Gabrielle Giffords for Senate in 2012?

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had reportedly expressed interest in the junior Arizona Senate seat before the Tuscon shootings and some say she should have the right of first refusal.

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last updated 8 January 2015

Sen. Jon Kyl's (R-Ariz.) announcement that he won't run in 2012 gives the Democrats an unexpected shot at picking up his Arizona Senate seat. And the Democrat to beat, according to several reports, would ideally be Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. She reportedly expressed interest in Kyl's seat before she was shot in the head, and "she ought to have the right of first refusal," a loyal Democratic source tells Talking Points Memo. Giffords is making a "miraculous" recovery, but is it at all plausible that she could run for Senate? (Watch a report about the Giffords speculation)

Giffords would be a "shoo-in": If Giffords "wants the seat, it's hers," says Valerie Richardson in The Washington Times. With "100 percent name identification and 100 percent sympathy from the public," as Arizona pollster Bruce Merrill notes, at least hypothetically there's simply "nobody who could beat her."

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This is a "fairy-tale scenario": Giffords is recovering at impressive speed, but a 2012 Senate run is nothing more than "a remote possibility," says Nate Silver in The New York Times. An intense Senate campaign "would presumably require relatively full use of one’s mental faculties," and Democrats will almost certainly have to field a "weaker" candidate in this "somewhat Republican state." All things considered, their odds of taking Kyl's seat is "probably on the order of 20 to 25 percent."

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