The National Association of Manufacturers canceled its previously scheduled presidential candidates forum in Iowa after only one candidate agree to appear, the news site IndustryWeek reported.

NAM announced in September it had tapped PBS NewsHour co-anchor Judy Woodruff to moderate the forum, which was to be held Monday in Pella, Iowa. The forum was open to both Democratic and Republican candidates, and a similar event in 2011 resulted in five Republican candidates appearing.

This year only Republican candidate Rick Santorum agreed to appear, reported IndustryWeek, citing an anonymous source within NAM.

Publicly, a NAM spokesman said the sheer number of candidates made scheduling the event next to impossible.

"With the field of candidates so large and their time so stretched, as currently scheduled the forum would not include a diverse, bipartisan, cross-section of viewpoints represented," said Erin Streeter, NAM senior vice president, communications. "Because of this challenge, the NAM decided to cancel the event."

The forum was been replaced by a series of "teleforums" in which individual candidates appear to answer questions posed by the business community. Unlike the canceled forum, the teleforums will not be publicly broadcast but available to NAM's business members.

The first teleforum with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is scheduled for Wednesday. http://bit.ly/1RLbb8T

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