As Mayor Bloomberg was distancing himself from the Republican Party this week, his police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, was emerging as a rising star among conservatives on the far right of the political spectrum.

“I think he brings to his job a national security-mindedness that is part and parcel of what we do every day,” the president of the Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney, who was President Reagan’s assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, said Tuesday before presenting Mr. Kelly with one of the center’s annual awards, the Freedom Flame.

The center, a nonpartisan organization that has argued for enhancing the American nuclear arsenal and increasing military spending, has previously awarded the prize to such conservative icons as presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, an assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, Richard Perle, and a former American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

As a Clinton administration official who led a multinational response to human rights abuses in Haiti and as a police commissioner under Mayor Dinkins, Mr. Kelly’s liberal credentials may rival those of Mr. Bloomberg. The mayor is a Democrat-turned-Republican who announced this week that he is no longer affiliated with any political party.

As with Mr. Bloomberg, admirers of Mr. Kelly choose words such as “professional” and “competent” to describe him rather than “liberal” or “conservative.”

“I see myself as being apolitical,” Mr. Kelly said before the award ceremony Tuesday night.

Yet his law-and-order sensibility and leadership in the field of counterterrorism have lately won him praise among right-leaning, pro-military hawks.

“We love him,” the chairman of the Center for Security Policy’s executive committee, Terry Elkes, said.

Today, Mr. Dinkins is honoring Mr. Kelly on behalf of another conservative group, Ministers of Harlem USA, with its Brightest Star award.

“This man, he comes to walk around in the Harlem community unannounced. He really cares about the community,” the organization’s founder, the Reverend Betty Neal, a former ally of Mayor Giuliani, said. “I think he’s doing a great job.”

At a moment when the country is sharply divided over national security and immigration issues, observers of Mr. Kelly say his practical approach to such ideas have defied political categorization, making it easy for both liberals and conservatives to claim him.

“He is as comfortable being in front of a group like the Center for Security Policy as he is being in front of a Muslim group from Brooklyn,” a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, Tim Connors, said. “I think that most people are appreciative of how broadly he’s reached out to groups in the community.”

A right-of-center homeland security scholar at the Hudson Institute, Christopher Sands, suggested that even during Mr. Kelly’s days in the Clinton administration, when he supervised customs enforcement, he was known more for his practicality than for his politics.

“He’s sort of a hero for people there,” Mr. Sands said. “At a time we’re talking about borders, he’s somebody who’s always taken these things seriously — but he wasn’t rabid or anything.”

A fellow Clinton administration official, P.J. Crowley, who is now a scholar at the Center for American Progress think tank, hypothesized that the embrace of Mr. Kelly might reflect more on the conservative movement than on the commissioner.

“I wonder if this says more about Frank Gaffney than it does Ray Kelly,” Mr. Crowley said. “It is refreshing that conservatives are willing to look at people who may be moderates but nonetheless have done a very professional, skilled job.”

In fact, Mr. Kelly’s newest fans used to be anything but. The Manhattan Institute once railed against the model of community policing that Mr. Kelly helped create while working for the Dinkins administration, and Mr. Gaffney used to be one of the Clinton administration’s harshest critics.

Some have suggested Mr. Kelly’s growing appeal on both sides of the aisle could put him in line to follow in Mr. Bloomberg’s footsteps.

Mr. Bloomberg shed his ties with the Democratic Party to become a Republican in his run for mayor in 2001. His latest move has increased speculation that he is planning to run for president in 2008 as an independent — a rumor he laughs off when asked about it.

Connections with some of the people attending the awards reception on Tuesday night, including Giuliani campaign fund-raisers and major local donors such as Carl Icahn, could be useful if Mr. Kelly decides to run to replace Mr. Bloomberg — a race that he might have a better chance at winning as a Republican than if he were to join the already crowded field of Democrats.

Questioned about whether he was considering it, Mr. Kelly adopted one of Mr. Bloomberg’s tactics: He laughed, said he was staying focused on his current job, and didn’t say no.

“Right now I’m running for police commissioner every day,” he said.