AZ-Sen: On Tuesday, retired astronaut Mark Kelly kicked off his campaign for the Democratic nomination for Senate in 2020. Kelly is the husband of former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords, who represented what was then Arizona's 8th District around Tucson from 2007 until 2012, when she stepped down after miraculously surviving a 2011 mass shooting assassination attempt in which a gunman shot her in the head and killed several others. Kelly and Giffords have consequently become national advocates for gun-safety reforms.
Kelly and his identical twin brother Scott Kelly, who is also an astronaut, are the only two siblings to ever go into space. The Kelly twins made national news when Scott Kelly spent a year aboard the International Space Station to compare the effects of long-term spaceflight on the human body, using Mark Kelly as the control subject. Mark Kelly himself has spent roughly 54 days in space before he retired in 2011 to aid Giffords with her long recovery from the shooting and to support her consequent gun-safety activism.
Kelly is so far the first notable Democrat to join the race against appointed GOP Sen. Martha McSally. However, he may not be the last, and Rep. Ruben Gallego reiterated on Tuesday that he was still "looking seriously" at running and would "be making a final decision and announcement soon."