Because of a quirk in New York election law, the words “liberal” and “Republican” could both appear next to the name “Michael Bloomberg” on ballots in November.

Mayor Bloomberg is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, and his name will appear on the ballot in the box for that party. Each of the state’s five official parties will have a line on the ballot.

But the mayor is also likely to be nominated by the Liberal Party, once a powerful New York political party that failed to get 50,000 votes statewide in the 2002 gubernatorial race. Parties that fail to reach this threshold lose their standing as official parties and are known as “independent bodies.”

Such parties don’t get their own line on the ballot, even if they collect the 7,500 signatures required to make it onto the ballot. The name of an independent body shows up on the ballot in the same box as one of the official parties.

That means Mr. Bloomberg could theoretically appear on the ballot as a Liberal Republican or Republican Liberal. (The candidate himself may choose which box houses the name of the independent body.)

A spokesman for the Bloomberg campaign, Stuart Loeser, declined to comment about the specifics of potential ballot configurations. He said the campaign has had discussions with the Liberal Party. “We haven’t ruled anything out,” he said. “But we don’t discuss internal campaign strategy.”

As the campaign heats up and the election draws nearer, many questions about endorsements and nominations will be answered and the physical appearance of the ballot will take shape.

One question yet to be answered is whether the law will change, allowing the Liberal Party to occupy its own ballot box. The head of the party, Henry Stern, told The New York Sun yesterday that he would like his party to have its own line on the ballot and is considering going to court to argue that barring the Liberal Party from the ballot violates its equal protection rights.

“There should be a way to support the mayor from people who are not Republicans and who are not devotees of the Independence Party,” he said. “It’s worth going to court over because we want our own line. We want people to be able to vote for a candidate on our line rather than being lumped in with other parties.”

Although questions remain, political observers are already musing about the possible significance of the words “Liberal” and “Republican” appearing in such close proximity.

A veteran political consultant, George Artz, said the wording could boost Mr. Bloomberg’s popularity.

“This is a town that is 5-to-1 Democrats,” he said. “Having the world ‘Liberal’ will enable people in the general who are hard-core Democrats and could not push down the lever on the Republican line to vote for a moderate Republican.”

He said back in 1957, he and his father, a staunch Democrat, ran into Nelson Rockefeller, the Republican who was running for governor. Rockefeller and Mr. Artz’s father had such a good conversation about politics that his father considered voting for Rockefeller. But, Mr. Artz recalled, on Election Day, when his father came out of the polling booth, “He held his hand in the air and said, ‘I just couldn’t push it down,’ which shows you the built-in feelings people have on party.”

Another political consultant, Jerry Skurnick, said, “I think he’s fairly well-known. People know that he’s not an archconservative. It just would reinforce it – that he’s one of the more independent Republicans around.” He said it might be an effective way of letting voters know that he is a politician who reaches out to voters of all party affiliations, particularly if he advertises it before the election.

A professor of public affairs at Baruch College, David Birdsell, said he sees the possible Liberal-Republican pairing as a potential negative for the Bloomberg campaign.

“I think this would be unattractive to the Bloomberg campaign,” he said. “He’s already under attack for not being Republican enough. If he were to dilute the actual name of Republicanism, that may actually imperil votes.”

Plus, he said, putting two parties in one box might confuse voters and cause problems: “We know from the infamous butterfly ballots of 2000 that cramming information into tight spaces does produce confusion and can induce errors.”

Correction: George Arzt is the spelling of the name of the political consultant. His name was misspelled in an article about the Liberal Party on page 4 of the June 10-12 Sun.