Still, he cannot avoid battle metaphors when describing the teams of teenagers he has deployed across the city this summer to help him promote a major change in New York City's campaign finance law.

      Mr. Juntikka (pronounced jun- TEE-ka), a bankruptcy lawyer who lives on the Lower East Side, hopes to place two questions on the Nov. 5 ballot, one creating a $100 limit on campaign contributions and another requiring public debates for all city candidates who take public financing. Current limits for those who participate in the city's optional campaign finance system range from $7,700 for candidates for Mayor and other citywide offices to $3,550 for City Council candidates.

      Placing questions on the ballot is a task that few individuals have managed to achieve because of New York's arcane and complex petition process, one that is likely to pit this 42-year-old political maverick against the vast resources of the city's political machines. But Mr. Juntikka is trying to become the poor man's Ronald S. Lauder.

      Mr. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, is one of the few people to have surmounted these challenges and put a referendum on the ballot. But he spent more than $2 million to win his campaign for term limits in 1993. Mr. Juntikka, who placed third in a 1992 Democratic primary for Congress, says that he has already spent his entire savings - $40,000 - an his petition drive.

      Mr. Juntikka offers a lofty, idealistic explanation for his quest. It's terribly imortant that people like me organize and try to reduce the amount of political corruption in our government," he said, arguing that politicians now are prone to corruption because people and industries that give large contributions can easily buy influence.

      For a citizen-initiated referendum, city law requires a minimum of 50,000 petition signatures from registered voters. Mr. Juntikka expects to file more than 65,000 signatures today.

      "We sent out an average of eight or nine teams every day to petition points that were picked strategically, almost like a military operation," he said with a cringe. With the eagerness of a little boy showing off his comic book collection, he pointed to the walls of his midtown law office, where he has placed maps with pins showing dozens of petition sites. Election lawyers and political analysts marveled at Mr. Juntikka's ability to garner so many signatures.

      Getting that many signatures "without any organized institutional support from a political party or an organized group like labor unions or the women's movement is close to heroic," said Hank Morris, a Demo- cratic political consultant.

      He added, however, that a cushion of only 15,000 extra signatures "wouldn't be a margin of safety I'd be comfortable with if I was doing it." Candidates generally try to get at least double the required number of signatures to insure spot on the ballot.

      "I wouldn't be optimistic about his chances," said Lawrence A. Mandelker, an election lawyer who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, "because when you set up tables on the streets, you wind up getting people who may not be registered and who may not live in the city."

      Mr. Juntikka readily admits that at best he has a 50-50 chance of getting his signatures certified and surviving anticipated legal challenges from politicians or others who benefit from the system as it is.

      "If it falls, we'll try again next year," he said.

      A second attempt would be much easier because legislation simplifying the petition process was approved by Gov. George E. Pataki this summer and will take effect in 1997. In addition to eliminating rules governing the way petitions are bundled and stapled, the legislation also cancels the need to record election and assembly districts of petition signatures.

      Nearly all of Mr. Juntikka's recruits are from Stuyvesant High School, where they are seniors or recent graduates. The four-lawyer bankruptcy law firm which he heads has hired clerical intems from Stuyvesant for years, and through word of mouth, he found nearly 100 other students willing to learn the petition game.

      He has such rapport with his work force that he asked their permission when his dwindling finances forced him to cut their pay in June from $6.10 an hour to the minimum wage of $4.25. "I said I'd try to pay the rest in September," he said. "And bless their hearts, they agreed to it."

      Neena Shin, who will be a freshman at Dartmouth this fall, said that the students trusted Mr. Juntikka to keep his word, and many had started to share his sense of mission.

      "Most people wanted to finish this," she said. "I'm not sure how much support he's going to get because it's kind of radical, but I think what he's trying to do is really admirable."

      Under his plan, candidates who agree to the $100 limit would receive six matching dollars from the city for every dollar they raise - a significant increase from the one-for-one match that now exists. He acknowledged that his system would increase the city's campaign costs from $6 million per election to about $24 million. "But that's worth paying, without a doubt," he said.

      Spokesmen for two probable mayoral candidates, the Manhattan Borough President, Ruth W. Messinger, and the Bronx Borough President, Fernando Ferrer, disagreed. They said the city's looming budget problem make additional public financing for campaigns irresponsible.