If you’re a conservative, it’s not presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris you fear. It’s her running mate.

That is, of course, if she chooses the right running mate.

And it’s beginning to look like she could.

Mark Kelly is on the short list of names for the No. 2 spot, and he’s rapidly rising as the popular choice.

On Monday, Karen Tumulty, the long-respected political writer and commentator for the Los Angeles Times and now The Washington Post, wrote that Harris’ "smartest selection would be Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.”

CNN’s special correspondent Jamie Gangel said the Harris team had given her names. The first she mentioned was Kelly, “who I am told (Harris) likes a lot, knows very well, and as we saw ... he has already come out to endorse her publicly. That happened very quickly, and I know their camps speak to each other quite often.”

Kelly’s third career would not bring much to the ticket. He’s a neophyte politician, a first-term senator just beginning to create a record.

Even so, his mind-bending first and second careers as a Navy fighter pilot and a NASA astronaut are his ticket to ride. They earned him entrée to the U.S. Senate in his initial run for office.

Those are extraordinary things to have done in one’s life, and they bulk up his profile and make him a legitimate contender for the vice presidential spot. If he gets it, he might one day fly wing to the first woman president of the United States.........

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