Is there a power in Albany more powerful than God? Well, not literally, maybe. But back in October, the Albany Times Union ran a news article under the headline, “Governor pledges tax break.” The subheadline was “Next budget will include deduction for parents of children in private schools.” The article reported on Mr. Spitzer’s speech to the New York State Coalition of Independent and Religious Schools, in which Mr. Spitzer said he would revive his campaign for a $1,000 state tax deduction to parents who send their children to private or parochial schools.

When, a few days ago, religious leaders got word that Mr. Spitzer might cut them loose, Edward Cardinal Egan, the Reverend Johnny Ray Youngbood, and four Orthodox rabbis — Kenneth Brander, Elie Abadie, Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, and Shlomo Hochberg — wrote the governor a letter reminding him, “our respective faiths instruct that commitments are to be taken very seriously. You can imagine our great concern when we learned of the possibility you would not be fulfilling your commitment to include the deduction in your Executive Budget.”

With the governor’s budget Tuesday, the possibility turned into an actuality. It turns out that the letter from the archbishop of New York, the reverend, and the rabbis wasn’t enough to prevail on Mr. Spitzer to keep his commitment. It seems that if there is a power in Albany more influential than God himself her name would be Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers. Mr. Spitzer, to his credit, already risked Ms. Weingarten’s ire by the way he structured the hundreds of millions of dollars in increased funding to New York City schools, working with Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein so that the money did not end up entirely in the pockets of the unionized teachers.

To alienate Ms. Weingarten further by including in the budget a tuition tax deduction proposal that stood no chance of being enacted into law over the objection of Assembly Speaker Silver was a step Mr. Spitzer was apparently unwilling to take. The governor learned with his last budget the risk of taking on a politically powerful labor union leader — the Service Employees International Union’s Dennis Rivera’s television commercials criticizing Mr. Spitzer’s cuts in health care spending sent the governor’s approval ratings plummeting. The governor, faced with a choice between angering Cardinal Egan and further angering Ms. Weingarten, decided he’d take on the cardinal.

We’ve little doubt that the governor’s heart is with the private and parochial school parents who, we’ve also little doubt, he recognizes are being ill-served by the public system. The governor may yet get the tax deduction enacted some year down the road, once Ms. Weingarten has moved on to the national scene. Or it may be that winning the battle in Albany for genuine school choice will await a politician who is prepared to take the intellectual case for it to the voters, making it the centerpiece of his campaign agenda rather than a commitment he is unwilling, or unable, to keep.