News that Mayor Bloomberg’s two aspiring challengers are having trouble getting on the ballot for a Republican mayoral primary raises the question of whether it’s the system or the message. Our Meghan Clyne reports that one of the would-be challengers, Steven Shaw, is dropping out of the race, having lost hope of getting the 7,500 Republican signatures needed to get onto the ballot. The possible other Republican challenger, Thomas Ognibene, though he may make it, is struggling to collect the necessary signatures.

This has people talking about how the signature requirements are an anachronism dating back to the 19th century and Tammany Hall, a tool for keeping people off the ballot. It’s not easy getting signatures, our John P. Avlon tells us (he wore out some shoes trying to do it for a candidate named Rudolph Giuliani). Signatures even need to be in the right format and bound the right way.

Talk is also being heard about how Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign is using the state party, and his finances, to edge out competitors. The mayor was reportedly on the boil after the party in Queens endorsed Mr. Ognibene. The mayor set out to ensure there would be no repeat elsewhere. The state Republican Party is controlled by friends and allies of Governor Pataki, who is close with Mayor Bloomberg. County organizations are beholden to the state party for funds and support, and the word is out to ensure Mr. Bloomberg alone receives the nomination.

These complaints, even if true, are a far from persuasive explanation of the systemic flaw. We’re more concerned with the impact campaign-speech laws have in restricting the money that can be invested in political campaigns. Reformist ideas – particularly of the kind Mr. Ognibene believes in – have resonated in this town. Witness what happened, say, when Ambassador Lauder got behind term limits and hit the airwaves with those ads showing an empty City Council chamber. Huge amounts of money go indirectly into the battle of ideas in this city.

To get these ideas in front of voters in an actual election, however, is difficult unless one is a rich man, like the mayor or Mr. Lauder, who also ran for mayor. They are certainly entitled to spend their own money on a campaign; we view it as a great public service that they do so. But the law has left Mr. Ognibene and his wife sitting at home, where our Lauren Mechling found them the other day, literally licking stamps in their kitchen.

But even the finance issue, in the end, doesn’t fully explain the lack of traction for Mr. Bloomberg’s opponents. Part of it is substance. There is plenty of disillusionment on the right about Mr. Bloomberg’s tax increases, his penchant for central planning when it comes to economic development, his failure to pursue school vouchers or transit privatization.

But there is also an increasing realization that Mr. Bloomberg is not entirely a stranger to the policies that won President Bush a second term. His education agenda of charter schools, standards and accountability, and a tough line with the teachers union has echoes of Mr. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.” His tax agenda of being the lowest tax candidate versus the Democrats also is similar to Mr. Bush being more low-tax than Senator Kerry. Mr. Bloomberg’s security record of Raymond Kelly running an aggressive and effective anti-crime and anti-terror police department is not that different from the president’s record of military victories combined with the Ashcroft Justice Department and the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act. The mayor’s defense of Wal-Mart is an example of the free-market principles Mr. Bush often stresses.

Which is why the mayor may have the last laugh. He’s going to argue that he got the momentum not because of his money or because of the system but because of the substance. It’s hard to gainsay the mayor’s argument on much of this; he’s managed to keep a lot of conservatives from fleeing to his opponents. By our lights he could have done a better job by moving in the more free-market direction that Mr. Ognibene has been pointing. The man from Queens is likely to be on the ballot in the fall as candidate of the Conservative Party, but strategically, we think the Republican Party would benefit from having a primary in which the more fundamental ideas could be battled out. It’s how the GOP forged its winning formula at the national level, where it controls the executive and legislative branches and has a chance, if it plays its cards right, to secure the leadership of the judicial branch for years to come.