Captain Mark Kelly / Facebook
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Sen. Mark Kelly has been coy about any potential run for president. He has thought about it, he continues to say, without revealing more.
The cash he’s raking in might help him decide. Thirty months before the 2028 election, Federal Election Commission first-quarter filings show that Kelly has the strongest potential war chest of any likely Democratic contender: $22.3 million. That cash, designated for his 2028 Senate reelection campaign, can be transferred into a presidential committee.
Donors apparently agree with the growing number of voters who say Kelly has a solid shot at the Democratic presidential nomination.
The filings also show that New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who ran for president in 2020 and who is seeking reelection for his Senate seat this year, has $21.9 million on hand. The gap widens after Booker. California Rep. Ro Khanna and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have $15.5 million and $14.7 million cash on hand, respectively.
Sen. Ruben Gallego has $1.9 million cash on hand — and larger problems than fundraising, if he decides to run for president. The ghastly sexual misconduct allegations against his friend Eric Swalwell, who just dropped out of California’s gubernatorial race, may have torpedoed Gallego’s chances in 2028.
Americans outside Arizona are only slowly coming to know Kelly, who’s still serving his first full Senate term in John McCain’s old seat.
A former Navy aviator and astronaut, Kelly has credentials that outstrip his charisma. But he has gotten an enormous boost — including a slot among Time’s 100 most influential people in the world — since a standoff last fall with Donald Trump. Kelly was among a group of six Congressional Democrats who in a video statement called on military personnel to ignore any illegal orders from their superiors. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump wrote in response.
Kelly’s words were, instead, rewarded richly. Soon after Trump’s threat, Kelly’s daily fundraising spiked twentyfold, and he pulled in $1 million on Nov. 30 alone, Cronkite News reported. That fundraising trend has continued as the administration continues to rage at Kelly impotently. Prosecutors this month failed to get a grand jury to indict Kelly for the video, a rebuke by average people that the New York Times called “a remarkable denunciation of a federal prosecution.”
