Kyrsten Sinema Is at the Center of It All. Some Arizonans Wish She Weren't.
The centrist senator is key to President Biden’s agenda in Washington. Her positions have angered some Democrats back home.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/us/kyrsten-sinema-voters.html
PHOENIX — Jade Duran once spent her weekends knocking on doors to campaign for Senator Kyrsten Sinema, the stubbornly centrist Democrat whose vote could seal the fate of a vast Democratic effort to remake America’s social safety net. But no more. When Ms. Sinema famously gave a thumbs down to a $15 minimum wage and refused to eliminate the filibuster to pass new voting rights laws this year, Ms. Duran, a Democrat and biomedical engineer from Phoenix, decided she was fed up. She joined dozens of liberal voters and civil rights activists in a rolling series of protests outside Ms. Sinema’s Phoenix offices, which have been taking place since the summer. Nearly 50 people have been arrested. “It really feels like she does not care about her voters,” said Ms. Duran, 33, who was arrested in July at a protest. “I will never vote for her again.”
Ms. Sinema, a onetime school social worker and Green Party-aligned activist, vaulted through the ranks of Arizona politics by running as a zealous bipartisan willing to break with her fellow Democrats. She counts John McCain, the Republican senator who died in 2018, as a hero, and has found support from independent voters and moderate suburban women in a state where Maverick is practically its own party. But now, Ms. Sinema is facing a growing political revolt at home from the voters who once counted themselves among her most devoted supporters. Many of the state’s most fervent Democrats now see her as an obstructionist whose refusal to sign on to a major social policy and climate change bill has helped imperil the party’s agenda. Little can proceed without the approval of Ms. Sinema, one of two marquee Democratic moderates in an evenly divided Senate. While she has balked at the $3.5 trillion price tag and some of the tax-raising provisions of the bill, which is opposed by all Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Washington and back home in Arizona have grown exasperated.
While the Senate Democrats’ other high-profile holdout, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, has publicly outlined his concerns with key elements of the Democratic agenda in statements to swarms of reporters, Ms. Sinema has been far more enigmatic and has largely declined to issue public comments. Mr. Biden, White House officials and Democrats have beseeched the two senators to publicly issue a price tag and key provisions of the legislation that they could accept. But there is little indication that Ms. Sinema has been willing to offer that, even privately to the administration. On Wednesday afternoon, she and a team from the White House huddled in her office for more than two hours on another day of what a spokesman for Ms. Sinema called good-faith negotiations.
“Kyrsten has always promised Arizonans she would be an independent voice for the state — not for either political party,” John LaBombard, a spokesman for the senator, wrote in an email responding to questions for the senator about her standing at home. “She’s delivered on that promise and has always been honest about where she stands.” That posture helped her win election to the Senate in 2018 from a state whose voters are roughly 35 percent Republican, 32 percent Democratic and 33 percent “other.” And for all the passions of the moment, Ms. Sinema is not up for election again until 2024.A breakthrough on the legislation could quell much
of the criticism and burnish Ms. Sinema’s image as a deal-maker who shepherded a related bipartisan infrastructure bill through the Senate. But liberals on Capitol Hill do not trust that she is actually willing to support the broader spending package.
A sit-in outside Senator Sinema’s Phoenix office in June to demand an end to the filibuster. Credit...Ash Ponders for The New York Times
snip
= new reply since forum marked as read
moved to the centre, towards the right, in 2013-14, after she was being attacked in her first re-election race. She was very much a lefty in the Arizona House (2004-2010) and AZ Senate (2012) before that.
In 2006, Sinema told a radio host that she was "the most liberal member of the Arizona State Legislature".
She is an ever-rightward-shifting chameleon and opportunist, with no real base political philosophy IMHO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrsten_Sinema
Early political involvement
Sinema began her political career in the Arizona Green Party before joining the Arizona Democratic Party in 2004. In 2000, Sinema worked on Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. In 2001 and 2002, she ran for local elected offices as an independent and lost. In 2002, The Arizona Republic published a letter from Sinema criticizing capitalism. "Until the average American realizes that capitalism damages her livelihood while augmenting the livelihoods of the wealthy, the Almighty Dollar will continue to rule", she wrote. She opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization during this time. She protested Senator Joe Lieberman's unsuccessful 2004 presidential bid, telling the Hartford Courant, "He’s a shame to Democrats ... I don’t even know why he’s running. He seems to want to get Republicans voting for him. What kind of strategy is that?" (OH THE IRONY!)
While in the Green Party, Sinema was its local spokesperson, working to repeal the death penalty and organizing antiwar protests. She had organized 15 antiwar rallies by the time the Iraq War began. She also opposed the war in Afghanistan. During a February 15, 2003, protest in Patriots Square Park in Phoenix, a group led by Sinema distributed flyers portraying a U.S. servicemember as a skeleton "inflicting 'U.S. terror' in Iraq and the Middle East". In a 2003 opinion piece, Sinema declared that Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were "the real Saddam and Osama lovers". When asked on a local radio show whether she would oppose someone joining the Taliban and fighting on its behalf, Sinema responded, "Fine ... I don't care if you want to do that, go ahead." During 2005 and 2006, Sinema co-hosted a radio show with 9/11 truther Jeff Farias.
snip
2014 (the rightward big move)
Sinema ran for re-election in 2014, and was unopposed in the Democratic primary, which took place on August 26, 2014. She faced Republican Wendy Rogers in the general election.
According to Roll Call, Sinema billed herself as bipartisan. This move was seen as a response to her district's voting pattern. It was drawn as a "fair-fight" district, and President Barack Obama won the district by four points in 2012. In September 2014 she was endorsed for re-election by the United States Chamber of Commerce, becoming one of five Democrats to be endorsed by the Chamber in the 2014 congressional election cycle. She was re-elected with approximately 55 percent of the vote, beating Rogers by 13 points.
snip
In the 2015th Congress, whilst still in the US House, she voted with Trump 62.6% of the time.
She and the centre-right DINO, forced birther/Republican campaigning/fundraising-for Henry Cuellar (huge Biden critic on immigration and a lead conservadem trying to scupper Biden's $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill in the House now) had by far the highest +/- ratings in all Dems in Congress (meaning they voted with Trump and the Rethugs far more than their districts predicted).
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/house/
