As much as the mayor would prefer that it not become an issue, the way he has been running the schools may well become the top issue in the upcoming campaign. Several candidates are already sharpening the knives in what promises to be the highest stakes test of all: who gets virtually unlimited control over the nation’s largest school system. Mayor Bloomberg and his direct appointee, Chancellor Klein, now have total say over filling thousands of top-level jobs paying more than $100,000 a year. The concentration of that amount of patronage in one person’s hands is unprecedented in the history of New York or any other city.

The counter-offensive is already beginning.

The City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, is taking his oversight panel on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit on the road, hitting Queens tomorrow and setting a series of “cyber-hearings” on the Internet as well. Mr. Miller has recruited marquee names for this panel, including the president of Columbia University Teachers College, Arthur Levine, and a former schools chancellor, Anthony Alvarado.

Aside from giving frustrated parents a forum to air grievances and win sympathy from an ambitious top city official, Mr. Miller may be attempting to demonstrate that he has a crackerjack education team waiting in the wings should he replace Mr. Bloomberg. Problem is that it is the same team that advised Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein.

The city’s controversial “balanced literacy” program was pulled right out of Teachers College and was strongly defended by Mr. Levine after the federal government refused to finance it, on grounds that it is not substantiated by scientific research.

Immediately after being named chancellor, Mr. Klein flew to San Diego to see first-hand how his former Justice Department colleague Alan Bersin and Mr. Alvarado were running the schools there. The program that Mr. Klein and his former deputy, Diana Lam, installed here in Gotham closely mirrors the San Diego model.

But Mr. Alvarado was removed over a year ago, and Mr. Bersin agreed just last week to leave at the end of the school year, one year before his contract expires. Mr. Bersin’s departure came as a direct result of pressure applied by the San Diego Education Association and the California School Employees Association, the unions representing teachers among others.

That, I’m sure, is not lost on the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. In the mayoral elections four years ago, the teachers made every wrong move along the way, endorsing three Democrats, each of whom was eliminated as Mr. Bloomberg crafted his surprise victory.

But this year the stakes are much higher, since the mayor now directly controls the schools. Once a candidate is chosen by the UFT, expect an unprecedented effort on that candidate’s behalf.

If Ms. Weingarten is not too thrilled with Mr. Miller’s embrace of the architects of the Bloomberg “reform,” she might be more likely to appreciate the words of Rep. Anthony Weiner, who made his first major education address at the West Side Chamber breakfast January 25.

The influence of Mr. Weiner’s mother, a retired teacher, was woven through his generally thoughtful presentation. He criticized the mayor’s program as “a top-down approach that introduced an untested and discredited curriculum,” and he castigated Chancellor Klein for choosing the program “without the input of the teachers who had to implement it.”

Those sentiments were echoed two days later when Ms. Weingarten, questioned by a former parks commissioner, Henry Stern, at a Manhattan Institute luncheon, asserted that her position regarding the reading curriculum was closer to that of “Sol Stern and Diane Ravitch” than that of Mr. Klein.

Mr. Weiner, now polling toward the end of the pack, would dearly like the support of the UFT to give his effort the credibility it needs to break through to front-runner status. Perhaps he was really addressing Ms. Weingarten when he told his business audience, “We need leadership that respects teachers, listens to their opinions, and makes tough demands on them without micro-managing them to distraction.”

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According to a dispatch in Saturday’s New York Times, Fernando Ferrer’s campaign chief, Roberto Ramirez, the former Bronx County Democratic leader and assemblyman, will not lobby City Hall on behalf of his clients should Mr. Ferrer become mayor.

If you believe that statement, than I have a bridge, the Willis Avenue Bridge, to sell you.

If Mr. Ferrer should become mayor, expect Mr. Ramirez to exercise the influence of a deputy mayor without actually holding the post. While clients may not actually “pay” Mr. Ramirez to lobby, there are a hundred ways in which lobbyists who double as political consultants can profit while evading the stigma of influence peddling.

With a large stable of political clients, Mr. Ramirez can mix and match. Appreciation for a quiet chat at City Hall can easily be shown by making a timely contribution to another Ramirez client, perhaps Eliot Spitzer or Adolfo Carrion, or by giving a legal job to a connected law firm, or even by having printing work done by a Bronx company that Mr. Ramirez’s partners in other ventures have an interest in. The era of simple, linear “pay for play” has ended. Tangled webs are far more difficult for the public to unravel.