EW YORK - Texas Governor George W. Bush gave in to the inevitable yesterday, telling supporters who control the New York Republican Party to let his rival, Senator John McCain, appear on all the ballots in the state's presidential primary next month.
The move might help McCain sustain whatever momentum he still has from his New Hampshire primary victory. And Bush allies hope it will blunt McCain's ability to buttress his image as an ''outsider'' who makes ''the establishment'' tremble.
McCain celebrated the news on his campaign bus in South Carolina proclaiming, ''Republicans of New York, rejoice. You're free. Cast off your chains.''
Until yesterday, New York's Republican leaders had disqualified McCain from 14 of the state's 31 electoral districts. McCain filed a lawsuit in federal court last week challenging their rules on primaries as unconstitutional.
US District Judge Edward Korman, who heard the case last Friday, seemed to agree with McCain's arguments, saying the rules made for a ''meaningless primary'' since they were designed to exclude all candidates but the one chosen by the party leaders.
Korman is expected to hand down a formal ruling today or Monday. The state Republican leaders were intending to appeal the decision if it went McCain's way. But after McCain clobbered Bush in New Hampshire, several began to see the issue as something that could only fuel the Arizona senator's cause and hurt Bush.
Early yesterday evening, Governor George Pataki issued a statement, saying: ''I think that John McCain should be on the ballot. This should be a campaign about ideas and issues, not technicalities. I'm confident that George Bush will win that campaign.''
Bush, saying he had no role in the dispute, said, ''It's the right decision.''
Polls show Bush leading McCain in New York by 20 percentage points - but they were taken before New Hampshire.
Ironically, Bush may be the one who does not make it on all the ballots in the state. Earlier this week, a judge threw his name off the ballot in a district in the Bronx after campaign workers admitted fraud.
The fraud would have gone undiscovered but for a move by the Republican leaders to disqualify Steve Forbes from three districts in Long Island, on the grounds that some of those who signed his petitions wrote down their addresses incorrectly.
This prompted Forbes's lawyers, who have nearly unlimited funds, to look at Bush's petitions - and to discover several pages of signatures that looked suspiciously similar. The suspicions were later confirmed.
Bush will still come to the March 7 primary with a strong advantage, enjoying the resources and discipline of the state's Republican machine.
By Republican rules, each electoral district holds a separate primary, and to get on the ballot, a candidate must obtain signatures from 0.5 percent of the district's registered Republicans. There are several procedural rules that make the task harder still.
Korman suggested last week that he might order the rule changed to 0.1 percent - in which case McCain could qualify in all the districts.
New York Democrats have very different primary rules. Candidates who collect 5,000 signatures anywhere in the state qualify for the ballot statewide.
Yvonne Abraham of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
