It was a night defined by who wasn’t there: Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The four other candidates challenging the two-term incumbent showed up to debate in Albany Thursday at a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters.

Cuomo’s top rival, Republican nominee Marc Molinaro, blasted “corrupted pay-to-play economic schemes that have produced more indictments than jobs,” called Albany “a cesspool of bad behavior” and said repeated sexual harassment scandals in the capitol mean he would never let his daughter intern there.

Former Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner — a former co-chair of the state Democratic Party — assailed allegations of pay-for-play politics in the state’s economic developments programs that have dogged Cuomo.

They “give expensive tax benefits to people who, lo and behold, were campaign contributors,” she said.

Libertarian Larry Sharpe and the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins also participated in the 90-minute faceoff.