MArk Kelly knows a thing or two about flying high – both literally and otherwise. As a NASA astronaut, he participated in four space shuttle missions between 2001 and 2011, accumulating more than 54 days in space and covering more than 35 million kilometers. Now he’s a senator from Arizona who is on the shortlist to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. The political handicaps have Kelly sharing the clear path to the veepstakes with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Kelly’s supporters are citing his space experience as a reason why Harris should choose him. Nothing is cooler than an astronaut on the ballot, they argue. But time in space on the resume has never been a surefire winner with American voters. Three other NASA astronauts ran for – and won – high office, and two others tried and failed before reaching electoral orbit.
By far the most successful astropolitician to date was Ohio Democrat John Glenn, who became the first American to orbit the Earth before serving four terms in the U.S. Senate. Glenn underwent serial launch tests before finally taking off on February 20, 1962, and his Electoral career had similar false starts.
After his first mission to space made him a national star, Glenn was quietly removed from NASA’s flight rotation when President John Kennedy decided the U.S. could not risk his life again. Angered by his role as a lineman, Glenn resigned from NASA in 1964 and retired from the Marine Corps the same year, with his limit set for the Senate.
Almost a month into your first campaignHowever, he fell into an empty hotel bathtub while trying to fix a mirror, suffering a concussion and inner ear damage that doctors warned would require at least a year of rest and recovery. Glenn pulled the plug on that campaign. He ran for the Senate again in 1970, losing in the primary to Cleveland businessman Howard Metzenbaum, who went on to lose in the general election.
In 1974, Metzenbaum and Glenn faced off again, and this time, after a decade of trying, Glenn finally prevailed. He was helped in no small measure by a blatant case of political malpractice, when Metzenbaum accused the astronaut and war hero of never having had a real job. In the ensuing debate, Glenn recited his service in World War II and Korea and his 149 combat missions – as well as invoking the deaths of men less fortunate than himself, including astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, who lost their lives . in the Apollo 1 launch pad fire on January 27, 1967. He followed this with a rhetorical blowtorch:
“You sit there thinking about this nation and tell me that those people didn’t have jobs. I tell you, Howard Metzenbaum, you should be on your knees every day of your life thanking God that there are some men…some men – who had a job. And they demanded a dedication to purpose, a love of country and a dedication to duty that was more important than life itself. And their self-sacrifice is what made this country possible. I got a job, Howard!
Glenn strangled Metzenbaum in the primaries, with more than 56% of the votesand ran in the general election over Cleveland’s Republican mayor, Ralph J. Perk.
Throughout his 24 years in the Senate, Glenn served as Chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee and as a member of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees, and participated in more than 9,500 roll-call votes. But his career was not without flaws. In 1984, he joined a crowded group of Democrats who took on the suicide mission of running for their party’s presidential nomination to challenge the immensely popular Ronald Reagan. Glenn finished fifth in Iowa and near the back of the pack in New Hampshire and Super Tuesday and was out of the race in March. Former Vice President Walter Mondale won the dubious honor of winning the Democratic nomination – and lost 49 states to Reagan.
In 1989, Glenn was involved in the so-called Keating Five scandal, when he and four other legislators appeared to intervene with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board on behalf of campaign contributor and savings and loan owner Charles Keating. A Senate Ethics Committee concluded that Glenn exercised poor judgment but committed no wrongdoing.
Still, he ran for and won a fourth term in the Senate in 1992, before deciding to retire at the end of that term. In a conversation I had with him in the fall of 1998, he said he would greatly miss the Senate, but not the ritualized humiliation of constant fundraising, which he described as “a stinking, miserable way of managing life.”
On October 29, 1998, while still a senator, Glenn ended his career with a second trip to orbitaboard the space shuttle Discovery. At 77he was – and remains – the oldest person to fly in space.
Harrison Schmitt did not have the storied political career that Glenn enjoyed. A geologist and astronaut, he became the 12th of 12 men to set foot on the Moon, serving as lunar module pilot aboard the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. In 1976, he ran as a Republican for a Senate seat in New Mexico. , easily winning his primary battle against a little-known rival, and defeating Democratic incumbent Joseph Montoya, winning 24 of the state’s 32 counties.
But the good times were short-lived for Schmitt. After just one term in the Upper House, during which he chaired the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space, he lost re-election to State Attorney General Jeff Bingaman, who accused Schmitt of failing to meet the needs of New Mexicans, and campaigned on the pointed slogan: “What the hell has he done for you lately?” Not enough, voters decided, ousting Schmitt by a margin of 54% to 46%.
For Jack Swigert, things were even more difficult as bad luck dogged his career – both careers, in fact. In 1970, he served as a command module pilot aboard Apollo 13– the mission that was aborted when an explosion crippled the mothership 200,000 miles from home and nearly cost the crew their lives. Swigert and his crewmates Jim Lovell and Fred Haise escaped unharmed and in 1978, Swigert ran for a seat in the US Senate of Colorado, but was defeated in the primary.
In 1982, Colorado received a sixth congressional district — one that included Swigert’s home in Denver. He ran for the seat, but during the campaign he was diagnosed with bone cancer – which was disclosed, along with his doctors’ prognosis that the disease was beatable. It was not. Swigert won, but on December 27, a week before he was to be inaugurated, he died. Today, a statue of Swigert in his Apollo 13 spacesuit, with his helmet happily at his side, he is at Denver International Airport.
Two other astronauts—Jack Lousmawho flew aboard Skylab and in the space shuttle program, and José Hernandez, another space shuttle astronaut — ran for Senate and House, respectively. Both lost and both retired from politics after that.
Space and politics are high-risk ventures, with a high chance of reaching the professional category. Mark Kelly knows this at least as well as any of the people who preceded him in both fields. If Harris chooses him and they win in November, Kelly will have risen higher than any other astronaut-turned-politician in American history. If he loses the Veepstakes, the popular lawmaker who won the 2022 race by a comfortable Margin from 51.4% to 46.5%at least he has his Senate seat to keep him warm.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
