who attended the forum Wednesday night was activist Denver Foote. Unlike the other two candidates, Foote has not served on the Des Moines City Council, but they mentioned their activism experience and how that would help serve in the mayoral position.
Foote advocated Wednesday night for the need for multi-use zoning to allow residents to live and work in the same place, and they also talked about how youth need a transit system downtown to travel the city more safely.
"I wish we had late night running transit, right? So we could get home safe, so we don't have to drive," Foote said. "That's a big thing from stopping people [from coming downtown at night]."
Current Des Moines mayor Frank Cownie did not attend Wednesday's forum. He announced Thursday morning he does not plan to run for reelection.