Facing a lively challenge from the right in Queens, the Bloomberg campaign made a stride yesterday toward establishing support among the borough’s Republicans by announcing an endorsement from the Forest Park Republican Club. The ties between the club and the campaign are friendly indeed: One of the founders and directors of the group is a paid employee of the Bloomberg campaign.

The mayor has received the endorsement of the county Republican organizations of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx. The Queens County Republican organization, however, bucked the Bloomberg campaign in February and backed one of the mayor’s Republican challengers, Thomas Ognibene. A former member of the City Council from Queens, Mr. Ognibene is the deputy county Republican leader.

According to a press release from the Bloomberg campaign, the mayor previously garnered support from Republican district leaders across Queens county and from the borough’s Whitestone Republican Club. Last night, at a meeting of the Forest Park Republican Club at the American Legion Hall in Forest Hills, the mayor was to be unanimously endorsed by the membership of the club.

One of the organization’s guiding influences, and one of four club leaders said to have recommended the endorsement, is John Haggerty Jr., and he has become an employee of the Bloomberg campaign, a spokesman for the mayor, Stuart Loeser, said yesterday. Mr. Loeser would not comment on Mr. Haggerty’s role in the campaign and declined to divulge Mr. Haggerty’s pay, which the spokesman said will be disclosed in the mayor’s next campaign-finance filing.

Mr. Loeser added that Mr. Haggerty, while one of the founders of the Forest Park Republican Club, “is not the president of the club, and he’s not the membership of the club.”

The club’s president is a Forest Hills attorney, Matthew Hunter. He said yesterday that the club has around 150 active members and that attendance at monthly meetings is usually around 50.

“It’s basically the directors of the club that endorse the mayor,” Mr. Hunter said. Those directors are Mr. Hunter; his brother, Keith Hunter; Mr. Haggerty, and his brother, Bart Haggerty. John Haggerty could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Hunter said the group, which in 2001 endorsed Herman Badillo in the Republican primary, decided about a month ago to back the mayor. According to Mr. Loeser, Mr. Haggerty was brought on as a paid member of the campaign “sometime in the last couple of weeks.”

The Albany Times-Union newspaper reported March 28 that Mr. Haggerty was resigning his $99,425-a-year job heading Governor Pataki’s legislative affairs office to take up a post as Mr. Bloomberg’s deputy campaign manager.

The paper said Haggerty previously worked for a former attorney general, Dennis Vacco, and is the son of Jack Haggerty, who was chief counsel and adviser to a former Senate majority leader, Warren Anderson.

Owing to the influence of the younger Mr. Haggerty over the Forest Park club and his ties to the Bloomberg campaign, Mr. Ognibene, for his part, said he was not concerned that the endorsement signaled any threat to his home borough support.

“They’re deeply concerned about me, and their support in Queens,” Mr. Ognibene said of the Bloomberg camp.

Mr. Ognibene, who has pledged to run against Mr. Bloomberg on the Conservative Party line all the way though November even if he does not outpoll the incumbent in the Republican primary September 13, characterized the Forest Park group as not representing mainstream Republican sentiment in Queens.