A liberal organization that exists specifically to get scientists into elected office has decided that the antidote to RFK Jr. running public health policy might be a literal astronaut running for president. 314 Action Fund is publicly urging Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly to launch a 2028 presidential campaign, and given what's currently happening to American science funding, you can see why they're not waiting around.
Who Is 314 Action Fund and Why Should You Care
According to Axios, 314 Action Fund has spent the better part of a decade trying to get people with actual science credentials into the halls of power. The group says it raised more than $100 million over that stretch, including $25 million during the 2026 midterm cycle alone. More than half of that 2026 money went toward Democratic primaries, which tells you something about the group's strategy: they're not just playing defense in general elections, they're trying to reshape who the Democratic Party sends into the fight in the first place.
The name, if you didn't catch it, is a reference to pi. These are the kind of people who name their political action committee after an irrational number. They are very online and they have $100 million. This is relevant context.
The group has spent this cycle elevating candidates who can credibly push back on what's happened to public health policy under the Trump administration. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running the Department of Health and Human Services, that's not a small task. Having someone who has literally been to space tell voters that vaccines work is, in their calculation, a pretty strong counter-programming move.
Mark Kelly, Former Astronaut, Current Senator, Possible Presidential Candidate
Kelly is not your average politician, and that is precisely the point. He's a retired NASA astronaut and former Navy combat pilot who flew 39 combat missions and four space shuttle missions before winning a Senate seat in Arizona in 2020. He won reelection in 2022. His wife is former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011 and has since become one of the most prominent gun control advocates in the country.
Kelly has positioned himself as a straightforward, facts-first Democrat in a state that has been trending purple. He talks about climate, veterans, and border security in ways that tend to make him harder to caricature than most members of his party. Republicans have tried anyway, with limited success.
Whether Kelly has any interest in a presidential run is, at this point, unclear. 314 Action Fund is making a public pitch, not announcing a campaign. But the group clearly believes the ask is worth making out loud, which is itself a signal about how the early 2028 conversation is shaping up on the Democratic side.
The Anti-Science Administration That Made This Pitch Necessary
Let's be direct about the context here. 314 Action Fund is not drafting a senator for a presidential run because things are going great for American science policy. This is a reaction to something specific, and that something is the last several years of the Trump administration systematically dismantling the infrastructure that the United States built over decades to protect public health, fund research, and maintain at least a passing relationship with empirical reality.
RFK Jr. at HHS is the most visible symptom. A man who spent years promoting vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories about public health agencies now runs those agencies. CDC guidance has been undermined. NIH funding has been cut or redirected. Public health experts have been pushed out or have left in protest. The people whose entire professional lives involved understanding how viruses spread or how drugs interact with the human body are watching someone who does not believe what they believe run the department that is supposed to implement what they know.
This is the environment in which a group that backs scientists for office is telling an astronaut-senator to run for president. The cause and effect is not subtle.
What a Kelly Campaign Would Actually Look Like
The 2028 Democratic primary is, at this point, a wide-open field. No obvious frontrunner has emerged, the party is still sorting through what went wrong in 2024, and there's an active argument happening about whether Democrats need to move left, move center, or just find someone who can communicate basic ideas to people who stopped watching cable news a decade ago.
Kelly would fit a particular lane. He's a moderate with a biography that is genuinely extraordinary, which is different from a politician who calls himself a moderate because he's afraid of his own shadow. He's from a competitive state. He has a record on gun safety that comes with personal weight behind it. And he has the kind of calm, mission-oriented affect that tends to poll well with voters who say they want competence over chaos, which, polling consistently shows, is most of them.
Whether that's enough to win a Democratic primary is a separate question. Primaries reward passion and organization, and a group of science-minded donors encouraging you to run is a long way from the infrastructure you need to actually compete in Iowa and New Hampshire. But someone has to be the candidate. 314 Action Fund has placed their bet on who it should be.
The Dingo Take
A group of people who named their PAC after pi is telling an astronaut to run for president against the guy who thinks vaccines cause autism. This sentence is real. It describes the actual state of American politics in 2026. Let that breathe for a second.
314 Action Fund is doing something strategically coherent, even if the situation that made it necessary is completely unhinged. When one party spends years burning down the credibility of scientific institutions, the opposition eventually figures out that running scientists is a good counter-move. Kelly is not a sure thing, and nobody should pretend the 2028 primary is going to be simple or clean. But the instinct here, to put someone on the stage who can look voters in the eye and say 'I have seen the Earth from orbit, I understand how rocket propulsion works, I am not going to tell you that sunlight cures disease,' is not a crazy one.
The harder question is whether Democratic voters, who spent 2024 tearing themselves apart over ideology and vibes, are ready to coalesce around someone who is going to run on competence and credibility rather than a maximalist policy platform. History suggests that's a genuinely difficult sell in a primary. But if the choice in November 2028 is between an astronaut and whoever the Republican Party produces next, the argument for putting Mark Kelly on the ticket basically writes itself.
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