The drumbeat for a Ray Kelly mayoral bid grows stronger every month. The latest Mayor Kelly push comes from former state GOP Chairman William Powers, who is in charge of the party’s newly created statewide “advisory committee." Powers tells the Post's Fred Dicker that Kelly could defeat City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in the general election, even in predominantly left-leaning NYC. "Remember, a lot of people didn’t think Rudy could beat Dinkins because he was a Republican, and he did," Powers tells the Post, adding "BWAHAHAAHA!"
And an anonymous source close to Kelly tells Dicker that although the popular top cop has previously resisted calls to run, he's now in a place where "he can be talked into running, and I wouldn’t have said that a year ago. I think his natural inclination is not to enter the political arena, but the more that he hears people saying that we can let up, that we don’t have to worry about crime and terrorism, the more he hears the talk about a more permissive posture for the city, the more I think he could be talked into running."
Also on board the Ray Kelly express train to Police State City? Former Mayor Ed Koch, who currently plans to endorse Quinn. But Koch tells Capital New York his first-choice candidate would be Kelly. "They think he's rethinking his position," Koch said. "I hope he does. He knows where I stand. I urged him, heavily, to run. He knows that if he were to run, I would support him.
"The problem is many people, myself included, believe that the candidates who are out there are drifting back to the old philosophy that brought this city bankruptcy with their support of stopping stop-and-frisk, and making the city unsafe in that way, in my judgment," Koch opined. "And the living wage bill, which I think is ridiculous."
So where does Commissioner Kelly stand on this Mayor Kelly business? At the end of March, the Manhattan GOP chairman informally asked Kelly if he'd consider running, and Kelly replied, "I'm a big fan of John Catsimatidis." Sure, what's not to love about the owner of a company that cheated hundreds of workers out of back wages? The billionaire owner of Gristedes sure has a lot going for him—namely money—but let's face it, he's no Kelly Kelly Kelly Kelly...
