Republican leaders in New York City are preparing the ground for popular police commissioner Ray Kelly to be the party’s mayoral candidate next year, the New York Post reported Monday.
Kelly, who publicly insists he has no interest in running for elective office, is aware of the moves, the paper’s long-standing state editor, Fredric Dicker, wrote.
The moves are being led by William Powers, New York’s former state GOP chairman, who was key to getting Rudy Giuliani elected in 1993. Former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso, supermarket tycoon John Catsimatidis, and financiers Ken Langone and Hank Greenberg are also involved, the Post reported.
A source close to the efforts told the Post, “The activities are taking place on two fronts: Create the inevitability that he’s going to run, and then make it easy for him so that the day he retires and announces he’s running, everything will be in place: the campaign apparatus and the money,’’
The source said a prominent election lawyer has been hired to get the paperwork ready.
Kelly, 70, was first appointed police commissioner by Democratic mayor David Dinkins in 1992, but was replaced after Giuliani took power. He worked in the Treasury and as Commissioner of Customs before current New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg reappointed him in 2002.
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