U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat who has won two consecutive elections in once solidly red Arizona, is among the five contenders being seriously considered as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate.
Harris’ campaign has requested vetting materials from Kelly and four others, NBC reported Tuesday, citing two anonymous campaign sources.
Kelly is a former astronaut and U.S. Navy captain who has been representing Arizona in the U.S. Senate since 2020, when he won a special election to finish out the term that the late John McCain was elected to serve in 2016, defeating Republican Martha McSally, a congresswoman who was appointed to the seat in 2019. Kelly then won re-election in 2022 to a full six-year term.
Kelly went from flying combat missions as a naval aviator during the Gulf War to being selected to pilot the NASA space shuttle in 1996. Kelly’s identical twin brother, Scott Kelly, is also an astronaut, and they are the only siblings to have both traveled into orbit.
The Arizona senator is married to former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was shot in an assassination attempt in Tucson in 2011. Six people died during the attack and Giffords was shot in the head, leading to her being in a medically induced coma while she recovered.
Giffords and Kelly founded the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Solutions, which campaigned for gun control measures such as universal background checks and red flag laws. The nonprofit has since changed its name to Giffords.
The Senate seat that Kelly holds hadn’t been won by a Democrat since 1962, when Carl Hayden was elected to his seventh term. In 2022, Kelly defeated Republican Blake Masters by a comfortable margin. He is slated to become the senior senator for Arizona upon the departure of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat turned independent who did not seek reelection this year.
Kelly left NASA and the Navy in 2011, citing Giffords’ needs during her recovery from the shooting. He is the fourth retired astronaut to be elected to Congress.
He has billed himself as a moderate Democrat and has even criticized President Joe Biden on the border, though he has voted in line with Biden positions 94.5% of the time.
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