Kamala Harris is trying to make her nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate a foregone conclusion, even though the party is in uncharted waters thanks to Joe Biden’s last-minute decision to back out of the campaign. As CNN reports, Harris’s team is already floating a list of potential running mates for the current vice-president, including the co-founder of one of the biggest gun control groups in the country.
According to CNN’s Jamie Gangel, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly is on the short list of potential running mates, a signal that Harris may make gun control one of the centerpieces of her campaign.
Gangel said Harris is considering Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as potential running mates.
“There are clearly others, but those four names are the names I keep hearing about,” Gangel said.
Of the four, only Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is even somewhat moderate on Second Amendment issues. Beshear allowed Constitutional Carry to take effect in Kentucky without a veto, though he never put pen to paper to officially sign the bill into law. Roy Cooper, on the other hand, vetoed the repeal of North Carolina’s permit-to-purchase law, though he was overridden by the state legislature. And Pennsylvaia Gov. Josh Shapiro has been a staunch advocate for more gun control laws going back to his time as the state’s Attorney General.
Kelly, however, is in a league of his own when it comes to gun control. As I wrote just a few days ago, when an Arizona Republic columnist floated Kelly as a replacement for Biden, he would make a fairly formidable candidate, at least on paper, but he also comes with a lot of anti-gun baggage… including his wife’s statement that the goal of the gun control organization she co-founded with her husband is “no more guns”.
Kelly has also been fairly quiet as a senator when it comes to his most important issue. He doesn’t routinely take to social media or the Senate floor to demand more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, like his colleague Chris Murphy, even though he’s a co-sponsor of the gun ban bill that would prohibit the sale and manufacture of the vast majority of semi-automatic rifles. Much of Kelly’s advocacy has taken place behind the scenes, so there aren’t a lot of outrageous Second Amendment-related soundbites that could be used against him in attack ads.
On the other hand, Moore is the only pundit I’ve seen to suggest Kelly as a replacement for Biden, so I think it’s fair to say he’s a dark horse candidate in a doubtful scenario where Biden willingly steps aside or is forced out at the convention. And if Kelly did manage to pull off an upset and emerge as the man at the top of the ticket, Giffords’ work to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms would become a major campaign issue between now and November, with his wife’s “no more guns” comment featured front and center in attack ads in key swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Early in Joe Biden’s administration he tried (and failed) to install Giffords’ senior advisor David Chipman as ATF Director. Will Harris do him one better by naming the co-founder of the same gun control group as her running mate? Biden/Harris was already the most anti-gun campaign in U.S. history, but elevating a committed gun control activist like Kelly to the number-two slot on the ticket would be even worse.
