ALBANY - Now state lawmakers know what it was like for Wall Street CEOs to have heard Eliot Spitzer was on line 1.

This week, the former crusading attorney general who whipped reforms into Wall Street will, as he assured lawmakers, take his $120.6 billion proposed budget on a statewide tour.

He will seek support from the public that gave him a historic share of the vote in November, armed with laminated palm cards of how his budget is “New York's Turning Point.” Purple bar graphs make it clear how much he would curb Albany's notorious overspending, while still providing property tax cuts and “fully funding” schools.

“I was elected with a mandate to change the direction of Albany - and I am saying right here, right now, we are going to defend the principles of this budget,” Spitzer said Wednesday in presenting his budget. “I will not become, under any circumstances, one more in the voices of the status quo paradigm that is destroying our economic future.”

Back in the paradigm, the Legislature will begin its budget hearings in Albany. Every element of the budget will be picked apart with an eye toward how lawmakers will try to change it.

That's when a rocky start is expected to turn ugly.

The tensions will likely rise because Tuesday is the special election in the Senate in which a Democrat - supported by Spitzer - tries to take a vacant Republican seat on Long Island from the narrowing Republican majority of Senate leader Joseph Bruno. Soon after, Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is expected to decide whether to fully buck Spitzer by choosing a state comptroller from among his members, none of whom were recommended by a panel created and agreed to as part of Spitzer's reform.

“He seems not to back away from a fight, in fact he seems to relish it,” said Assemblyman William Parment, a 25-year veteran of the Legislature and a Democrat, like Spitzer. “He's up front and in your face. And you know, that's all right, but that will engender confrontation.”

“You can't draw lines in the sand,” said Republican Sen. Thomas Libous of Broome County. “Where the governor wants to reform, I think he's got some good ideas. But everybody has their own ideas on reform.”

Now, lawmakers and lobbyists are trying to find a way to turn back, or at least veer, Spitzer and his aggressive administration. Some lobbyists are calling it “the cult of Eliot.”

There is no shortage of fights.

Spitzer is taking on the Senate's Republican majority by trying to direct more school aid to the neediest schools, close $499 million in business tax loopholes, and expand the bottle law. He's taking on the Assembly's Democratic majority by trying to expand charter schools, create a private school tax break for parents, and freezing Medicaid payments to hospitals and nursing homes. In addition, Spitzer is taking on both chambers by carrying out an independent commission's recommendation to close costly, underused hospitals.

Powerful advocates and lobbyists for education and health institutions are already lining up with the Legislature.

Spitzer's “proposals will undermine the goal he has articulated and most of us are working toward in the first place,” said Carl Young, president of the New York Association of Homes & Services for the Aging. He said Spitzer's tone was “unnecessarily aggressive.”

“It feels as though the Legislature has been put in the position of choosing between children and the elderly,” Young said. “I just don't think that's good policy.”

But there are many goals, if not methods, shared by Spitzer and the Legislature. Among them are billions of dollars in property tax breaks and billions more for schools.

“I think the goals are almost uniformly accepted,” said state Sen. Stephen Saland, a Poughkeepsie Republican who's been in the Legislature since 1980. “It's how you get there.”