RUTHFULLY YOURS

Elections have consequences.  Whether voting for president or senator, Americans should be wary of those who avoid discussing their stands on the issues.  When Joe Biden and Mark Kelly do talk about the issues, it is obvious that their views are in line with the leftists.  Just because Mark Kelly’s name has the astronaut title, that does not mean that it should change to the title of senator.  Those who might think of voting for him should look at his stance or non-stance on the issues.  American Thinker interviewed some Arizonans who spoke about how Kelly is not right for Arizona.

David Eppihimer, the Pima County Republican Party chairman, strongly believes that “Mark Kelly tries to portray himself as an Arizonan, but he is not.  I believe he is a Texan and maintains a home there.  He wants to make himself out as an independent from Arizona.  This is how Kyrsten Sinema got elected to the Senate, by portraying herself effectively as a centrist, not as a hardline Democrat, which she is.  Kelly will vote straight down the Democratic/Chuck Schumer party line.”

Mark Kelly has also aligned himself with Joe Biden.  Kelly made his support known in a tweet: “Joe Biden understands the challenges Arizonans face and knows what it’s like to be knocked down, get back up, and keep serving others.  We need a president who will unite us and find common ground to get things done.  That’s why I’ll be voting for Joe Biden.”

Arizona is a permit- less carry or Constitutional Carry gun state.  This seems to be endangered if Mark Kelly is elected senator, considering that Joe Biden has announced he would make Beto O’Rourke his gun czar, the same person who openly advocates for gun confiscation.  Kelly has called for gun control but touts it as a moderate stance.  Yet the New York Times had this headline in October, 2019, “Is Arizona Shifting on Gun Control? Senate Race May Offer an Answer.”  The article points out issues Kelly wants to focus on, stating, “Conspicuously missing from that list: gun control.”  But Arizonans should be wary, considering that Kelly said this: “But a gun is a pretty simple thing.  It’s not a fighter jet.  It’s not a spaceship.  It’s a basic instrument designed for one thing: to kill.”  Eppihimer says, “This whole environment with rioters is changing the narrative because people need guns to protect themselves, their family, and their businesses.”

Kelly’s stand on education is aligned with Biden.  The Democratic presidential candidate has said that to expand the federal government’s power over education by “[f]or-profit charter schools should be banned[.] … [R]equire charter schools … to abide by the laws and regulations applicable to traditional public schools, and oppose any and all voucher and neo-voucher programs such as Education Savings Accounts and Tax-credit Scholarship programs.”  There is no mistaking Kelly’s stand, considering that on his website, he says he is a proud product of public education and that he stands “with teachers as they fight for higher pay and more funding.”

Dr. Kelli Ward, the chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, says Senator Martha McSally understands that “education is not a one-size-fits-all policy because it does not work.  Joe Biden and Mark Kelly will force students into staying with failing schools.  This harms the low-income student because they do not have the resources.  The COVID-19 virus has awoken parents to see their options, whether public schools, charter schools, private schools, or homeschooling.”

In May of this year, Biden announced that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the co-author of the “Green New Deal,” will be co-chairwoman of his campaign task force on climate change.  The GND calls for the elimination of all fossil fuel energy production, the lifeblood of American industry and life, including not only all oil, but also natural gas, eliminating all nuclear power, to eliminate 99 percent of cars that have combustion engines, to gut and rebuild every building in America, including every home, factory, and apartment buildings, to eliminate air travel, and to ban meat.  Arizona has many cattle ranchers.  What would happen to that industry?

Kelly proudly endorses a radical climate change agenda, although he has not publicly endorsed the GND.  He has commented, “Left unchecked, climate change poses a threat to Arizona’s economy and our way of life.  As one of the nation’s leading producers of renewable energy, this is also an opportunity for Arizona.”

Regarding national security, just as Joe Biden and his son had ties to China, so does Mark Kelly.  China has shown its hand, and Americans should be very wary of those politicians in China’s back pocket.  Just look at this video, where Kelly is on a motorcycle with both the American and Chinese flags.  In the fall of 2014, the CEO of World View Enterprises, the company Kelly co-founded, announced during a visit to Beijing that Tencent had invested an undisclosed sum of money in the Tucson-based space travel venture.  Several prominent lawmakers said Tencent is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party and a threat to U.S. national security.  Republican senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley in late April introduced a bill aimed at preventing Chinese espionage by prohibiting U.S. federal employees from conducting official business over platforms run by Tencent.  Like Joe Biden, who had his son working alongside the Chinese, Kelly’s oldest daughter works for Tencent.  When RealClearPolitics tried to get him to explain his association, he sidestepped the questions.

Dr. Kelli Ward points out how Nike has decided not to have a plant in Goodyear, Arizona.  She noted to American Thinker, “They have slave labor in China, but the company is not going to help Americans have jobs.  Mark Kelly has not commented and loves to keep quiet.  Patriotic Americans understand Nike is using slave labor in China while having as a spokesman Colin Kaepernick, who hates America.  Nike and the Democrats are massive hypocrites, and I am hoping people wake up and see through them.”

Another national security issue is border security.  Kelly has lambasted the Trump administration: “Let me be clear: we can’t be taking children away from their parents and locking them in cages.  I don’t think that’s who we are as a country.”  Art Del Cueto, a vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, tells American Thinker how he was dissed by Mark Kelly.  “In 2016, after a Tucson Veterans’ Day parade, I went over to say hi to him.  He turned around and saw I was on the Border Patrol Council and then made the hand gesture to go away.  Since I am Hispanic, if he was part of a different political party, people would yell he was a racist.”

Regarding border security, Art, who is on the front lines, does not think Kelly believes in border security.  “His outcry about children in cages happened during the Obama/Biden administration, not the Trump administration.  The separation of children from parents is because they were crossing by themselves and there was no parent present.  At the end of the day, I think Mark Kelly is an extremist and is out for his own gain.”

Eppihimer says that besides his leftist stances on other issues, “Mark Kelly is talking in general terms.  He never gets into the specifics, whether on health care, the economy, or education.  He is not campaigning personally, but does it with commercials where almost every TV break is a Mark Kelly commercial.  He is using the Joe Biden playbook, where he is not coming out to face the constituents on the issues and answering their questions on where he stands.”

Dr. Kelli Ward agrees: “He is just like Hidin’ Biden.  He is a slick far leftist progressive who wants to trick Arizonans to vote for him.  The vast majority of Arizona voters are deeply patriotic, vastly independent, and will make sure they are educated when entering the voter booth.”

The Arizona seat is important to make sure the Republicans keep the majority in the Senate.  It is obvious that Mark Kelly is not in line with Arizonans and Americans on the issues.  While he will support the Democratic progressive agenda, Senator McSally is working to make sure Arizonans and Americans are the top priority.  The best example to see how she cares versus the Democrats is her proposal for Congress to pass a simple seven-day extension of expanded unemployment benefits that Chuck Schumer blocked.  Arizonans, Americans, and the Senate need more leaders like Martha McSally and not someone like Mark Kelly.

The author writes for American Thinker.  She has done book reviews and author interviews and has written a number of national security, political, and foreign policy articles.