Quite the battle is shaping up at Albany, as our William F. Hammond Jr. reports at Page 1 of today’s Sun. The majority leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno, is leading something of a revolt against the head of his Republican Party, Governor Pataki. Mr. Bruno, fearful that freezing or reducing state aid will lead to soaring property taxes at the local level, is ready to take the easy way out of the state’s budget crisis: raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Mr. Bruno knows that while tax increases may push businesses and the rich out of the state, they are likely to placate the majority of voters. The governor, on the other hand, who sees his only chance at national office as being tied to his reputation as a fiscal conservative — he certainly won’t win over the national party on social issues — is ready to go to war.

If Mr. Bruno and his new pal, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, win, tally it as another victory for Dennis Rivera and his health-care workers union. Mr. Rivera got a nice payoff from the governor in the 2002 election campaign in the form of tax increases to fund increased health-care spending. Now, Mr. Bruno is showing up at union rallies wearing ties with SEIU/1199 colors. Mr. Pataki is left out in the cold with a unanimous Senate overriding one of his vetoes for only the second time that has happened, as he tries to maintain a semblance of fiscal austerity.

But Mr. Pataki isn’t licked. This is a test of what the governor is made of, played out before the entire nation. As Mr. Hammond pointed out in these pages recently, the governor has a few choice weapons in his arsenal, in the form of control over thousands of patronage jobs and management of state transportation funds. Further, all Mr. Pataki has to do in order to stage his own coup is to find 20 Republican senators to oust Mr. Bruno as Senate majority leader and install a regime friendlier to taxpayers. The first person he might talk to is Raymond Meier of Utica. Mr. Meier was the lone Republican recently to vote against the first two components of the Senate-Assembly budget deal. A state senator against tax increases? It sounds like our governor’s glory days back in the state Legislature’s upper house. We’re sure Messrs. Pataki and Meier would have a lot to talk about.