Mark Kelly (21 February 1964-) was a Democratic US Senator from Arizona from 2 December 2020, succeeding Martha McSally.
Biography[]
Mark Edward Kelly was born in Orange, Essex County, New Jersey in 1964, the son of two retired police officers. He served as a US Navy aviator from 1987 to 2011, serving in the Gulf War, and he became a NASA space shuttle pilot in 1996 and flying his first mission in 2001. Kelly's last mission was the STS-134 mission in 2011, which was also the last mission of the space shuttle Endeavour. In 2007, he married Democratic politician Gabby Giffords, and she suffered a severe brain injury after an assassination attempt by a right-wing fanatic in 2011. She and Kelly were thrust into the media spotlight, and, in 2019, Mark Kelly followed his wife into politics by running for US Senate in Arizona, challenging the Republican incumbent Martha McSally. Kelly defeated McSally with 51.17% of the vote to her 48.82%, and he succeeded her on 2 December.