It looks as if Governor Spitzer, having realized that his “I am a f—ing steamroller” approach is faltering in Albany, is trying a new strategy, ladling out pork for Senate Democrats in hopes of winning their fealty come the day his party wins control of the upper chamber. And to judge by Jacob Gershman’s report at page one today, the governor is distributing the pork not with a spoon but with what amounts to a steam shovel. The governor is soliciting wish lists from the 29 Senate Democrats, who have each been told they can submit up to three capital requests for projects in their districts. While the governor isn’t guaranteeing he’ll make every wish come true, Malcolm Smith and other Senate Democrats have submitted requests totaling tens of millions of dollars of borrowed state funds. Maybe Mr. Spitzer’s parents read him Virginia Lee Burton’s classic children’s story about Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel one time too many.

Certainly the governor is digging himself into quite a hole, given the way the governor campaigned for office on a platform of reform and vowed that on day one, everything would change. In the past, the kinds of capital funds the governor has been shoveling have been used to pay for projects such as the National Museum of Catholic History and Art, the Irish Repertory Theatre in Chelsea, a heating system at St. Edward the Confessor Catholic church near Albany, and even subsidizing, for $1.2 million, the Hickey Freeman Company Inc., a suit manufacturer based in Rochester, Mr. Gershman reported on January 29.

Mr. Spitzer swept into office vowing to “reform” Albany by making “member items” in the operating budget more transparent. He was cheered by good government groups and editorialists, who realized that the member items are key to enforcing the culture of compliance in Albany. Member items are one of the perks used by the three men who run the state —Speaker Silver, Majority Leader Bruno, and the governor — to discourage independence by lawmakers. What are voters to make of the fact that the governor has been taking aim at member items in the operating budget as wasteful political pork that dodges the oversight of the budget process — while at the same time using the capital budget the same way to build a foundation for his governorship?

The question is all the more glaring given the way Mr. Spitzer vowed in his State of the State speech to be the governor of “One New York,” criticizing “partisan politics.” But it is highly partisan of the governor to make capital funds available through his office only to Senate Democrats and not to Senate Republicans. It leaves New Yorkers divided into those who live in a Democratic district and can get capital pork from the governor’s steam shovel, and those who are represented by Republicans and have to rely on the largesse of Senator Bruno.

The thrill of the steam shovel seems to have enticed Mr. Spitzer to abandon the position of reformer who would steam-roll Messrs. Bruno and Silver as he changed the old ways of doing business in Albany. Instead, he’s becoming but another one of the three men in a room who shovel out the taxpayers’ money with abandon for partisan political advantage and with little concern about the high taxes and debt that the state is running up along the way. We don’t underestimate the governor’s ambition or his intelligence. He probably feels that the goal of winning a Democratic majority in the Senate is worth it.

He may also reckon that he is only making up for what Democratic senators have been deprived of for years by their minority status. But if Mr. Spitzer wins a Democratic Senate majority, he will then have to contend with a batch of senators accustomed to getting $1 million a year each in discretionary capital pork. By the time they get done negotiating with him, the Albany pork will have to be distributed not by the spoonful nor even by steam-shovel full, but by dump trucks, and the ones bearing the burden will be the state’s already overstretched taxpayers. And Mr. Spitzer will be forced to live in the hole he dug for himself.