BOCA RATON, FL (Boca Post) (Copyright © 2026) — Boca Raton’s 2026 municipal elections move into the public-forum phase Thursday, Jan. 29, with a City Council Candidate Forum scheduled for 6 p.m. at the 6500 Building, 6500 Congress Ave., hosted by the Federation of Boca Raton Homeowner Associations.
For residents who can’t make it in person, the forum will be live-streamed on YouTube on the Federation’s channel, @FederationofBocaRatonHOAs. Doors open at 5 p.m. Seating is first-come, first-served. The recorded event is also expected to air on local government channels: Comcast/Xfinity Channel 20, AT&T Channel 99, and Hotwire Channel 395.
The Federation of Boca Raton Homeowner Associations is also still accepting questions for the candidates via this form.
The forum brings together candidates in the races for mayor and City Council Seats A, B and D — the contests that will shape the council’s direction on some of the biggest issues Boca Raton residents have been tracking for months: redevelopment, public land, traffic, the city’s budget, and how much growth Boca should absorb.
Mayor candidates (three-way race):
Seat A candidates:
Seat B candidates:
Seat D candidates:
With all of those names on one stage, the night is likely to compress weeks of campaign messaging into a couple hours of direct questions, side-by-side contrasts, and the kind of follow-ups that force candidates to stop talking in slogans and start talking about votes, projects, and the limits of what City Hall can actually do.
What’s likely to come up
The forum is arriving at a moment when Boca’s growth and redevelopment fights are already bleeding into campaign material.
Liebelson, a candidate for mayor, has publicly criticized Thomson’s fundraising and has framed the race around developer influence at City Hall. In campaign messaging provided to Boca Post, Liebelson claims Thomson raised significant support from developers and land-use attorneys through his campaign and political committee, and he points to additional contributions into a PAC aligned with Thomson. That line of attack is built to tee up a forum question voters often ask in Boca elections: who pays for the campaigns, and what does that mean when development votes come back to the dais.
Thomson’s own campaign messaging leans the other direction — emphasizing opposition to the Government Campus redevelopment, calling for “responsible growth,” and highlighting traffic and cost-of-living concerns. As previously reported by Boca Post, Thomson is also the only sitting commissioner who voted against the One Boca development. That record, now paired with competing claims about campaign money, is the kind of tension that tends to surface in a live forum: supporters want the vote highlighted; critics want the funding story explained.
Across the council races, the themes repeat, even when candidates use different language.
Some candidates stress transparency and public process — how the city notices projects, how residents get heard, and whether major decisions involving public land should trigger more direct voter input. Others center public safety staffing, infrastructure capacity, and traffic congestion as the day-to-day quality-of-life problems residents feel first, before they ever read a staff report.
Development, though, is the common thread, and it can show up in multiple forms: what gets built, where it gets built, what zoning changes are granted, and what happens when the city is asked to partner with private entities on projects residents view as civic assets.
How to prepare before you go
If you’re walking into the 6500 Building Thursday night, the fastest way to make sense of the forum is to review the candidates’ own issue pages and written priorities ahead of time. That gives you a baseline, and it makes it easier to hear what’s new, what’s dodged, and what’s being softened for a general audience.
It also helps residents track what’s actually being promised: tax and spending restraint versus expanded services, stricter development controls versus “balanced” growth, and whether candidates are committing to specific process changes, like how city decisions are communicated and how residents weigh in.
At minimum, voters will come away with clarity on three things: which candidates are running as continuity, which are running as a break from how City Hall has handled growth and public land decisions, and which ones can explain their positions without a script.
Where to watch
- In person: 6500 Building, 6500 Congress Ave., Boca Raton (doors 5 p.m.; forum 6 p.m.)
- Live stream info found on Federation of Boca Raton Homeowner Associations Facebook Page
- Recorded replay on government channels: Comcast/Xfinity Ch. 20, AT&T Ch. 99, Hotwire Ch. 395
Source: Federation of Boca Raton Homeowner Associations forum announcement; candidate campaign sites for Fran Nachlas, Andy Thomson, Mike Liebelson, Michelle Grau, Bernard Korn, Christen Ritchey, Meredith Madsen, Jon Pearlman, Marc Wigder, Larry Cellon, Stacy Sipple, and Robert S. Weinroth.
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