Mark Kelly, potential VP pick, plans to be in Arizona next week

Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly says he’ll be in his home state of Arizona next week as speculation swirls around which running mate contender Kamala Harris will pick to join her on the ticket and an upcoming swing state tour.

“I'm not going to get into any of that,” Kelly told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday when asked if he will join the vice president on her campaign tour, which starts in Philadelphia on Tuesday. “I am going to be focused on making sure that Kamala is the next president. … I'm going to be traveling across the country tirelessly. Next week my plan right now is to be in Arizona.”

The interview, Kelly’s first on cable news since President Joe Biden exited the race, comes as Harris zeroes in on choosing her vice presidential pick from a pool that includes Kelly, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, POLITICO reported .

Although the border-state senator and former astronaut is less keen to wade into attack-dog politics than some contenders who have adopted furious media schedules , Democrats are looking at Kelly closely for how he messages on immigration and the border — issues that he’s comfortable talking about, but which have plagued Harris since she was assigned as vice president to address the root causes of migration to the United States from Central America. Harris hit back at Donald Trump’s “border czar” attacks during her Tuesday rally in Atlanta and released a digital advertisement that blamed the former president for dooming a bipartisan border bill in February that Harris supported but died in the Senate.

Kelly accused Republican Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, of planning to visit the border for a “photo op.” And he sought to defend Harris at every turn, praising her work on Central America, which originally drew the ire of some in the Biden administration and then became fodder for Republicans to label her as a failed leader on the border.

“The work she did in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, is now paying dividends,” Kelly said, describing his recent visit in Mexico with the country’s president and future president.

Kelly slammed Republicans for the failure of the bipartisan border legislation earlier this year — which he said was crafted “on the 10-yard line on their side of the field.”

“We had an agreement, we had the votes , and Donald Trump wakes up one morning and sees that he does not want this problem solved,” Kelly said. “Most [Senate Republicans], including J.D. Vance, didn't walk away from this problem — they ran away from it.”

And the vice presidential contender kept up his hits on Vance’s Senate record while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, also whacking him on his past comments where he said the Democratic party was run by “childless cat ladies” such as Harris.

“He's made some very obnoxious comments that are just wrong — where he feels more [empathy] about certain families than others, than people deciding when to have children, even to the point where he's talking about votes and who gets to vote,” Kelly told reporters.

Kelly also accused Vance of opposing a bipartisan tax package which includes an expansion of the child tax credit.

Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.