(Bloomberg) -- Arizona Senator Mark Kelly offers Kamala Harris a potential running mate with a powerful life story — a former astronaut and fighter pilot tested by space, combat and personal tragedy.
The working-class son of two New Jersey police officers, Kelly counters the testosterone-infused appeal of Republicans Donald Trump and JD Vance with a swashbuckling career as a Space Shuttle commander and Navy aviator who flew 39 combat missions in the Persian Gulf War. He turned to politics only after his wife, then-Representative Gabby Giffords, was grievously wounded in a 2011 mass shooting near Tucson.
Giffords’ recovery with her husband at her side inspired a documentary film, People magazine cover story, a book, and the founding of a new national gun safety organization.
Kelly, a compact, broad-chested 60-year-old, “has been through the hardest trials that anybody could ever imagine and passed it with flying colors,” said John Hickenlooper, a Democratic Senate colleague from neighboring Colorado.
Kelly also may provide some reassurance on of one of Harris’s greatest vulnerabilities — a surge in illegal migration under President Joe Biden that polls show is now a leading voter concern. Trump has long made cracking down on immigration a signature issue, and Republicans have attacked Harris for her role addressing root causes of migration.
Kelly, a border-state senator, was a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s decision two years ago to end pandemic-era migration restrictions known as Title 42, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security hadn’t adequately coordinated with local governments or crafted a plan to handle a rise in illegal crossings.
But he’s taken a nuanced approach to border policy that is sensitive to Democratic constituencies, also championing immigrants rights. He supported a bipartisan compromise earlier this year that would have restricted access to asylum during migration surges. Republicans abandoned the deal after Trump criticized it, but Biden imposed similar measures by executive order and illegal crossings subsequently declined.
Voters in swing states have a positive impression of Kelly, with 27% viewing him favorably versus 20% unfavorably, though more than half have never heard of him or had no opinion, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll taken July 24-28. That’s similar to views of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, another potential VP pick.
The poll gives Harris a narrow 2-point edge in Arizona. She has more ground to make up in Pennsylvania, where she trails by 4 points.
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Kelly is one of the few Democrats with a personal connection to billionaire Elon Musk, who has become a Trump ally. The former astronaut worked with SpaceX on their safety advisory panel and drives a black Tesla Model S Performance.
“I’ve worked with him mostly on stuff that has to do with rockets and spacecraft,” Kelly said. “He’s very good at that.”
He also has a long relationship with Republican John McCain’s family dating back before Kelly won the late senator’s Senate seat, and has called his fellow Navy aviator a personal hero.
Kelly can tap an extensive fundraising network he built during the years he spent promoting the gun safety group he co-founded with his wife and his run for the Senate in 2020, when he won one of the most expensive congressional campaigns in history. He won a full term in 2022. He raised nearly $190 million between the two election cycles, according to OpenSecrets data.
“Sounds crass, but there’s not a better fund-raiser in the entire United States Senate,” Hickenlooper said.
Kelly has shown a light-hearted side with his identical twin brother, Scott, also a former astronaut. He arranged for a gorilla costume to be smuggled onto the International Space Station for their birthday when Scott Kelly was commanding in 2016, and the twin donned it to chase a fellow crew member.
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Still, Kelly hasn’t been tested on the national stage nor does he have a reputation as a dynamic campaigner, though he’s a draw for other Democratic senators at events around the country.
He’s been a cautious senator, less apt to grab the limelight or launch a partisan broadside than many of his colleagues. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware recalls last year, when his fellow Democrats were pontificating about what it would take to train up Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s, Kelly let them go on for about 15 minutes before piping up.
“He sort of clears his throat and says, ‘Excuse me, I think I may be the only jet fighter pilot in the room,’” Coons said.
Ukrainian pilots trained on F-16s in Arizona with backing from Kelly, who has visited Ukraine twice and sharply criticized Vance for opposing aid.
Though Kelly would bring home-state appeal to the Harris campaign in the swing state of Arizona, he isn’t a regional figure in the Rust-Belt “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or Michigan that many Democrats believe will be pivotal electoral battlegrounds this year.
Should he become vice president, Arizona Democratic governor Katie Hobbs could only appoint a temporary replacement and the party would have to defend the seat in the midterm 2026 election, when the party in the White House usually loses seats.
Republicans during his Senate campaigns have also attacked Kelly for his work as a co-founder of World View Enterprises, a high-altitude balloon company based in Tucson that received some funding from Chinese company Tencent. Asked about the criticism, Kelly touts jobs the company created and work it has done for NASA and the Department of Defense.
He’s actively assailed Vance in the weeks since Trump picked the Ohio senator as a vice presidential nominee on issues such as reproductive rights. He pounced when past comments by Vance denigrating step-parents like Harris and Giffords surfaced, lauding his wife on social media as “an amazing role model and stepmother to our daughters.”
--With assistance from Ellen M. Gilmer.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.