State attorney general and presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee Eliot Spitzer’s early endorsement of Fernando Ferrer for mayor should come as no surprise. In the brave new world of consultant-dominated politics, they both play for the same team.

It used to be that political parties had organizations, and those organizations were further subdivided into political clubs. In the 1950s, when a Bronx resident of, say, Belmont needed a favor, he or she would trudge up to the Arthur H. Murphy Association at the corner of Third and East Tremont avenues, and make their case to the district leaders, John Satriale or Rose Catania. The Murphy club, named for the first Democratic leader of the newly formed Bronx County (which in 1914 became the last county created in New York State), was the “regular” Democratic organization club in the area, the old 7th Assembly District.

Satriale was also the district’s state assemblyman, the chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. But he also derived influence as a Democratic district leader. He commanded an army of block captains who, before the age of computers and political direct mail, knew where every voter in his or her little empire could be found. If a problem was beyond Satriale’s or Catania’s ability to solve, they would take it to a higher authority. No, they didn’t visit the local bishop or rabbi. They contacted Bronx County’s most powerful person, the Democratic leader, the Boss, Rep. Charles Buckley.

Becoming a county Democratic boss was the penultimate political achievement. Mr. Buckley’s predecessor, the urbane Edward Flynn, a confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt, did not relinquish his Bronx post even upon assuming the national Democratic leadership. It was a position one usually held for life. When Murphy died, Flynn was elected leader. When Flynn passed on, Buckley assumed the post. When Buckley met his reward, Henry McDonough was tapped for the job. Upon McDonough’s demise, Patrick Cunningham was selected.

Cunningham and his successor, Stanley Friedman, wound up in jail, hence their early exits. George Friedman (no relation to his predecessor other than political) left the post to become a State Supreme Court Justice, a nod to the borough’s rapidly changing ethnic realities.

When then-Assemblyman Roberto Ramirez assumed the party leadership in 1995, Bronx political life was a lot different than it was in the days of Charlie Buckley. There are no more block captains and only a handful of weak political clubs. Positions as district leader, once eagerly sought, now go begging.

It was Mr. Ramirez’s genius to understand that it is not the official leadership where power now resides, but rather with the shadow leadership of consultants and lobbyists, fueled by campaign dollars. That is the connection between Messrs. Ferrer and Spitzer. They both are extensions of Mr. Ramirez and his growing empire of lobbying and consulting firms and nonprofit groups.

At what seemed to be the pinnacle of his power, Mr. Ramirez declined to seek re-election to the Assembly, and then resigned as Bronx Democratic leader. But he is still in charge. He has now privatized the party machinery, making more and bigger deals, while retaining control of the Bronx party. This permits Mr. Spitzer to pay Mr. Ramirez for his various services, including space from which his campaign is run. Hundreds of thousands flow from the attorney general to Mr. Ramirez’s firms, while Mr. Spitzer curiously directs other quasi-public funds to a charity that Mr. Ramirez has great influence over.

In 1998, Mr. Spitzer got some important help in his race for attorney general from the executive director of the Hispanic Federation, Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez, one of Mr. Ramirez’s closest associates.

When then-Attorney General Dennis Vacco, discussing capital punishment with the Jewish Week newspaper stated, “We don’t do surveys of criminals. You don’t stand outside a bodega and ask the bandito if he would have killed somebody if there was no death penalty,” Ms. Cortes-Vazquez very publicly accused Mr. Vacco of being insensitive to Hispanics.

This helped put Mr. Vacco on the defensive, and took the spotlight off of serious ethical and legal questions raised about Mr. Spitzer’s campaign finances. Mr. Spitzer won the race, but by the narrowest margin in state history.

Five years later, by which time Mr. Spitzer had become one of Mr. Ramirez’s biggest clients, the Hispanic Federation, a group clearly in the Ramirez orbit of influence, got a $100,000 “gift” from Mr. Spitzer, out of the pockets of one of the corporate “miscreants” he has so aggressively pursued. In settlement, Philip Anschutz, the former chairman of Qwest, was ordered to pay $4.4 million to charities of Mr. Spitzer’s choosing. Among them was the Hispanic Federation. Not the United Negro College Fund or the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, or Catholic Charities.

Of the tens of thousands of worthy charities, why was the Hispanic Federation chosen? It doesn’t take much to get from point A to point B.

With Mr. Ramirez in top positions in both the Spitzer and Ferrer campaigns, why should anyone be surprised by the early endorsement? After all, this is right out of Mr. Ramirez’s playbook. In 2001, Mr. Ferrer won the early support of then-State Comptroller H. Carl McCall who, like Mr. Spitzer, seemed to have his party’s gubernatorial nod sewed up. When you want to win the game, you put all of your best players in the field.