The talk of political circles is the looming clash of the state Democratic Party’s superegos, Eliot Spitzer and Sheldon Silver.

The story of the 2006 New York governor’s race has been a tale of Democrats cohering behind a celebrity prosecutor and Republicans falling to pieces. Behind the scenes, Democrats are eyeing their own storm clouds.

With Mr. Spitzer, the state attorney general, holding a commanding lead in opinion polls in the governor’s race, it’s likely that Mr. Silver’s more than decade-long reign as New York’s dominant Democrat is winding down. Mr. Silver is the Assembly speaker.

While publicly some Democrats are predicting a peaceful changing of the guard, Albany Democrats and political observers say the two leaders – who differ sharply in background and on key political issues – are on a collision course.

Few expect that if elected governor Mr. Spitzer would declare war and openly try to knock Mr. Silver, 62, from his Assembly perch, especially when the loyalty the speaker has amassed among rank-and-file Democrats is said to be at a peak.

Those who are optimistic about party unity point to the fact that Mr. Silver was one of the first prominent politicians to jump aboard the Spitzer bandwagon, endorsing him back in November 2003.

But party insiders say a battle for control of the state party is unavoidable. In his leadership post, Mr. Silver has picked New York’s delegates for Democratic presidential conventions and has overseen the hiring of staff of the state Democratic Party. One of the first big questions of a Spitzer administration is whether Mr. Spitzer would drive out the chairman of the state Democratic Party, Assemblyman Herman “Denny” Farrell, an ally of Mr. Silver’s.

Those who aren’t predicting an all-out clash say the relationship will likely follow the same downhill course set by Governor Pataki and the Republican Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, who was the governor’s pick to succeed Ralph Marino. Marino opposed Mr. Pataki’s candidacy in 1994.

Mr. Bruno came into power saying he and governor-elect Pataki shared political values, such as a commitment to fiscal restraint. In 2003 their relations nose-dived, with the majority leader siding with Mr. Silver by overriding 119 of Mr. Pataki’s vetoes.

“There’s always tension between the executive and the Legislature that transcends party unity,” a Democratic senator of Manhattan, Eric Schneiderman, said. “Right now, everybody is getting along real well. It would be a shame to disrupt this rare moment of Democratic unity. Are we going to have problems down the road? Yes, probably.”

While Mr. Spitzer hasn’t criticized Mr. Silver’s leadership directly, one of his main campaign themes is reforming Albany. It’s a platform that suggests at least disappointment with the current leadership, political observers say.

Mr. Spitzer will “seek to change the way business is done in Albany, and that could be threatening to the current elected leadership of the Legislature,” the executive director of the watchdog group Citizens Union, Dick Dadey, said.

The political differences of the two Democratic leaders may also be a seed of tension. Mr. Spitzer has said he supports the death penalty, charter schools, and the idea of tuition tax credits – all of which Mr. Silver has been against.

That split could be exacerbated by their contrasting backgrounds. Mr. Spitzer, who lives on the Upper East Side, graduated from Horace Mann, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and tapped his father’s wealth to help get elected in 1998.

Mr. Silver, the son of a hardware store owner, grew up on the Lower East Side and got his law degree from Brooklyn Law School. He methodically rose to power in the Assembly, becoming the top Democrat after Mr. Pataki unseated Governor Cuomo in 1994.

Some Democrats interviewed said they saw in Mr. Spitzer’s recent critical comments about the budget an early sign of tensions to come.

At a high-profile conference on the budget earlier this month in Westchester, Mr. Spitzer took aim at the spending plan put forward by the Legislature and vetoed by Mr. Pataki. The attorney general argued that it misspent surplus money and heavily relied on sunny economic forecasts.

“This is a faith-based budget,” Mr. Spitzer reportedly said. “It takes on faith that the state will have dramatic revenue growth in the coming years that bring the out-years of the budget into balance.” The comments came at a delicate moment in budget negotiations and helped provide cover to the governor’s office, which was preparing to let loose a raft of vetoes.

In an interview with The New York Sun, Mr. Silver predicted a good working relationship with Mr. Spitzer while acknowledging that there could soon be a change in the Democratic hierarchy. He said he thought he and the Legislature would “live by his rules” and said Mr. Spitzer would “provide the leadership that this governor has not provided,” referring to Mr. Pataki. He also praised Mr. Spitzer as a “hard worker.”

He said the real target of Mr. Spitzer’s budget remarks was Mr. Pataki, saying, “Most of his criticism was about the governor, the whole process, and what the governor put into the budget originally.” In his speech, the attorney general said the governor’s executive budget was an example of “classic avoidance behavior” that skirted necessary reforms, the Associated Press reported.

The speaker said Mr. Spitzer’s comment about the budget being “faith-based” referred to the entire budget, not simply the one passed by lawmakers.

Mr. Spitzer’s campaign refused to comment on the attorney general’s opinion of the speaker.