ALBANY — Governor Spitzer and the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, yesterday moved closer to a major confrontation over the search for a comptroller, as Democrats signaled that they would reject the three candidates recommended by a screening panel backed by Mr. Spitzer.

After huddling for several hours behind closed doors, Assembly Democrats said they were in near agreement that the panel’s decision to pass over all Assembly contenders lacked legitimacy, and therefore they were not bound by its recommendations. All but two Democrats supported rejecting the panel’s selections, one lawmaker who attended the conference said.

Democrats, however, did not go as far as to anoint one of their members, four of whom are seeking the job. Several Democrats said an assemblyman of Nassau County, Thomas DiNapoli, who is the favored choice of Mr. Silver, carried the most support.

Lawmakers said they would wait until at least next week to get behind one candidate, which leaves Mr. Spitzer some time to change minds and persuade members to rally behind someone else outside of the Assembly.

“It was pretty unanimous,” a Democratic assemblyman who asked not to be identified told The New York Sun. “Everybody said the system was tainted.”

It now appears that Democrats plan to circle the wagons and pick one of their own to be the state’s top fiscal watchdog, a position that opened after last year’s resignation of the Democratic comptroller, Alan Hevesi.

Such a move would come over the objections of Mr. Spitzer, who has demanded that Democrats abide by the recommendations of the panel.

The governor has been “real clear,” a spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, Darren Dopp, said Monday. “They should choose from the list and honor the agreement.”

Messrs. Spitzer and Silver have been on the brink of conflict since Thursday, when a bipartisan screening panel composed of former state and city comptrollers put forward a list of three outsiders as finalists for the comptroller post, including William Mulrow, a Wall Street investor and Democratic activist who is close to Mr. Spitzer. Eighteen people had applied for the job. The other two candidates who made the cut are the Nassau County comptroller, Howard Weitzman, and the New York City finance commissioner, Martha Stark. Mr. Silver, who consented to the panel under an agreement with the governor, expected that it would pick five candidates and at least one of the five Democratic Assembly members bidding for the job. Democrats accused the governor of lobbying the three panelists, a charge the governor’s office strongly denies.

Lawmakers who saw an erosion of their budgetary powers during the Pataki years signaled yesterday they were drawing a line on giving up any more fiscal authority to the executive.

“I certainly don’t think that the governor ought to be involved in this,” a Rochester-area Assemblyman who is vying for the office, Joseph Morelle, said. “The job of the comptroller is to be the auditor of state agencies, which are under the governor’s control. That’s one of the prime responsibilities. So the governor would rightfully understand that it would not be appropriate for him to be involved in the decision-making.”

Assembly Democrats get to play the role of kingmaker because they make up the largest bloc of votes in the full Legislature, which votes to replace vacancies in the office.

Mr. Spitzer, who has spent his first month in office trying to consolidate power by aggressively attempting to unseat the Republican majority in the Senate and seize greater control over state ethics bodies, may have underestimated how jealously the Assembly guards its power.

The Assembly’s rejection of the governor does not necessarily mean that Mr. Spitzer comes away from his battle weakened, at least in the court of public opinion.

The Assembly risks drawing negative publicity by tossing out the panel’s recommendations and installing a comptroller allied with the speaker.

One of the governor’s main strengths is his popularity with voters. Mr. Spitzer, who has an approval rating of 75%, could win even more support by appearing to take a stand against Albany cronyism. The “governor would view this as losing the battle but winning the war,” a source close to Mr. Spitzer said.

Mr. Silver agreed to set up the panel after Mr. Spitzer let it be known that he would rather the job go to a financial expert outside of government than a member of the Assembly.

To avoid a clash, the two leaders and the Republican Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, agreed that the Legislature would vote on candidates that were first screened by a panel composed of two former state comptrollers, Ned Regan and Carl McCall, and a former city comptroller, Harrison Goldin.

The panel’s decision to pass over the Assembly was an embarrassing development for Mr. Silver and a rare political miscalculation for a speaker who has ruled his conference for 12 years.

The battle to succeed Mr. Hevesi, who stepped down after pleading guilty to a felony charge of defrauding the government, has enormous consequences for Albany.

The person who fills the position will likely hold the job for almost four years, and will be responsible for auditing state agencies, including the governor’s office, reviewing the budget, and overseeing the state’s $145 billion pension fund. The New York comptroller is one of the most powerful investors in the nation.

The consequences extend beyond who ultimately gets the job. The outcome could shape the governor’s relationship with the Legislature over the next four years of his term. Some Democrats have been privately commenting that they were now more inclined to criticize Mr. Spitzer’s first executive budget, which he is set to unveil this morning.