Kamala Harris is now at the top of the Democratic ticket for the 2024 election. Waves of Democrats have endorsed Harris, including some of the party’s biggest names like the Clintons, the Obamas, and, of course, President Joe Biden.
Biden’s announcement that he would end his reelection campaign sent a shockwave through the world of politics. He then endorsed Harris in a social media post on July 21.
Harris’ campaign hit the ground running, putting out ads, going viral online, gaining donor support and vetting potential running mates.
This week, I spoke with The Arizona Republic’s National Political Reporter Ronald J. Hansen about the Harris campaign’s interest in Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly as a potential vice president.
Sen. Mark Kelly has quickly gained notoriety across the country with the news that he is being considered as a potential running mate in Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the Democratic nomination for president. Kelly’s name is well known in Arizona — and not just because of his time as a senator. I first learned of him as the supportive husband of my local representative Gabrielle Giffords from Tucson. He was by her side in the aftermath of the tragic 2011 shooting that left six dead and 13 wounded including Giffords.Can you take us through how we got here?
Ron: A lot of people have said this in different contexts, but Sen. Kelly has a biography unlike anyone else. He has an identical twin brother and their parents were both police in New Jersey. Mark Kelly was a Navy combat pilot in the Gulf War in 1991 and NASA accepted him (and his brother) for astronaut training five years later.
Kelly flew four space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011. The last mission came months after Giffords was shot, giving that flight more national attention. Kelly retired from NASA months afterward, citing Giffords’ health needs. She quit her congressional job in 2012 and they started a gun-control advocacy group that today bears her name. Kelly became the voice of that national effort throughout several spasms of gun violence for years.
He wrote books on Giffords, gun control and several titles for children. He also worked with his brother as a motivational speaker.
In 2019, Kelly ran for the U.S. Senate seat that had been occupied by the late John McCain, R-Ariz. Kelly cast himself as an independent thinker and raised more than $100 million in his campaign against U.S. Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz. His Republican critics tried to cast Kelly as beholden to China because a balloon-surveillance company he co-founded included a Chinese corporate investor that had worked closely with Beijing.
Kelly won that 2020 special election by about 80,000 votes, 2 percentage points. He did so at the same time President Joe Biden won Arizona by about 11,000 votes, for the closest finish of any state Biden carried. That win gave Kelly the right to finish the final two years of McCain’s term and meant that Kelly had to run for reelection in 2022.
That year he faced Republican Blake Masters, whom he defeated by about 125,000 votes, or 5 percentage points. Masters tried to cast Kelly as a rubber stamp for Biden and blamed him for a spike in illegal immigration under Biden.
In office, Kelly has been an advocate for supporting semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. as a bulwark against Chinese leverage on U.S. companies and the military. He has been a reliable vote for the Biden administration, though he has been for years a notable critic of its handling of the border, calling conditions a “crisis.”
When Biden quit the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee, Kelly quickly became a serious contender for the job, in part because of his military background and also as an ideological moderate to complement voters’ views of her.
How could Harris-Kelly stack up to Trump-Vance?
A potential Harris-Kelly ticket was not on my bingo card for this year’s election, but we have seen the two appear at campaign rallies for President Biden. You wrote about how a Las Vegas campaignstop this past June may have been a preview of how Harris and Kelly could work together. Do you think a Harris-Kelly ticket can stand up to a Trump-Vance ticket?
I’ve talked to presidential scholars and one of the things they all note is the vice president should help broaden the presidential candidate’s appeal , be willing to be an attack dog on some issues and maybe help bring a swing state closer for their ticket.
Kelly is in politically useful ways a contrast from Harris. While she is a woman of color, he is a white male. She is seen as a San Francisco liberal; when he lived in Texas and worked for NASA, he was registered as a Republican. He’s seen as a low-key centrist who is tough on the border. That could help signal a reset on the issue to counter former President Donald Trump’s insistence that the border is a disaster.
It’s worth noting that Vance was elected to the Senate in Ohio in 2022.He won with millions of dollars in backing from billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. Thiel invested in another candidate the same year: Kelly’s opponent, Blake Masters.
There are some similarities between Vance and Masters, and Kelly has already spoken publicly about how he knows their type and already trotted out some attack lines on Vance that echo the words that worked against Masters two years ago.
The fact that Kelly’s wife was shot in the head in 2011 could give him exceptional latitude to move political discussions past the attempted assassination of Trump earlier this month. Kelly has already done that, too. He has noted his gratitude that Trump wasn’t killed, said he knows all too well how real political violence is and then rebuked Trump for inciting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
It’s the kind of rhetoric a lot of Democrats would like to use, but Kelly is uniquely suited to deliver.
Kelly has only been in the Senate for about four years, which isn’t an extensive record, but it’s twice as long as Vance has been there. In many ways, Kelly seems well positioned to make the case for Harris in a way that could resonate with voters.
Lastly, Kelly comes from Arizona, one of the nation’s newest swing states. There’s no denying that Trump appeared headed to victory in Arizona over Biden. He’s likely to maintain an edge over Harris in the state as well. Kelly is arguably the most popular politician in Arizona. Presumably, that means he helps close the gap with Trump, though Trump likely remains the favorite to win the state in November, at least for now.
How does Kelly compare to other potential VPs?
Of course, Kelly is not the only person being considered for the VP role. This week, we learned he’s one of seven Democrats being vetted. Our friends at USA Today reported that the list includes North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer among others. Where does Kelly land in this list of names? What is the Harris campaign’s strategy in picking a running mate?
Ron: This is the million-dollar question, and I wish I knew definitively how she views Kelly and his competition.
From the outside looking in, Kelly is the kind of person who presidential nominees tend to pick, especially for the Democrats. He is a senator and brings a serious biography to the table. He has a background in military and national security as a combat veteran and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He’s from a swing state and, in the Senate, he’s been in the majority, which allows him to point to at least some legislative triumphs. Most notably, he helped shape the CHIPS and Science Act that supports semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S.
One of the downside realities of picking Kelly is facing the consequences of a Harris win. That would mean Kelly would leave his Senate seat and Arizona would have a special election in 2026 with no clear successor to hold the seat for Democrats. It’s a legitimate concern, but it’s probably not a deal-breaker in an election Democrats have framed as existential for the health of American democracy.
The Democratic governors bring executive experience and that’s a big deal, too. They have helped set the political tone in their states, and some of these contenders are from states that Democrats desperately want to win: Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina. None of them has the kind of biography that feels as nationally familiar now as Kelly’s.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro presumably has outsized appeal in his state, which is an absolute must-win for Democrats. He’s Jewish, too, which can help shore up some support in a normally left-leaning bloc. But he’s not especially well known outside Pennsylvania.
Whitmer in Michigan is a woman, which realistically seems like a deal-breaker to a lot of people. The nation has never elected a woman as president; Whitmer would be asking voters to elect two at once. That injects an element of uncertainty in the race that Democrats may want to avoid. She has also said she intends to remain the governor in Michigan, seemingly removing herself from consideration.
Cooper has won in North Carolina four times, which is the kind of record Democrats would love to have in a federal race there. But it’s not clear that Cooper guarantees a win any more than Kelly can’t single-handedly assure Arizona. Besides, Cooper is 67, which may make him too old for Democrats now.
There are other names in the mix as well, but they are less known, hail from less-critical states or bring biographical baggage that may be limiting. Kelly isn’t a lock to win the nomination, but as you game out the strengths and weaknesses of each possibility, Kelly seems to hang in there.
Could Kelly help Harris win Arizona?
Arizona remains a key battleground state. In the past couple of elections, we have seen how voters in our state can have a major effect on the presidential race’s outcome. You quoted Kelly in a recent article where he shared some optimism about Democrats’ chances in Arizona this year. He said, “It is absolutely winnable. I won it twice, President Biden won it in 2020, and Kamala Harris is going to win it here.” Would Arizona voters turn out in support of Harris having Kelly on the Democratic ticket? Can she win the state without him?
Ron: This strikes me as political puffery. What else is Kelly supposed to say?
The reality is the only reason Kelly is now in the vice-presidential conversation is because President Joe Biden recognized he could not win in critical swing states. One of them was pretty clearly Arizona.
Switching to Harris is probably good for Democrats nationally and helpful in at least some states, especially Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia, where African Americans represent a significant fraction of the electorate and some of them may be newly interested in supporting a Harris-led ticket.
But even so, Trump’s obsession with the border is in line with a lot of Arizona voters. That issue seems to transcend party lines, and that always figured to be a problem for Biden in 2024. If Kelly is the VP nominee, he can credibly claim to have a view on that issue more in line with where the public is. That helps. It still might not be enough in his home state, but, paradoxically, it can help elsewhere.
Kelly might help Harris in Arizona in another way. Kelly probably doesn’t have to campaign much in Arizona to have the desired effect. That could be a savings of money and time for Democrats to concentrate on other states, especially those in the Rust Belt. At the same time, Kelly’s presence may force the Trump campaign to work a little harder and spend a little more money in Arizona than they otherwise would. Just making the race in Arizona closer has an upside to Democrats.
That said, at the end of the day, whoever the Democrats pick for the VP, that person has to help them win the needed states because close losses are still losses.
What to watch for as the DNC approaches
The 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago is only a few weeks away. Do Democrats have enough time to steer the ship toward a successful run at the presidential race? What will you be looking out for during the convention in August?
Ron: Democrats know they are digging out of a deep hole, politically speaking. Biden was headed to a near-certain defeat. Remember, not very long ago the headlines seemed focused on a Trump blowout win.
Polling is still in the early stages of reflecting a Harris-led ticket, and to underscore: We don’t know who her running mate is going to be. But there are glimmers of hope for Democrats in the polls I’ve seen so far.
The race seems closer. That’s not surprising when considering how consistently voters told pollsters they viewed Biden as too old.
The money is flowing again. In his final days in the race, Biden faced reports of donors closing their wallets to him. Harris is raising record sums in short bursts. Don’t be surprised if Trump and his base are also busy girding for a race they now expect to get harder, but it does seem that Democrats are bringing in quick financial reinforcements.
Harris seems to be emphasizing her background as a prosecutor to contrast with Trump’s criminal convictions. She’s also bringing up her support for abortion rights in a way that is even more striking now for the Democrats.
All of these things suggest Harris and her party can make a real race of it. The Democratic National Convention will probably have a lot more unity and passion than it otherwise figured to have with Biden.
Harris’ quick hold on the nomination also gives Democrats weeks to get over any disappointment that someone else didn’t get the nomination. In the end, Democrats are pretty strongly united around the idea that they don’t want Trump to have a second term.
If anything is clear in the Trump era, however, it is that you should not sell his appeal to voters short. They are passionate about him and angry at Democrats that preceded Biden’s departure. Since the attempt on his life, many Republicans see him as an even more important avatar of a movement they still really support. That means that everyone should sit down, buckle in and get ready for another epic election.
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