Arizona Republican Sen. Martha McSally has the political odds stacked against her as she campaigns against Democrat Mark Kelly to hold on to her Senate seat for another two years.
McSally was appointed to the late Sen. John McCain’s old seat in 2019 after losing Arizona’s open Senate race to Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in 2018. Now, McSally faces defeat again, this time in her Nov. 3 special election to continue representing her state in the Senate until 2022.
McSally last polled ahead of Kelly in an outlier survey published midsummer, the incumbent trailing the challenger on average by high single digits, according to RealClearPolitics. Her contest is considered the Democrats’ best pickup opportunity as they try to gain the three to four seats they need for a Senate majority.
On paper, McSally, 54, is a strong candidate.
The Harvard Kennedy School graduate was a House lawmaker focused on national security and veterans issues for four years after serving in the U.S. Air Force for more than two decades. There, she rose to the rank of colonel.
McSally, a decorated pilot, was the first American woman to fly in combat after she was deployed to Kuwait in 1995 and ordered to enforce a no-fly zone in southern Iraq. The first woman to command a fighter squadron after being sent to Afghanistan in 2004, she also drew praise last year for sharing during a congressional hearing on sexual assault in the military how she was raped by a superior officer.
But despite earning a centrist reputation as Arizona’s first female Republican House lawmaker, the state’s shifting demographics and her perceived closeness to President Trump have hurt her politically in both of her Senate bids.
“You’re a liberal hack. I’m not talking to you,” she told a reporter during Trump’s impeachment.
McSally’s up against a formidable, well-funded opponent, too.
Kelly, 56, is a retired Gulf War naval aviator who later became an astronaut and led Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final mission in 2011. The engineer is married to former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who used to represent parts of McSally’s old congressional district before she was shot in the head at point-blank range during a 2011 assassination attempt in a supermarket parking lot.
The couple founded Americans for Responsible Solutions, a political action committee that lobbied for greater gun control. The organization is now known as Giffords.
Kelly has taken a page from Sinema’s winning centrist playbook, given Trump clinched Arizona in 2016 by only 3.5 points. Stumping on topics such as healthcare, the economy, immigration reform, and Social Security, Kelly is outperforming McSally with the state’s independents, a crucial voting bloc considered relatively even in terms of Democratic and Republican party registration rates.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is predicted to boost Kelly from the top of the ticket as well.
Meanwhile, McSally is busy pushing anti-China policies amid the coronavirus pandemic, criticizing Kelly for his business ties to the communist country.
