Mayor Bloomberg, who has expressed support for New York City’s system of publicly funding campaigns and strictly limiting campaign contributions, may just gain an appreciation of the virtues of a free market in political speech. He’s facing down two separate legal challenges instigated by the speech regulators. In one, the City Council is intent on blocking Mr. Bloomberg from spending his own money in support of non-partisan elections. In the other, the McCain-Feingold crowd is trying to restrict the Republicans’ and Democrats’ 2004 conventions, the Republican one of which is set for New York.

What a perfect illustration of the absurd level to which some are willing to take the concept that politics can be cleansed of the influence of money. The City Council thinks it can hamstring a billionaire mayor, who spent $74 million of his own money to get elected, by passing an unconstitutional law — unconstitutional, we say, because the Supreme Court has so far refused to uphold limits on expenditures. Common Cause and friends, on the other hand, think that our democracy will be strengthened by stiffing New York’s and Boston’s convention committees out of soft money on which they are counting.

The speech stiflers are really thwarting themselves, though. If Mr. Bloomberg could gain his win on nonpartisan elections, maybe we wouldn’t need all that soft money for party conventions in the first place. But that thought is a reminder that the use of political parties is itself a practice that has grown up under the protection of the First Amendment. That Mr. Bloomberg seeks to stifle parties is why he gets but two cheers on this head.