Even in light of a major news bomb, Candidate for New York Governor Cynthia Nixon stuck to her planned speech about higher education and raising faculty salaries at the Defend SUNY Rally in New Paltz.

"Excelsior is more headlines and smoke and mirrors than an actual solution to crushing student debt," Nixon said to the crowd of about 200 SUNY faculty and students.

The Excelsior program, pushed by Governor Andrew Cuomo, offers free SUNY scholarships to income-eligible families. A reported 22,000 students received full scholarships through the program.

Just after her speech, with the crowd still chanting for education funding reform, Nixon took several questions on the abuse allegations against now-former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

"Without the #MeToo movement, I don't know that these women would have felt the strength to do it and felt that the environment was right," Nixon said when first asked for her reaction.

Spectrum News also asked the candidate about whether she had ever found herself in situations during her acting career in which she was roped into uncomfortable situations with men who held higher positions.

"I've been very lucky," Nixon said. "I've had things happen to me, but they've all been manageable. I've been very lucky that way, but I think that unless something like that has happened to you personally, I think you'd have no idea of how widespread it is."