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Marty Lederhandler/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Raymond Kelly takes oath as police commissioner from former Mayor David Dinkins.

This was late last week, which means this was before Ray Kelly came up so big in a Daily News poll about him and the possibility of him being the next mayor. I wasnt talking to Kelly about him running for mayor, just how he imagines his career his life, really when he is no longer the citys police commissioner.

I still need challenges, he said.

Kelly wasnt being a politician there, just himself, which means honest. Maybe that is why he has become the most interesting politician in town these days withou t being a politician, without having any political affiliation, without announcing he is running for anything, no matter how many people want him to.

By now you know about the polling on Kelly we ran in Tuesdays Daily News, 46 of the people polled wanting Kelly to run, Kelly having the best favorable/unfavorable rating among the other contenders, including Christine Quinn, a whopping 77 saying they approve of the job Kelly is doing as police commissioner.

Then there are all the numbers showing you how Kelly does when you put him up against Quinn, Bill de Blasio, Bill Thompson, Scott Stringer. There is an old line out of sports about how if you torture numbers long enough, theyll tell you anything you want them to.

So none of this means that Kelly gets the Republican nomination even if he decides he wants it.

But go back across the history of the city and try to find another police commissioner you think could get a 77 approval rating even serv ing half as long as Kelly has.

Kelly hits a number like that even after the way some precincts in the media have been banging away at him over the past year, as if he is some kind of threat to them picking the next mayor.

Some of the people polled say Kelly doesnt know enough about issues beyond crime or terrorism. But there happens to be a good reason for that: Kelly has spent the last decade fighting crime and terrorism in his current job.

I am completely immersed in the job I have, he said last week, before he even knew a poll like ours was coming.

I asked him if he thinks of Mayor Bloomberg leaving office as some finish line for him as police commissioner.

Im not saying that, Kelly said.

It is something else that makes the idea of Kelly nonpolitician, noncandidate running for mayor so fascinating: If he does, the city loses the best police commissioner it has ever had.

You have to believe Kelly polls as strongly as he does is because he has stayed away from sectarian issues and concentrated on what Bloomberg appointed him to do: