As the Harris campaign narrows down its top picks for the Democrat vice presidential nominee, all eyes are on Arizona’s Mark Kelly, who is widely perceived to be one of the leading contenders (and is reportedly being pushed by Barack Obama). While Harris campaign operatives are no doubt hopeful that Kelly could attract support from moderates and Independents and improve Harris’s odds of winning the crucial battleground of Arizona, there is reason to believe that a Kelly vice presidential nod could serve as a massive gift to down-ballot Republicans this Election Day.
A controversy from Kelly’s 2022 re-election effort, which erupted over an Arizona-based TV spot, could be crucial if Republicans prepare themselves for an announcement of Kelly as Harris’s running mate. By leveraging both the facts and the spirit of the ad—which with minor alterations, could be run today about Kelly or any so-called Democratic “centrist”—the national GOP apparatus could drive home the message that, in choosing Kelly, the Democrats are revealing their greatest fear and weakness: the need to find a front-man to cover for Harris’s radicalism. Yet, like all Democrats in Congress, front-man Kelly has shown that he believes his political survival depends on adhering closely to the progressive left agenda that now defines the Democrat Party.
Like Michael Dukakis’s famous statement from his nomination acceptance speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, “This campaign is about competence, not ideology”—which Ronald Reagan seized upon to criticize Dukakis as an incorrigible “liberal” during the 1988 presidential campaign—Kelly, as the VP nominee, could be used to highlight how defensive Democrats are about their own far-left shift under Biden and Harris.
Since being elected to the United States Senate in 2020, Kelly—a veteran and former astronaut—has been a prominent figure among Democrats in Congress who like to present themselves as centrists. However, in reality, he is a make-believe moderate and a key enabler of the party’s far-left agenda. Kelly’s presence on the national ticket would expose every Senate and House Democratic candidate to accusations of being a “Kelly clone”—appearing moderate or even conservative while actually voting with the hard left, which not only controls the party but also threatens any Democrats considering more moderate stances with expensive primary challenges and defamation from a well-financed left-wing attack machine.
Before the corporate media ecosystem reinforces the false narrative that Kelly is a political centrist, the GOP should be ready to pounce much as the 2022 TV ad did, by highlighting Kelly’s record of aligning with the left wing of the party and his own well-documented extremist positions.
In its two-minute version, the ad begins at a rapid pace in the first 20 seconds, then transitions into an information-heavy yet compelling narrative that hits an astonishing number of Kelly’s weak points, leaving viewers both taken aback and intrigued.
The TV spot, which revealed Kelly’s support for the Biden-Harris border fiasco, also featured the headline “CORRUPT BARGAIN WITH EXTREMISTS” over an image of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and other far-left representatives dubbed “The Squad.” It implored voters to defy the “corrupt national media” and end Kelly’s “free ride.” The ad made a compelling case that, in order to avoid a primary challenge financed by Ocasio-Cortez and her billionaire allies, he told the “liberal extremist” line in Congress.
The ad’s use of the “corrupt bargain” charge sought to highlight the left’s greenlighting of the Biden agenda, from inflationary spending to the federal takeover of elections. In citing Kelly’s voting record on behalf of that very agenda, the 2022 ad labeled him as Biden’s “key enabler,” noting that he voted with Biden 92 percent of the time and “cast the deciding vote on huge spending bills that caused shattering inflation and recession”—referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” which even further aggravated inflation and increased costs for American families.
The ad focuses initially on the media for trying to “crush dissent” and hide corruption after displaying headlines about media scandals and smears—including its handling of the China Virus leak, censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, promotion of the Russian collusion hoax, coverup for Hillary Clinton’s email scandals, and refusal to report on Biden’s blackmailing of the Ukrainian government. The ad also lists other political smears, like those against General Michael Flynn and parents protesting anti-Americanism in their local schools. The narrator also notes the Democrats’ “dark money alliance” with left-wing billionaire George Soros, who has funded rogue left-wing prosecutors.
The spot then quickly switches to a photo of Kelly as “Biden’s key enabler,” going through his voting record and complicity in passing massive spending bills, inflation, shutting-down pipelines, high gas prices, and food shortages. It goes on to note the left’s attempts to push a radical takeover of elections, as well as efforts by other Democrats to alter the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Senate, American citizenship, and the Electoral College. These actions, the ad states, represent a “scorched-earth rule-or-ruin” attack on longstanding American democratic institutions.
“How can he say he isn’t a left-wing extremist if every time, he votes like one?” the narrator asks at the end of the ad.
What happened in Arizona during the 2022 midterms remains a strong example of the incompetence of the national GOP consultant class. After a strong start for Kelly’s then-Republican rival Blake Masters, the GOP establishment retreated when the national media began attacking Masters. They began running defensive ads that notably failed to use terms like “extremist” or “liberal” and failed to highlight the Soros connection and Kelly’s failure at the border. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell even cut off funding for Masters out of fear that Masters would vote to oust him from his perch as the Senate Republican leader, given Masters’ close affiliation with Donald Trump.
But the point is not only that the GOP could challenge Kelly’s record, or even that it could showcase the 2022 TV spot. However much the Harris team might hope that Kelly’s status as a former Navy captain and astronaut would help to veil his extremism from voters, the American people should not be fooled: a Vice President Mark Kelly would be virtually indistinguishable from Kamala Harris on every major issue.
The key to a Republican attack on Kelly as a VP candidate, and more broadly on the Democrat Party machine, lies in exposing this perceived “corrupt bargain” alignment.
As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich recently observed, the psychology here is that people often get used to their own representatives or senators and have trouble believing they are extremist liberals. “The problem is more and more of their party is anti-Semitic, more and more of their party sides with terrorism. More and more of their party is deeply hostile, not just to Israel, they are deeply hostile to the United States,” he said in a recent interview with Laura Ingraham.
But this cycle, GOP congressional candidates could point to Kelly’s choice as just another Obama-inspired scam.
This line of attack would also give the GOP a much-needed chance to raise the always potent “bossism” issue, like “Boss Obama,” and to label as “Kelly clones” all the Democrat members of Congress who, like Kelly, were afraid of the left in their own party and became frontmen and mouthpieces for extremist, liberal, and radical left politics.
But the GOP could also take this opportunity to make a nationwide appeal, urging voters to understand that the problem isn’t just Biden, Harris, or Kelly—it’s all the Democrats who are afraid to vote according to their constituents’ wishes or even their own consciences out of fear that they would face a left-wing primary.
Thus far, there are some signs of hope, as Senate candidates Bernie Moreno (R-OH) and Tim Sheehy (R-MT) have, in the vein of the Kelly ad, been using terms like “extremist” and “liberal,” instead of displaying the usual Senate GOP failure to make the broader ideological case against the progressive left.
Should Kelly be tapped to run alongside Kamala Harris this fall, Americans have every reason to believe that he would double down on his “corrupt bargain” with the most extreme voices in his party—forfeiting American security, strength, and prosperity in exchange for his own personal advancement and the ambitions of Democrat Party leadership.
If Harris ultimately chooses Kelly as her vice-presidential candidate, Republicans should not hesitate to highlight him not only as an extremist, but also as a symbol of the Democrat Party leadership’s seething contempt for everyday Americans.
Republicans should make the case that Democrats believe American voters can’t see past Kelly’s supposedly moderate image. Should they do so, they could find that their majorities in the House and Senate come January will be far greater than they could have expected. But if they continue to refuse to make key strategic changes, they shouldn’t be surprised if Republicans underperform at the polls next November.
The “liberal extremist” theme, therefore, is a strong one. As a senator, Kelly has greenlighted nearly every Biden-Harris policy, including voting against additional funding for border agents, voting against the border wall and “Remain in Mexico,” and supporting mass amnesty and sanctuary cities—even though he represents a border state.
Kelly also supported the Biden-Harris spending sprees that triggered rampant inflation and co-sponsored legislation that would ban Voter ID, among other radical and far-reaching propositions.
And just this week, Kelly, who was challenged over his record on border security, bizarrely insisted on MSNBC that Kamala Harris “had a lot of success in the Northern Triangle.” He went on to claim that Harris’s “work” in “Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala is now paying dividends”—indicating that, if he is tapped as her running mate, he will stand firm in his open border extremism.
For a time, Kelly’s willingness to use his status as a former astronaut to conceal his real political agenda and serve as a frontman for far-left positions caused him trouble in his reelection campaign two years ago, during which he was forcefully called out for his extremist liberal positions and voting record, which overlaps overwhelmingly with the Biden agenda.
An updated version of the ad could be a key attack point for the GOP. GOP Senate and House election committees could easily use this line of attack against every Democrat in Congress, implying that they will be threatened with well-financed primary runs if they stray from the party line. In response to recent reports indicating that Kelly was Barack Obama’s first choice to lead the Democrat ticket this fall, the ad could reinforce the notion that Obama backed Kelly in hopes that he would continue to camouflage the far left’s extremist policies.
Above all, if the GOP plays its cards right, a Mark Kelly vice presidential nomination could be used as a wrecking ball in driving home the message that he represents Democrat extremism, weakness, and policy failures on the national stage just months out from a crucial presidential election.
Ultimately, as the Harris campaign prepares to announce its vice presidential pick, the GOP should get ready to show voters who Mark Kelly really is: a mouthpiece for Biden, Harris, and Obama, enabling their far-left politics and extremism at every turn.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
