‘Two for one’: Gabby Giffords, wife of VP contender Mark Kelly, is a force herself

As Vice President Kamala Harris and her team weigh her running mate options, one of her top contenders, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), comes with a powerful spouse, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a leader in the movement to end gun violence after she survived an assassination attempt in 2011.

Giffords, who married Kelly in 2007 and leads a national gun control organization, has been hitting the campaign trail for Harris in battleground states, with stops in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Monday and last week in Philadelphia. According to Giffords aides, the former Arizona congresswoman’s appearances had long been planned even before her husband was under consideration to be Harris’s running mate.

Her organization announced a $15 million campaign last week to help boost Harris and House candidates in battleground districts who have been advocating stricter gun laws. The group spent over $11 million in the 2020 campaign, according to campaign finance records.

“We are at a crossroads,” Giffords said at the event in Grand Rapids. “We let the shooting continue, or we can act. We can protect our families, our future. We can vote. We can be on the right side of history. Please join us in this fight.”

Giffords was nearly killed after being shot in the brain during a 2011 mass shooting at a constituent meeting outside a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona. Six people died, including one of Giffords’s aides, Gabe Zimmerman.

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Eight months after the shooting, Giffords attempted to return to her work as a congresswoman to cast a vote on the debt ceiling, but she decided to resign a year later. The shooting left her partially paralyzed on her right side, and the bullet destroyed portions of her brain that enabled her to speak fluently.

The former congresswoman had been seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, and the shooting changed the trajectory of her life.

“The irony is she would have been the senator from Arizona had she not been shot,” said Chuck Coughlin, a longtime Republican strategist in Arizona who left the party during the Trump era. “She was being that bipartisan compromiser, everyone was looking at her and her bright political future.”

The organization Giffords founded in the wake of the shooting is a commanding force that has been involved in passing hundreds of laws at the state level to restrict access to firearms. In 2023, the group was able to trace some of its lobbying efforts back to $1 billion in community safety gun grants and $75 million in federal research on gun violence. In addition, 460 Giffords-backed candidates were elected to state or federal offices, according to reporting from Time, since last year, when the organization turned 10 years old.

“Anyone that knows Gabby Giffords, certainly anyone that knows Gabby Giffords well, isn’t the least bit surprised that after a decade with her sunny, incredibly sunny disposition, the glass-is-half-full approach to life and to any problem, that Giffords has had the success that it’s had,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said in an interview with TIME.

Wasserman Schultz’s friendship with Giffords dates back to when they were first serving in their respective state legislatures. The Florida congresswoman flew to her bedside after the 2011 shooting and was there when she first opened her eyes.

Beyond campaigning for Harris, Giffords has been in the spotlight recently in light of several current events. She was among the first to speak out after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

“Political violence is terrifying. I know,” Giffords said on X. “I’m holding former President Trump, and all those affected by today’s indefensible act of violence in my heart. Political violence is un-American and is never acceptable — never.”

As Harris’s team weighs its choices for a running mate, some believe Kelly’s vice presidential chances are boosted by his wife’s star power and advocacy. Many are highlighting his willingness to stand by her, and even at times in her shadow.

“I still can picture him holding her hand as she testified at congressional hearings,” a Democratic strategist with ties to Arizona said, speaking under condition of anonymity. “He’s been her biggest supporter over the years. I think the Harris team has to be taking that into consideration since the person chosen as vice president will need to be able to take orders and be in the shadow of a woman. That sounds simple, but it’s never been done in the history of our country before, if Harris is elected.”

Giffords is already getting a head start going on offense against Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, who has been at the center of a firestorm over his resurfaced remarks that the country was being run by “childless cat ladies.”

She sounded off on social media, slamming his comments. Giffords and Kelly have previously opened up about their heartbreak about not being able to have children after the shooting.

“Vice President @KamalaHarris is a proud mom of two remarkable stepchildren—and so am I,” Giffords wrote on X. “@CaptMarkKelly and I were trying to have a baby through IVF before I was shot and that dream was stolen from us. To suggest we are somehow lesser is disgraceful.”

Not only has Kelly found support from Democrats after being elected to the Senate in 2020 and winning a full term in 2022, but many view him and Giffords favorably across the aisle as well.

“She’s a beloved figure in Arizona politics, both Republican and Democrat,” Coughlin said. “I mean, at least traditional Republicans. If Harris chooses Kelly, he’s sort of getting a two-for-one deal.

“You would think that his personal testimony of what his family has been through — and not to mention he’s a big gun owner himself, a fighter pilot, an astronaut — it’s unbelievable the kind of cache he brings to the table,” Coughlin added.

At the event last week in Philadelphia, Giffords demurred when asked whether she had considered becoming the second lady, if her husband was chosen as the Democratic vice presidential nominee and elected. However, she spoke highly of her husband.

“He is my best friend, he is so funny, funny, funny,” she said. “I love him a lot.”