EW YORK - Senator John McCain came here yesterday for one purpose - to stand in the cold snow and lash out at New York's Republican Party leaders for trying to keep him off the state's primary ballot, comparing them to the Communist bosses of the old Soviet Union.
He has uttered that line several times in recent days, only this time he did so before a bevy of TV cameras, right across the street from the Russian consulate.
In the upcoming Russian presidential election, he exclaimed, ''there will be more than one name on the ballot.'' And so, he said, should it be in New York.
McCain made no bones about what he was doing. Asked afterward why he chose to make his statement at this Upper East Side location - way off the beaten track of any other appointments for the day - he smiled and said, ''I thought it would make a good photo op.''
It was a desperate tactic, but for McCain, these are desperate times - in New York, that is.
The way the state's Republican Party has set up its March 7 primary, McCain could wind up the favored candidate and still not win a single New York delegate to the national convention.
The party's leaders, who are backing Texas Governor George W. Bush in the presidential race, made it this way long ago and for this reason: to control the primary outcome.
State law seems fairly simple: To make it on the presidential ballot, a candidate needs to collect 5,000 signatures.
However, on the Republican ballot, votes are cast for delegates, not for candidates directly. And by the party rules, the candidates must collect signatures from 0.5 percent of registered Republicans in each of the 31 congressional districts. Furthermore, they must not include Republicans who have signed another candidate's petition.
The contest is tilted against McCain in another way. Because the party leaders have demanded solidarity within the ranks, Bush's delegates are well-known local politicians. The other candidates' delegates are, by and large, unknowns. The ballot shows the delegates' name in big, bold letters - and the candidates' name in small, thin ones.
By contrast, in the Democratic primary, voters cast ballots for the candidates. Delegates are chosen later, to reflect the proportion of votes.
McCain qualified in 16 of the districts - and party lawyers are challenging even some of those petitions.
McCain has asked the Board of Elections to allow his name on all the district ballots, and has filed a lawsuit in a federal court, which will hear the case next week.
''The problem is, we're a small party,'' said Guy Molinari, the Staten Island borough president and one of the few New York Republicans of any prominence who have endorsed McCain. ''Without the help of the state organization, it's almost impossible to qualify in a lot of districts.''
Joseph Mercurio, a local GOP consultant, said that, in over half the districts, ''even the Bush people had trouble qualifying.''
Steve Forbes, the multimillionaire Republican candidate, made it on all 31 ballots this time, after going through the same struggles in 1996 that McCain is going through now. However, Forbes spent $750,000 merely to organize the necessary petition drive.
It used to be, both parties in New York ran closed primaries. Until the mid-1970s, all ballots listed only the names of delegates.
In 1976, candidates' names were added to the ballot, but, to qualify, their delegates had to collect 1,250 signatures in each congressional district - far more demanding than the Republican rule today.
