February 12, 2019

Mark Kelly, Retired Astronaut and Husband of Gabby Giffords, Announces Senate Run

He’ll challenge Republican Martha McSally to finish John McCain’s last term.

Matt Rourke/AP

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Mark Kelly, the retired astronaut and husband of former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, announced Tuesday that he is running for US Senate in 2020.

He will challenge Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), who in December was appointed to the Senate seat previously held by Sen. John McCain just weeks after narrowly losing a Senate race against Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the midterm elections. McSally is considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans going into the 2020 elections.

“I learned a lot from being an astronaut,” Kelly says in a video message announcing his candidacy. “I learned a lot from being a pilot in the Navy, I learned a lot about solving problems from being an engineer. But what I learned from my wife is how you use policy to improve people’s lives. Arizonans are facing incredibly challenging issues here in the years to come.”

Kelly, an outspoken advocate for gun control, rose to national prominence after Giffords was severely injured from a mass shooting in 2011.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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