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TagsBY TOM HESTER SR.
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who was shot in the head and critically wounded Saturday while meeting with constituents in Tucson, is married to astronaut and West Orange native Mark Kelly, who was scheduled to return to space next month.
Giffords' brother in law and Kelly's twin brother Scott Kelly, has been in space since October as commander of the International Space Station and is not scheduled to return to the United States until April.
Mark Kelly, 46, was scheduled to spend about eight days in the space station next month as commander of the Endeavor as the space craft makes the final mission of the space shuttle program. The Endeavor is to deliver equipment to the station.
It was to be the first time NASA has had siblings in space at the same time but it can be assumed that Kelly will miss the flight with his wife hospitalized. Doctors at Arizona University Hospital Saturday said they are hopeful Giffords, 40, will recover. She and Kelly were married on Nov. 30, 2007.The Kelly brothers worked together in West Orange as teenagers at a pizzeria and as volunteers with an ambulance crew in Orange. They graduated from West Orange High School in 1982. The brothers are former Navy pilots who joined NASA in 1996.
The Kellys' parents moved to Florida about 23 years ago.
Giffords, a Tucson native, was re-elected to her third term last November. She was first elected to Congress amid a wave of Democratic victories in the 2006 election. The former state lawmaker won a narrow victory against a tea party favorite in the 2010 election. She is the first Jewish person to hold a congressional seat in Arizona.
The shooting comes amid a highly charged political environment that has seen several dangerous threats against lawmakers but nothing that reached the point of actual violence.
The website Sarahpac.com posted a map with the districts of 20 Democratic members of Congress marked in the crosshairs of a rifle. Giffords is one of the Democrats targeted. No New Jersey Democratic Congressmen were on the list.
Giffords has drawn the ire of conservatives, especially for her support of the health care bill. Her Tucson office was vandalized a few hours after the House vote to approve the health care law in March, with someone either kicking or shooting out a glass door and window.
According to the Association Press, a San Francisco man upset with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's support of health care reform pleaded guilty to threatening the Democratic congresswoman and her family, calling her directly on March 25 and threatening to destroy her Northern California home if she voted for health care reform.
In July, a California man known for his anger over left-leaning politics engaged in a shootout with highway patrol officers after planning an attack on the ACLU and another nonprofit group. The man said he wanted to "start a revolution" by killing people at the ACLU and the Tides Foundation.
