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Manchester, N.H. — The Voters First Forum was the first attempt at corralling the giant field of Republican presidential hopefuls onto a single stage.

It proved to be as difficult as it sounds. Fourteen of the 17 candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination participated in the event were here at St. Anselm College on Monday night. To abide by the RNC’s rules governing debates, none of the candidates could appear on the stage at the same time, so candidates cycled on and off one at a time, in a rapid-fire format reminiscent of speed dating. Each sat on the same elevated stool — only Carly Fiorina seemed to really find a comfortable way to position her legs on it — and spoke as fast as possible, straining to cram as much as possible into the less than ten minutes allotted per candidate over the course of the two-hour debate. Eleven contenders appeared in person, while three senators — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul — teleconferenced in from Washington, D.C. due to Senate duties.

It was a first look at how difficult it will be to stage events with such an unwieldy number of candidates seeking the GOP nomination. On Thursday, the candidates will be split into two groups for the first officially sanctioned debate in Cleveland, with the ten candidates polling highest in the national polls on the main stage, and those outside the top ten in a separate, earlier debate. That arrangement has caused much consternation, particularly among the candidates who will not be in the main debate; but as Monday night’s forum showed, the sheer number of candidates will make any arrangement awkward.

The forum was meant to be an antidote to the nationalization of the nomination process, but it left little room for any one candidate to shine.

“You know I didn’t think that having people on the stage was a distraction at all. I thought it worked really well,” Rick Santorum cracked sarcastically after the debate. Santorum is one of the candidates who will certainly be in the “second-tier” debate on Thursday, and he’s been vocal in complaining about it.

“Hopefully we’ll have forums where you can get into more than a one- or two-minute sound bite and really delve into what people’s solutions are,” Ben Carson told reporters after the event. But, he said, “it’s better than nothing.”

Others seemed more enthused by it.

“I like what happened tonight. I thought it was great. I had a great time, glad I was here,” said Ohio governor John Kasich, though he said he wished he’d sat up straighter.

Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who acknowledged he is regularly criticized for speaking too fast, said he thought “the format was fine,” and any opportunity to talk voters was a good one.

The format allowed the candidates to answer the question they wanted to answer, rather than the one moderator Jack Heath actually asked them. With just about four minutes of speaking time in each of the two rounds, there was no time for Heath to push back when candidates opted to sidestep in their answers. For the most part, candidates stuck with their stump speeches.

The event showcased the struggle Republicans will have in organizing events until some of the candidates start to drop out.

One elephant was not in the room: Donald Trump, the current front-runner in the polls, declined to attend. Trump has sucked much of the air out of coverage of the field lately, but he cast little shadow Monday night. His name was never mentioned by either the candidates or the moderator.

“I never thought about it,” Kasich told reporters in the spin room afterwards, when asked if he thought the forum was different without Trump present. “It’d’ve been great if he had been there.”

— Alexis Levinson is a senior political reporter for National Review.