Holiday cheer is eluding Albany.

The “three men in a room,” Governor Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, all called in to The New York Sun yesterday for year-end interviews in which Messrs. Silver and Bruno clashed sharply while Mr. Spitzer attempted to stay above the fray.

Mr. Bruno, a Republican, cast Mr. Silver, a Democrat, as a coward who is colluding with Mr. Spitzer.

As for Mr. Spitzer, Mr. Bruno said he is ruling out any face-to-face meetings with the governor, whom he accused of threatening his life, unless they’re done in front of the cameras.

Mr. Silver, speaking to the Sun, said Mr. Bruno is “stomping and screaming and name-calling,” suggesting that the Senate leader has a “total disdain” for his responsibilities.

Mr. Bruno said the speaker should be more adept at handling insults. “Since when did Shelly get so sensitive? He’s got a hide like a rhinoceros for Christ’s sakes,” he said.

All of this is boding ominously for next year’s budget negotiations, where important issues, such as dealing with a $4 billion deficit and divisions over how to distribute billions of dollars of health care and education spending, must be settled.

“What would Shelly have us do? Have the governor run roughshod over everyone?” Mr. Bruno asked. “This governor has gotten very politicized. … He has threatened my life in terms of my existence, personally, calls me a senile old s—, and he’s going to knock me down and knock me out. And then Shelly, the wimp, sits there doing nothing and thanks the good lord that it’s not him that Spitzer’s aimed at.”

Mr. Bruno was apparently referring to an episode earlier in the year when he charged that the governor told him he would “knock” him down. Spitzer aides denied the charge.

Said Mr. Silver: “I really shouldn’t dignify anything that he says with a response.”

Still, he said Mr. Bruno “wants it his way, and he goes off stomping and screaming and name-calling if he can’t get his way. He just doesn’t want to admit that some people know as much as he knows.”

For his part, Mr. Spitzer, whose administration is contending with two investigations surrounding charges that he orchestrated a political hit on Mr. Bruno using the state police, is presenting himself as a model of serenity.

“I’m completely comfortable with how we’re going to move forward,” he told the Sun. “I have spent my first year as governor focusing on the public interest. I haven’t said anything publicly that would be disparaging of my colleagues nor do I intend to. It’s not my nature.”

Said Mr. Spitzer: “People will forget the screaming and shouting, 99% of which is silliness. What matters in the long term is the substance. That’s what gives me comfort. Twenty years from now, when I’m done with this chapter in my life, I will look back and what I will remember, I hope, is the substantive accomplishments.”

For the last six months, lawmakers and the governor have agreed to virtually nothing.

On the micro-level, the paralysis is rooted in policy disagreement.

Mr. Bruno has been hoping to clinch a deal on the future of horse racing in New York, a paramount issue for him, his Saratoga constituents, and a myriad of business interests who are angling for a piece of the industry.

Meanwhile, Mr. Silver’s conference has been imploring their leader for their first pay raise in a decade. Senate Republicans have taken a salary hike for lawmakers off the table, unwilling to meet the governor’s demand that Albany first agree to tighten campaign finance laws and hesitant to alienate voters before an election year.

The differences have helped freeze negotiations over horseracing, a deadlock that has triggered more gridlock on a variety of issues, including agreements on a capital-spending plan, scaling back a costly public construction mandate, and expanding the state’s criminal DNA database.

On the broader level, many political observers say, the impasse is a result of a tense political dynamic revolving around the future of the Senate, which has been controlled by Republicans for four decades.

The policy battle is ultimately a prelude to next year’s elections, which will determine if Republicans will hang on to their two-seat Senate majority.

Democrats say they view the Senate’s stance as a strategy to further drag down an increasingly unpopular governor who is eager to show accomplishment.

Lawmakers say Mr. Bruno’s needling of Mr. Silver is part of an effort to put a wedge between the speaker and the governor, giving Senate Republicans more leverage over budget talks.

Mr. Silver, who joined forces with Mr. Bruno in 2003 to block Governor Pataki’s budget, said he didn’t envision another partnership.
“Joe Bruno can’t override the governor. He doesn’t have the votes,” Mr. Silver said.

“I would hope the senator … makes a resolution over the New Year that he is not going to be as obstinate as he has been for the last few months…that he’s not going to totally treat his responsibilities with total disdain,” Mr. Silver said.