EW YORK - If further proof were needed that Senator John McCain is running an uncommon campaign for the March 7 Republican primary here, just look where he's put his New York State headquarters - on Staten Island.
Usually, candidates have their main offices amid the bustle of Manhattan or in the capital of Albany.
Staten Island - the most remote, the smallest, the least urban, the least New Yorkish of New York City's five boroughs, with only 380,000 people (5 percent of the city's population) - tends not just to get passed over, but overlooked entirely.
''This is the first time a campaign headquarters has ever been here,'' Guy Molinari, the borough president, said yesterday, a little mist in his eye. ''Usually, candidates don't even come here.''
Molinari is also McCain's New York campaign manager, and he finds an exquisite justice in the fact that the headquarters is here. For, according to statewide polls, McCain is slightly ahead of the establishment candidate, George W. Bush, and it feels like a David-Goliath contest, ratcheted up to the third power.
All three share an underdog's, even an outcast's, reputation:
McCain, the insurgent who threatens to blow up his party's links with corporate soft money;
Molinari, the 71-year-old, eccentric pol who thumbs his nose at the state GOP bosses, who stand otherwise united behind McCain's rival, George W. Bush;
And Staten Island itself, which so loathes the city of which it is a part, that two-thirds of its residents voted a few years ago to secede. (It was a nonbinding referendum.)
The feeling is fairly mutual. Those who live in the four other boroughs rarely come to Staten Island, except to pass through on the interstate. Until 1964, when the Verrazano Bridge was built, the only way to get to Staten Island was by ferry from Manhattan or driving through New Jersey from Brooklyn or the Bronx.
To most New Yorkers, Staten Island is known for having the world's largest garbage dump, one of the world's best guitar stores (Mandolin Bros.), a once-notorious mental hospital (Willowbrook), Frank Lloyd Wright's ugliest house, and little more.
Its fortunes have been turning a bit lately. New York City's Republican mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, has treated the borough well. Staten Island gave him his margin of victory in 1993, when he first won the mayor's seat. In return, he promised to shut down the garbage dump by 2002, and lately agreed to build an expensive minor-league baseball stadium for the forthcoming Staten Island Yankees.
Everything about this primary is unusual, beginning with the fact that it's the first time in 20 years that the New York Republican primary has been seriously contested.
It is unclear why Molinari, who once stood with Bush as solidly as his brethren, split off last autumn to endorse McCain. Some chalk it up to a bruised ego. A decade ago, Molinari was the state campaign manager for Bush's father. He expected the same role in George W.'s, so this theory goes, and stomped off when Governor George Pataki drew the honors.
Molinari insists he simply grew ''disenchanted'' with Bush, and thought McCain the better candidate.
Whatever the reason, McCain would be nowhere in this state without him. It was Molinari who filed the suit that succeeded in putting McCain's name on every primary ballot after the party bosses tried to disqualify him in nearly half the state's election districts.
That was how the headquarters came to Staten Island. ''It was not by design,'' Molinari explained.
During the fight to get on the ballot - first through circulating petitions, then through filing the suit - Molinari could not legally make calls from Borough Hall. So the campaign, which had almost no money, rented an office across the street.
After McCain won New Hampshire and the campaign here took off, it was easier to expand into adjoining suites than to rent space in a more central location.
As with most McCain operations, which have had a hard time keeping pace with its grass-roots growth, the Staten Island headquarters has a decidedly shabby look about it.
Just over the past couple of weeks, two offices expanded into a suite of five, all of them sorely in need of renovation: plaster peeling, tiles flaking, sockets exposed. Multiple computer lines entered the picture last week. ''McCain 2000'' buttons were printed up yesterday. New phone banks were installed the night before.
''It's three steps up from a tin can and a string,'' said Gerry O'Brien, the campaign coordinator, as he watched a volunteer struggle with a defective switch.
In one sense, though, this campaign depends critically on high technology. Lacking access to the state party's rosters and other resources, McCain's team has built up strength almost entirely through the Internet.
