There was an amazing event in U.S. politics this week, and almost no one realized it.
It happened in Arizona, where former astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, announced he was running for Senate in 2020. He got a lot of attention, and his candidacy is viewed as a big win in the 2020 recruitment battle. He’s widely considered the best possible choice to run against the incumbent senator, Martha McSally, a Republican. Kelly immediately confirmed that he is a contender by raising more than $1 million in his first days as a candidate.
The extraordinary part of all this is that Kelly — and Giffords — have been associated with a single public policy issue since the 2011 assassination attempt that almost took her life: Fighting against guns. Sure, Kelly was an astronaut, which has been a great ticket to political success for decades, and yes, he’s the heroic husband who has fought for and with his injured wife. But he is also a gun-control activist in Arizona, a western swing state that leans Republican. That’s the kind of candidate national Democrats want in 2019.
That’s a changed world.
In the 1980s, plenty of urban Democrats advocated for gun control, but it was always a divisive issue within the party. After 1994, when Speaker Tom Foley was defeated in a Republican national landslide that featured plenty of accusations that Democrats wanted to chip away at the Second Amendment, the Democratic Party as a whole decided the issue was hopeless, and hid from it for years.
It happened in Arizona, where former astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, announced he was running for Senate in 2020. He got a lot of attention, and his candidacy is viewed as a big win in the 2020 recruitment battle. He’s widely considered the best possible choice to run against the incumbent senator, Martha McSally, a Republican. Kelly immediately confirmed that he is a contender by raising more than $1 million in his first days as a candidate.
The extraordinary part of all this is that Kelly — and Giffords — have been associated with a single public policy issue since the 2011 assassination attempt that almost took her life: Fighting against guns. Sure, Kelly was an astronaut, which has been a great ticket to political success for decades, and yes, he’s the heroic husband who has fought for and with his injured wife. But he is also a gun-control activist in Arizona, a western swing state that leans Republican. That’s the kind of candidate national Democrats want in 2019.
That’s a changed world.
In the 1980s, plenty of urban Democrats advocated for gun control, but it was always a divisive issue within the party. After 1994, when Speaker Tom Foley was defeated in a Republican national landslide that featured plenty of accusations that Democrats wanted to chip away at the Second Amendment, the Democratic Party as a whole decided the issue was hopeless, and hid from it for years.
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