Arizona Dem says he'll welcome 'anybody' including Joe Biden on re-election campaign

Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly said on Sunday that he would be happy to welcome "anybody," including President Joe Biden. join him on the campaign trail as he looks to keep his seat against the Trump-endorsed challenger, Blake Masters.

Kelly was asked by Jake Tapper during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" whether he would like Biden to campaign in Arizona for him.

“Hey, I will welcome anybody to come to Arizona, travel around the state at any time — as long as I’m here, if I’m not up in Washington in session — and talk about what Arizona needs,” Kelly said.

Kelly would go on to tell Tapper that he was "not at all" worried about whether Biden was the best candidate for the Democrats in 2024, as polling for the president continue to reach new lows.

In May, Kelly, along with Krysten Sinema, was critical of Biden's response to the crisis at the southern border in Arizona and Texas.

"I've been down to the border, Douglas and Yuma. I’ve talked to sheriffs and mayors, and the two sector chiefs and their leadership teams. We've got a problem. The federal government has failed on this issue for decades now. Washington has to do better, and Arizonans are fed up. So, I'm just going to call it like I see it," Sen. Kelly told reporters.

Kelly, a former NASA astronaut, currently has an 8-point lead over Masters in the Senate race. 50 percent of respondents backed Kelly compared to 42 for Masters, the poll by Fox News shows.

Many Democrats have been more reluctant to sharing the campaign trail with Biden, whose popularity remains low amid a recession and soaring inflation.

In July, a New York Times/Siena College poll suggested that 75 percent of Americans believed the country is headed in the wrong direction. The Times wrote that the poll reflected a "country gripped by a pervasive sense of pessimism" with a sense of national dread that "spans every corner of the country, every age range and racial group, cities, suburbs and rural areas, as well as both political parties."

In April, another Fox News poll had only 2 in 10 Americans thinking that the country was going in the right direction.

In May, the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research found the same numbers as only about two in ten adults believed America was heading in the right direction or that the economy was in a good condition.

That same poll reported that 39 percent of adults in the US approved of Biden’s performance as president.