(SBT24/7News) For years, Plymouth’s mayoral candidates have squared off in a public debate sponsored by a local radio station and the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce.

But not this year.

After a disagreement between the candidates over questions submitted for their review before Tuesday night's WTCA/Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce mayoral debate, the event, which was to be at Christo’s Banquet Hall, has been canceled.

“We’re not going to do anything,” Chamber Director Doug Anspach said Monday afternoon. “...we’re just going to cancel the debate.”

Anspach said Democrat incumbent Gary Cook and a representative of GOP candidate Mark Senter could not agree Oct. 19 over so-called “seed questions” — questions the public were invited to submit before the event.

The questions, he said, are designed to help provide initial questions for moderators until a sufficient number of questions come in from the floor at the debate.

Press releases sent out by both Cook’s and Senter’s campaigns said the problem arose when debate organizers, Cook, and Nelson Chipman, representing Senter’s campaign, gathered to examine questions submitted by the public.

And that’s where it gets tricky. According to Senter’s press release, there were more than 17 questions ready to be reviewed at the meeting, and Cook asked for extra time to go over them to determine whether or not he would agree to them being included in the debate.

Both parties agree that the time when Cook was supposed to send his answer back to the organizers was 2 p.m. But that didn’t happen. Cook, contacted by telephone Monday, said that one of the reasons he was unable to give an answer during that time frame was that he ran into unexpected work responsibilities.

But more than that, he said, he was disturbed by the nature of the questions, which he said Chipman brought to the meeting, which Cook stated in his press release “were designed to discredit my administration” and “hi-jack the debate from the voters.”

Cook said he believes the questions may have been penned by members of Senter’s campaign.

Chipman “walked in with 17 envelopes, and the handwriting was the same on all of them,” he said.

Cook said he asked for more time to think them over, and offered to respond early this week. Chipman, he said, refused those terms. Because of that, Cook said he decided he would not agree to the majority of the questions.

Cook, however, did say he plans to go to Christo’s during the scheduled debate time to talk to anyone who shows up.

In the press release sent out by Senter’s campaign, however, a different picture is painted. The release states that after Cook did not respond to the questions in the time allotted, missing a first deadline at 2 p.m., then a second at 4 p.m., the mayor finally stated that he needed until Monday to review the questions or would reject the vast majority of them.

That delay, the release states, was in violation of an agreement made earlier between the two candidates. Because of that, Senter and his supporters elected to withdraw from the event.

“On the day he promised to select debate questions, Mr. Cook agreed to only one for the scheduled 90-minute debate while rejecting 17 or 18 others,” the release stated. “Besides his bizarre behavior in being unwilling to honor simple rules he had personally negotiated, and his flouting of additional accommodations he demanded, ... Mr. Cook has made a farce of an important event to Plymouth.

“It is with great regret that we are forced to withdraw from this event,” the release stated.

Senter did not immediately return a message left on his cell phone seeking comment. Chipman could not be reached at his office Monday afternoon.

Anspach said the decision to call off the debate was not taken lightly, and, up until the middle of the day on Monday, organizers were still discussing the possibility of somehow holding at least some type of forum.

“We were very concerned that we'd have about 100 people show up over at Christo's,” he said. “... and at this late date, we weren't certain we could contact everybody to let them know” the event was canceled.

Tribune Staff Writer Anita Munson contributed to this report.