New York City – As Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly considers a run for City Hall, the likely mayoral candidates are lining up to praise his record and indicating that if elected mayor, they could try to keep him on as commissioner.

Businessman John Catsimatidis, a Republican, said he would love to have Mr. Kelly on his team, and the speaker of the City Council, Christine Quinn, a Democrat, said New York is lucky to have him and would be lucky to keep him.

Two other top candidates, Comptroller William Thompson Jr. and Rep. Anthony Weiner, both Democrats, left open the possibility that they would appoint Mr. Kelly to run the police department if they won the race, but declined to speak specifically about whom they would appoint to any administration positions.

That no one in the field is ruling out the possibility of extending an offer to Mr. Kelly is a sharp departure from the mayoral race in 2005, when all the Democrats running, with the exception of Mr. Weiner, said they would appoint their own police commissioner rather than keep Mr. Kelly.

At the time, however, Mr. Kelly had rendered the question moot by saying he would not work for anyone challenging the mayor, who appointed him police commissioner in 2002. But with term limits barring Mayor Bloomberg from seeking re-election next year, the political circumstances in the next mayoral campaign will be different, and it is unlikely that Mr. Kelly would make the same promise this go-round.

Among the likely mayoral candidates, Mr. Catsimatidis offered the strongest support for an extension of Mr. Kelly’s tenure when he told The New York Sun that he’d love to keep the commissioner on. Ms. Quinn said the city would be lucky to have him stay and called him an exceptional police commissioner. In a statement to the Sun, she said his return to the department after the attacks of September 11, 2001 helped restore New Yorkers’ sense of safety and security “when they needed it most.”

She also said Mr. Kelly had never received proper credit for steep declines in violent crime that began when he first led the department in the early 1990s under Mayor Dinkins. He is the city’s only police commissioner to serve for two nonconsecutive terms.

A spokesman for Mr. Weiner, John Collins, said the congressman has always said he thinks Mr. Kelly has done a good job and served the city well, but that it would be premature to talk about filling administration posts at this time.

Mr. Thompson said in a statement that Mr. Kelly has done “an excellent job” and noted that he has always been publicly supportive of him, while declining to comment on any appointments he would make as mayor.

The candidates’ early support for the police commissioner could simply be a reflection of how the mayoral hopefuls value Mr. Kelly, but also could signal an early effort to discourage him from entering the race.

Despite Mr. Kelly’s public protestations that he is not running for mayor, New Yorkers have put him at the top of their list, when polled about whom they would want as their next mayor. He has the highest approval rating of any city official other than Mr. Bloomberg, and if he launched a campaign, he’d likely catapult to the front of the field.

(Source: NY Sun)