The Democrats running for attorney general lined up to bash Albany and often took aim at Gov. Andrew Cuomo – declaring New York’s corruption-riddled state Capitol is incapable of cleaning itself up.

“We have had too many years of corruption scandals in Albany and it is very clear that Albany isn’t going to clear itself up,” said Zephyr Teachout, who was treated as the frontrunner by her opponents throughout the debate after scoring two key newspaper endorsements in recent days. “It’s very clear that the governor is not taking the corruption scandal seriously.”

City Public Advocate Letitia James, who is running on Cuomo’s ticket in the primary, joined the calls for the head of the state’s ethics commission, close Cuomo ally Seth Agata, to resign.

And Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney called for disbanding the board, known as the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, and consolidating the powers into the Attorney General’s office.

Still, Albany pols found a brief reprieve when James declared that not all of them are corrupt.

“I don’t want to slash and burn,” James said at one point. In another, she added: “You have to understand that not everyone in Albany is corrupt and there are some fine elected officials.”

She argued her practicality would give her an edge in negotiating with state lawmakers to receive new powers to investigate corruption.

The policy debates in the NY1-hosted forum at CUNY’s John Jay School were frequently derailed by mentions of President Donald Trump, who is deeply unpopular in his native New York, in spite of the moderators’ best efforts.

For instance, when discussing Albany corruption, Maloney responded in part by saying: “Let’s remember that the most serious public corruption in America today is by the president of the United States, Donald Trump.”

The crowd applauded.

When policy discussions did break out, there was little light between the four candidates: For instance, all said they supported bringing an end to cash bail in New York state, and all said they backed closing Rikers Island.

Those similarities meant that the candidates largely leaned on their biographies to try to differentiate themselves – and they took nonstop aim at the perceived frontrunner in the race, Teachout.

The Fordham law professor doesn’t have the money or institutional support of some of her competitors, but James, Maloney and former Hillary Clinton aide Leecia Eve kept the spotlight on Teachout after she scored endorsements from The New York Times and The Daily News.

When they each had a chance to ask each other a question, all three pointed theirs at Teachout.

James, the early favorite in the race, repeatedly attacked her as an impractical academic and ideologue, referring to Teachout as “professor.”

“I am a professor, and, by the way, you know who else was a professor: Barack Obama,” Teachout rebutted.

Maloney charged she was a hypocrite on campaign finance, referencing the support Teachout received from outside groups spending in her 2016 upstate congressional race.

Under federal law, Teachout and her campaign are barred from coordinating with those groups – and none was alleged during the debate — and the outside groups supporting her were outspent by roughly a 2-1 margin.

“Money is poison in our politics, but so is being holier-than-thou and hypocrisy,” Maloney said, whose campaign has received $150,000 in donations from powerhouse Manhattan developer firm the Durst Organization.