For most of this week, Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul and her opponent, City Councilman Jumaane Williams, have been locked in a dispute over personal finances.

Hochul released this video criticizing Williams for accumulating personal debt and walking away from a home mortgage almost ten years ago. Williams and his defenders called Hochul out of bounds, arguing the attack was personal and even "classist."

On Thursday, Cuomo defended the attack and called on Williams to release his tax returns, something Williams says he won't do until Hochul agrees to a debate with him.

"Release of taxes, transparency is of course a legitimate topic. It's a topic in every campaign going back decades," the governor said.

The governor also discussed health-care policy. Cuomo's opponent, Cynthia Nixon, has called for universal health care in New York State under a single-payer system. NY1 asked Cuomo what he thought of the proposal with a study from the Rand Corporation now supporting the concept.

"It's something that we would look at with the legislature, certainly," Cuomo said. "The Rand study, I don't know if it is necessarily determinitive. Because it made many assumptions about how costs would be allocated."

In a separate development, several Democratic state Senators rejected a call from their opponents to return donations from a fund created between the Independence Party and the state Senate's now-defunct Independent Democratic Conference, known as the IDC.

"So we are demanding that you return the money, and we are making a promise to you to this day that we are going to let every single voter in our district know where you got your money from, and we are going to settle this on September 13 at the ballot box," said Zellnor Myrie, a candidate for state Senate.

A spokesperson for the former IDC candidates says there is no legal basis for returning the funds and the account is "fully compliant." IDC Democrats had a coalition with Republicans for control of the state Senate until April, when the IDC disbanded and they rejoined the mainline Democrats.