--- title: Mark Kelly Isn't the First Astronaut-Turned-Politician description: Mark Kelly, who announced he's running for an Arizona Senate seat in the 2020 cycle, isn't the first former astronaut to seek higher office. canonical: https://time.com/5528036/mark-kelly-astronauts-politicians/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-02-13T18:46:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-13T08:22:35.447Z article:section: History og:title: Mark Kelly Isn't the First Astronaut to Consider a Political Campaign og:description: But, other than John Glenn, most didn't have the right stuff og:url: https://time.com/5528036/mark-kelly-astronauts-politicians/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2121b58bcf76c90/6989451209208f7520413537/mark-kelly-senate.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: Mark Kelly Senate Astronaut og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Mark Kelly Isn't the First Astronaut to Consider a Political Campaign twitter:description: But, other than John Glenn, most didn't have the right stuff twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta2121b58bcf76c90/6989451209208f7520413537/mark-kelly-senate.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Mark Kelly Isn't the First Astronaut to Consider a Political Campaign. But Most Didn't Have the Right Stuff > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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Its journalism is reported and edited by a professional newsroom led by Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs, with named correspondents on politics, climate, health, technology and culture. It reaches 1 million US print subscribers and 1.15 million globally, plus more than 1.1 million newsletter readers. #### How do I subscribe to TIME magazine? Subscriptions are at time.com/subscribe-agent. Choose digital only at $20 a year, or print and digital from $29 a year or $49 for two years. TIME also publishes seven free email newsletters at time.com/newsletters, which do not require a subscription. #### Can I cancel a TIME subscription? Yes. TIME states that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. #### Does TIME have free newsletters? Yes. TIME publishes seven free email newsletters reaching more than 1.1 million readers, covering daily news, Washington politics, health, AI, climate and energy, culture, and the newsroom itself. They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=d2d4d7be-1dda-41e2-b798-bd5dd9abfd51&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=d2d4d7be-1dda-41e2-b798-bd5dd9abfd51&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Retired Astronaut Mark Kelly Announces Run For Senate Seat in Arizona [Watch (HLS stream): Retired Astronaut Mark Kelly Announces Run For Senate Seat in Arizona](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/sbc8XxXe.m3u8) (4:17)  _Published 2019-02-12. Retired astronaut Mark Kelly, who rocketed to the national spotlight when his congresswoman wife Gabrielle Giffords was shot in a failed assassination attempt, announced Tuesday he’s running to finish John McCain’s last term in the U.S. Senate._  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Feb 13, 2019 6:46 PM UTC  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Feb 13, 2019 6:46 PM UTC Most people go through their entire lives without checking any of the major fame boxes. In a nation of 325 million people, there are only so many NFL quarterbacks, Oscar winners and Nobel laureates. There are only so many astronauts and elected officials, too — so it’s especially rare when someone tries to succeed at both gigs. [Mark Kelly,](https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/kellyme.html) onetime NASA astronaut and husband of [former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords,](https://www.biography.com/people/gabrielle-giffords-20550593) is going for just that twofer, with his Feb. 12 announcement that [he will run for a U.S. Senate seat in Arizona](http://time.com/5527478/mark-kelly-senate-arizona/) during the 2020 cycle. Kelly, a Democrat, will be seeking to defeat incumbent GOP Senator Martha McSally. Arizona is still tricky ground for a Democrat, though it’s been trending purple. And Kelly’s spaceman status confers instant name recognition—especially with the high political profile he and Giffords have maintained in their campaign for gun control after her [near-fatal shooting](http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2041427,00.html) in 2011\. But astronaut-candidates have been few, and their success in the terrestrial mud of retail politics has been uneven. America’s spaceman-politician talk got started almost as soon as the space program itself. In 1964, [Gordon Cooper](https://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/features/cooper%5Fobit.html), one of the original seven astronauts, was courted to run as a Democrat for a Senate seat from Oklahoma—back in the era when there were still a few breeding pairs of Oklahoma Democrats left in the wild. Nobody who knew Cooper well, however, believed he would thrive in the micro-managed business of a political campaign, much less a political career. He had taken a breezy, wake-me-when-we’re-done approach to astronaut training, and actually did fall asleep on the launch pad waiting for liftoff before his 1963 flight. He ultimately—and probably wisely—decided against running. Speculation about an astronaut-senator heated up again in 1968, after [Apollo 8](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250182514/ref=as%5Fli%5Fqf%5Fasin%5Fil%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=time037-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1250182514&linkId=1b10bb7418cd29ea0d25fb076e9bc8cb), commanded by veteran astronaut [Frank Borman](https://www.nationalaviation.org/our-enshrinees/borman-frank/), became the first manned spacecraft to orbit the moon. Borman’s feet had barely touched Earth again before [Barry Goldwater](https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h4011.html), Arizona Senator and the Republican Party’s 1964 presidential nominee, came calling, urging him to run for the state’s other Senate seat. Borman was flattered, but passed. He was a West Point graduate and an Air Force man, and very much liked the military’s crisp chain of command, in which orders are issued and promptly followed. He later confessed that the clubby Senate, with its slo-mo dealmaking, would have driven him mad. Two years later, Borman’s Apollo 8 crewmate, [Jim Lovell](https://www.biography.com/people/james-a-lovell-jr-37140), went back into space as commander of [Apollo 13](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0618619585/ref=as%5Fli%5Fqf%5Fasin%5Fil%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=time037-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0618619585&linkId=183df9c1673a7a8c91032de46982d21d). After an explosion crippled the spacecraft about 200,000 miles from Earth and Lovell improbably steered it back home and deposited himself and his crew safely in the Pacific Ocean, he could have had his choice of pretty much any political office he fancied. The Republican Party thought he would be a good fit as a candidate for the Senate from Wisconsin—where he spent much of his childhood—and he was approached by multiple members of the GOP aristocracy, including [Illinois Senator Charles Percy](http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=p000222) and [Vice President Spiro Agnew](https://www.biography.com/people/spiro-agnew-9177292). Lovell declined all of the offers. But the Party was undeterred, and he soon received a call from the White House. The operator said, “Hold for the President please,” and Richard Nixon came to the phone. Nixon made more or less the same pitch Percy and Agnew had. Lovell once again responded with a polite “no,” this time adding that he really did not know the first thing about running for office, that it was late in the election cycle anyway, and that he had not raised any money. “Captain,” Nixon responded, “money would not be a problem.” Lovell’s hazard-alert antenna either did or didn’t twitch at that, but either way, he thanked the President, declined once more, and ended the call. It would not be until 1974 that an astronaut would at last make it to the political majors, when [John Glenn](https://www.nasa.gov/content/profile-of-john-glenn), who in 1962 became the first American to orbit the Earth, was elected to the Senate as an Ohio Democrat. He was originally encouraged to run in 1963 by his close friend, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. Glenn declared his candidacy at the end of that year, but just three months later, in February of 1964, the man who had flown 149 combat missions in World War II and Korea and orbited the Earth three times took a fall in a hotel bathtub, leading to a concussion and inner ear damage that his doctors warned him would require at least a year’s recovery. Glenn bowed out of the race, ran again in 1970, and this time lost in the primary. He finally won in 1974 and went on to serve four terms. In 1984 he ran for President, got clobbered in Iowa, New Hampshire and on Super Tuesday, and withdrew in March, but continued on in the Senate for 14 more years. No astronaut before or since approached Glenn in terms of electoral success. In 1976, Apollo 17 moonwalker and New Mexico Republican [Harrison Schmitt](http://www.nmspacemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.php?id=39) was elected to the Senate. But he served just one term before losing in 1982 to Democrat Jeff Bingaman, who famously asked voters, “What on Earth has he done for you lately?” That same election year, [Jack Swigert](https://www.astronautscholarship.org/Astronauts/john-l-swigert-jr/), Lovell’s Apollo 13 crewmate, yielded to the electoral temptation his former commander had resisted and ran for Congress as a Republican from Colorado. He won, but just seven weeks after the election—and seven days before he would have been sworn in—he died of an aggressive bone cancer that had been diagnosed during the campaign. If Mark Kelly wins his Senate bid next year, he will join a decidedly tiny fraternity, becoming only the fourth-ever American astronaut to win a federal election. That is one-third the number who have walked on the moon. [Space is hard](https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/29/8863121/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-explosion-excuses); politics—at least going by the numbers—may be harder. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] So seeing that sunrise from space for the very first time, it is incredible. It becomes pretty obvious pretty early when you get into space that we're all kind of in this together. [ MUSIC ] When I launched on July 4th of 2006, Gabby thought I was gonna propose from space. And then what happened? [ LAUGH ] Nothing! Nothing! [ MUSIC ] I'm an identical twin and in 1996, we both became astronauts in the same class. And we learned a lot from my mom. She became a police officer in the 1970s. And I remember my mother trying out how she was going to pass this physical fitness Test. It was a hard test, it was designed for men. But that did not deter my mother. When she finally took the test, instead of getting over in the required nine seconds, she got over in four and a half, much faster than almost all the men, and became one of the first female police officers. My parents Taught my brother and I the value of hard work. I always knew that I was gonna serve this country in some way. I flew 39 combat missions in operation desert storm over Iraq and Kuwait. By the time I met Gabi I had already flown my first two flights on the space shuttle. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] You remember when you first entered Congress for the first time? Yes, so exciting. I though then that I had the risky job. Yeah. Turned out that you were the one who had the risky job. I remember the first time I saw her. You know, within minutes a bloody tear coming down her eye. It didn't even look like her. You know, but it was her. One thing I realized early on was that Gabby needed me to help her through this, she needed an advocate. And the thing I have to do for my wife Is to be able to think clearly and make good decisions. You nearly lost your life serving your country. Yes. But what you do when bad things happen? Move ahead. You gotta move ahead. Gotta move ahead and try to make a difference in the world. You ready? Let's go >> where do we go? 100 miles ? >> 100 miles no >> How far do you want to go ? >> Five miles . >> You know I learned alot from being an astronaut ., I learned alot from being a Pilot in the Navy. I learned alot about solving problems from being an engineer. But what I learned from my wife is how you use policy. To improve people's lives. Arizonians are facing incredibly challenging issues here in the years to come. Access to affordable healthcare, the stagnation of wages, job growth, the economy. You know, as the climate warms, we're going to have more drought here in the desert. Solving some of the hardest problems requires one thing and that's teamwork. Captain Kelly, nice to see you. Partisanship and polarization and gerrymandering and corporate money have ruined our politics. And it's divided us. I care about people. I care about the state of Arizona. I care about this nation. So because of that I decided that I'm launching a campaign for the United States Senate. We've seen this retreat from science and data and facts. And if we don't take these issues seriously we can't solve these problems. We're going to need to bring people together. From all parts of the state, in all walks of life. [ MUSIC ] So please join us. [ MUSIC ] Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead. [ MUSIC ] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5528036/mark-kelly-astronauts-politicians/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5528036/mark-kelly-astronauts-politicians/"},"headline":"Mark Kelly Isn't the First Astronaut to Consider a Political Campaign. 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