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Kelly defeated Republican Senator Martha McSally in a special election by over 78,000 votes.
Retired sea captain and NASA astronaut, Kelly was widely considered one of the Democratic Party’s strongest recruits in 2020. He is married to former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot and nearly killed in 2011 and is now a leader of the movement. against armed violence.
McSally was appointed by Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, to take the seat formerly held by the late Senator John McCain after narrowly losing a race to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema for the other Arizona Senate seat in 2018 .
With Kelly’s election, the fight over which party controls the chamber hinges on the outcome of two Georgia Senate second-round elections to be held in January.
Kelly and her identical twin brother Scott were chosen to be astronauts in 1996.
The Senator-elect flew his first space mission in 2001 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor, and he completed three other missions. Kelly, 56, also spent more than 50 days in space and lived on the International Space Station before retiring from NASA in 2011.
Kelly has campaigned to improve gun safety laws, improve services for veterans, and quality health care for Arizonans. In 2013, he and Giffords co-founded Giffords, a gun violence prevention organization following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
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