In 2015, the former US astronaut Mark Kelly made a grand entrance onto a stage in China, riding a motorcycle with American and Chinese flags displayed on its handlebars.
“I took Shaklee vitamins and the Shaklee rehydration drink while in orbit aboard the space shuttle,” Kelly, now a Democratic US senator from Arizona since 2020, told his audience during his sales pitch for would-be Shaklee franchisees.
Nine years later, in a highly charged US election year – where any association with China could jeopardise a politician’s ambitions for higher office – a minute-long video of that appearance is circulating on social media amid reports that US Vice-President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, might select Kelly as her running mate.
Kelly is reportedly competing with three Democratic governors – Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania – for the selection as vice-presidential candidate.
After the video resurfaced, several supporters of the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on X, a social media platform owned by the billionaire Elon Musk who has himself endorsed Trump, castigated Kelly, one calling him a “sell-out” to China.
Shaklee is a California-based manufacturer and multilevel marketing distributor of nutritional supplements. Starting in 1993, it supplied Nasa, the US space agency, with a customised version of its rehydration beverage until the end of the Nasa shuttle programme in 2011.
According to a 2019 Huffington Post report on Kelly’s Senate campaign that year, he was paid for at least three of these events – but only one in China – between 2011 and 2016. More recently, the New York Post reported that Kelly earned US$50,000 from Shaklee speeches in 2011 alone.
The video was also posted in 2020 on the account on X, then known as Twitter, of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which decried Kelly’s “dangerous ties to China”.
The controversy was the second China-related issue involving Kelly this week. Earlier, reports emerged he had co-founded a company called World View that specialised in space tourism and spy balloons; venture capital for the firm came from the Chinese tech giant Tencent in 2012.
In a statement, Tencent said that it stopped investing once World View’s business model moved away from space tourism. According to reports, Tencent made investments in 2013 and 2016.
World View told Fox News that after its management changed in 2019, the company distanced itself from China. But some Trump supporters on social media still accused Kelly of starting a company “funded by China”.
Last year, shortly after taking control of the House, Republicans removed Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, from the House Intelligence Committee following 2021 allegations that he had connections with a Chinese spy. A House ethics panel investigation concluded that May, finding no evidence of any wrongdoing by Swalwell.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released on Thursday found that among Democrats, at least 45 per cent view Kelly favourably, the highest of any potential Democratic running mate.
