New Yorkers got welcome news yesterday: Police Commissioner Ray Kelly might run for mayor next year after all.
Our advice: Go for it, Ray!
Do New York a favor.
Sources say that Kelly is now open to the idea of running, as Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker was first to report.
And certainly, there’s a powerful case for a Kelly bid. As everyone knows, crime’s fallen sharply — some 35 percent overall — on his watch, after having already dived over the previous decade.
Many folks had feared it could only go up.
And Kelly has had to add a whole new mission to his portfolio: fighting terror.
He’s served during a time of tightening budgets — and vitriolic bashing of law-enforcement by the left.
Indeed, you can tell Kelly’s done a spectacular job just by the breathless, dirty reporting by outlets like The Associated Press (which won a Pulitzer Prize yesterday for doing so; see below), The New York Times and New York magazine. These left-leaning outlets dread the idea of a Kelly run.
Yet despite all this, the commish — relying on keen management skills and tough-as-nails, law-and-order policies — somehow managed to drive down crime further.
The results have been stunning:
* Murders dipped 77 percent since their peak in 1990, from 2,245 to 551 last year.
* Burglaries are down 85 percent.
* Car thefts fell — get this! — an incredible 94 percent, from 150,000 to just 9,300.
Meanwhile, the NYPD has thwarted some 14 separate terror plots against New York since the 9/11 World Trade Center attack.
Is the city safer? No question about it.
Voters, of course, have no way of knowing Kelly’s views on other issues — the budget, schools, bike lanes . . . (Which is why, of course, we haven’t made up our minds about whom we’d back.)
But that’s what campaigns are for.
Besides, the likely Democratic candidates — City Council Speaker Chris Quinn, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and others — all lean so far to the left, it’s hard to see how Kelly could be any worse in those areas.
Should Kelly join the crowd — perhaps as a Republican (he’s not enrolled in either party at the moment) — New Yorkers might get to have a real, meaningful debate about the future of the city.
And if he won, well . . . New Yorkers could surely do a lot worse than Ray Kelly.