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For a moment, it looked like Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly was going to be the Democratic nominee for vice president.
After outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in July 2024, Kelly was listed by betting websites as the leading contender to join Harris’ ticket. That never happened, as Harris picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and then lost the election handily to Donald Trump, who took office on Jan. 20.
But in the first 10 months of the second Trump administration, Kelly has emerged as one of its most outspoken critics. His service in the U.S. Navy and status as a former astronaut make him a key patriotic foil to the MAGA movement.
Last week, Kelly was among six military veteran members of Congress to release a video calling on members of the U.S. armed forces to honor their oath to defend the Constitution and refuse unlawful orders. Trump responded by posting on social media that what the six said was “punishable by DEATH!” before walking back the statement, saying it wasn’t a threat.
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Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on X that he would investigate Kelly over the comments, which may result in “recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.”
It isn’t the first time Kelly and Hegseth have sparred. In Hegseth’s nomination hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kelly skewered Hegseth over Hegseth’s alleged history of getting sloppy drunk and taking young female staffers to strip clubs.
But Kelly wasn’t out of step with the Trump administration on every issue. Around the same time, Kelly was also one of 10 Democratic senators to back the Republicans’ controversial Laken Riley Act, which mandates the detention of undocumented people merely accused, not convicted, of crimes. That move drew criticism from local-level Democratic officials like Phoenix councilmember-elect Anna Hernandez.
Here’s what you need to know about Arizona’s senior senator, who is feeling the crunch in Trump’s Washington.
Who is Mark Kelly?
Prior to being elected to the Senate in 2020, Kelly was an astronaut at NASA and traveled to space on four separate missions from 2001 to 2011, spending more than 50 days in space. When he was selected to join NASA in 1996, he was in the same class as his identical twin brother, Scott.
Before his days at NASA, Kelly was a U.S. Navy pilot. He joined the service in 1986, the same year “Top Gun” was released, and later flew 39 missions in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. He has degrees from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, where he studied marine and aeronautical engineering.
He is also the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, whom he married in 2007. Giffords survived a 2011 shooting during a campaign event in Tucson that killed six people. After Kelly commanded his final mission to space months later, he retired from NASA to spend more time helping Giffords rehabilitate. He and Giffords became notable advocates for solutions to prevent gun violence, such as background checks, and Giffords founded an eponymous organization dedicated to those efforts.
Kelly was elected to the Senate in 2020, defeating Martha McSally in a special election after the 2018 death of Sen. John McCain. Kelly won a full term in 2022, handily beating Republican challenger Blake Masters.
While Kelly was known earlier in his senatorial career as a cool, moderate dealmaker, the Trump presidency has seen Kelly take on a scrappier role. For instance, he has sparred with adminstration officials like Elon Musk, whom he called an “asshole” after Musk said he was a “traitor” for visiting U.S. ally Ukraine.
Sen. Mark Kelly introduces Vice President Kamala Harris at the first meeting of the National Space Council in December 2021. NASA/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Mark Kelly’s record in the Senate
According to FiveThirtyEight, Kelly voted in line with President Joe Biden 95.5% of the time during the 2021-2022 congressional session. They disagreed on vaccine and mask mandates, which Biden supported and Kelly did not; and on imposing more sanctions over a Russian gas pipeline, which Kelly supported and Biden opposed.
Kelly has sponsored a combined 226 bills in five years, according to Congress.gov. Four of those bills have passed and became law; two were from the 2021-22 session and dealt with water rights for Indigenous tribes in Arizona and near the Colorado River. The Building Chips in America Act became law in 2024, and the ACES Act required the Department of Veterans Affairs to investigate cancer mortality among fighter pilot veterans.
Kelly also has co-sponsored another 1,317 bills, 32 of which have been signed into law by Biden or Trump. Three of those bills were passed this year, including the HALT FENTANYL Act, which was sponsored by GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and classified fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs.
In previous sessions, Kelly co-sponsored bipartisan bills that required law enforcement agencies to conduct de-escalation training, reformed ocean shipping and promoted U.S. exports, countered human trafficking and extended a program that compensates people who were exposed to radiation from atomic weapons testing.
Kelly and Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, also introduced legislation to require members of Congress to post their public schedules online so constituents can have a more transparent look at what their elected officials are up to and with whom they’re meeting. It has not gained traction.
Kelly’s willingness to work across the aisle with Republican colleagues aligns with his appeal to centrist and center-right voters, who played a crucial role in electing Kelly in 2020 and reelecting him in 2022.
One reason Harris might not have picked Kelly as a running mate in 2024 was because of unions’ concerns about the Arizonan’s support.
ABC’s Max Zahn reported that unions, a major player in the Democratic Party’s coalition, seemed to have an issue with Kelly for not backing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. But Kelly’s team moved quickly to quell the fire – about an hour later, Kelly said he would vote for the bill.
“I would vote for it today,” Kelly told HuffPost. “I am, like a lot of legislation, working to make it better. But if it came to the floor today or any day going back to the day I was sworn in, I would vote for it.”
The AFL-CIO, a federation of some of America’s largest unions, has noted Kelly voted in favor of working people 98% of the time during his first three years in the Senate.
