The rugged border lands around Douglas, Ariz., dip through precipitous canyons and shoot skyward on rocky mountain walls, impossible terrain for a 30-foot steel bollard wall but not for the cartels smuggling people and contraband from Mexico.
Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat under consideration to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, knows this expanse well — a fact that even the state’s Republicans acknowledge.
Donald Huish, the G.O.P. mayor of Douglas, recounted a phone call with Mr. Kelly two weeks ago, when the two men talked through progress on making the small city an official, expanded port of entry into the United States. The senator has pushed hard for the move, and Mr. Huish has embraced it. Both of them see the plan as a way to inject economic stability into the region and possibly defang the coyotes and cartels prowling the passes.
“What gets me about Senator Kelly is, yes, we’re in touch with staff on the issues, but he personally calls me on a regular basis, and I feel comfortable calling him,” said Mr. Huish, who identifies as a strongly conservative Republican. “I’m sure he’s taken some heat from some of his party concerning the border, but he understands it.”
Mr. Kelly, 60, is a relative newcomer to politics. But he would bring to the Democratic ticket a résumé as remarkable as any political consultant could dream of: He is the working-class son of New Jersey police officers, a Navy pilot who flew 39 combat missions off the U.S.S. Midway in Operation Desert Storm, and a NASA astronaut and engineer who collected debris from the Columbia disaster, commanded a shuttle as the United States returned to space and flew the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final mission.
Oh, and he is married to Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona representative whose near-fatal brain injury in a mass shooting made her a symbol against gun violence, in her battleground state and beyond.
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