Kel­ly could be Democ­rats’ secret weapon to blunt crit­i­cism of ‘bor­der czar’ Har­ris

As Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris and her team race to vet poten­tial run­ning mates fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s depar­ture from the 2024 race, Sen. Mark Kel­ly (D‑AZ) is emerg­ing as an asset who could help counter one of Harris’s biggest weak­ness­es: the administration’s han­dling of the bor­der cri­sis.
Sources have con­firmed Kel­ly is being vet­ted by Harris’s team. A for­mer Navy pilot and NASA astro­naut from a work­ing-class fam­i­ly in New Jer­sey, the Ari­zona sen­a­tor already has a strong resume made even more impact­ful by his pow­er­ful advo­ca­cy against gun vio­lence after his wife, then-Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords, sur­vived an assas­si­na­tion attempt dur­ing a mass shoot­ing in 2011. 
How­ev­er, it’s his exper­tise on the pol­i­tics of the U.S.-Mexico bor­der as the sen­a­tor of a bat­tle­ground state that shares sev­er­al bor­der cross­ings with Mex­i­co that could be one of his largest strengths. 
“Hav­ing some­one who under­stands how impor­tant it is for us to get tech­nol­o­gy and hire more Bor­der Patrol offi­cers and do bet­ter, quick­er vet­ting — all of those things S …