Arizona Senator Mark Kelly has the highest favorability rating among the top contenders to become Kamala Harris' vice presidential candidate, a new poll shows.
The survey, conducted by ABC News/Ipsos, has the former astronaut with a 10-point net favorability rating, with 22% of respondents having a positive view of him and 12% doing so negatively.
It is worth nothing that a relatively high amount of respondents said they had no opinion or didn't know him, (24% and 41%, respectively), but that was also the case for other officials floated for the post such as Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.
The only ones with a positive favorability index were Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Shapiro, all of whom had a 4-point favorability rating. California Governor Gavin Newsom, Whitmer, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz had negative ratings. So did North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who has withdrawn from the race.
Mark Kelly is among those being vetted by the firm of former President Barack Obama's former attorney general Eric Holder, the Financial Times said. The process is set to be concluded before the party's national convention, which begins in Chicago on August 19.
He mostly mostly has the backing of Hollywood Democratic donors and both him and his wife, former lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords, are close to Harris. "I couldn't be more confident that Vice President Kamala Harris is the right person to defeat Donald Trump and lead our country into the future. She has my support for the nomination, and Gabby and I will do everything we can to elect her President of the United States," Kelly said on X following President Joe Biden's decision to drop out and endorse the vice president.
Mike Noble, CEO of Noble Predictive Insights, told Fox's Phoenix affiliate that the senator would be a perfect running mate. "Mark Kelly has fantastic numbers of all the elected officials in the entire state of Arizona. Mark Kelly has the best image of all the electorate," he said about the senator, who won his seat in 2020 after defeating Republican Martha McSally. He won reelection in November 2022, beating Republican challenger Blake Masters.
Kelly was well-known before taking office due to his job as an astronaut, particularly because of a study in which he and his twin brother Scott's bodies were compared after one spent time in space and the other one stayed on earth.
The experiment took place between 2015 and 2016, with Scott living in space for a year and Mark staying on Earth. Scientists noted some changes after the period was over, including some changes in Scott's chromosomes. His retina and carotid artery were also enlarged, as well as his intestinal microbiome. Over 90% of Scott's genes went back to normal after returning to Earth, but some changes persisted in time.
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