Kyrsten Sinema won Democrats a U.S. Senate seat from Arizona for the first time in a generation thanks in no small part to unity in her party and division among Republicans.
\nThat Democratic unity of 2018 was on display again in the next two election cycles as the party picked up Arizona\u2019s other Senate seat and won the top three state offices.
\nBut that winning formula is in jeopardy ahead of the 2024 election because of Sinema\u2019s estrangement and subsequent divorce from the Democratic Party, which could complicate President Joe Biden\u2019s path to reelection and the party\u2019s hopes for maintaining control of the Senate. She registered as an independent shortly after last year\u2019s midterm elections.
\nDemocrats are already voicing fears that a three-way race with Sinema picking up votes from both Democrats and independents could hand the seat to a Republican such as Kari Lake, the failed gubernatorial candidate and one of the country\u2019s most prominent election deniers.
\n\u201cIf there were ever a time for her to listen to her constituents for once, it\u2019d be now,\u201d said Alex Gomez, executive director of the Latino organizing group Living United for Change in Arizona, which has tangled with Sinema for years. \u201cShe needs to step aside. The potential candidacy of a Kari Lake presents a clear and present danger to our democracy.\u201d
\nSinema has not said whether she will seek reelection, and Lake has not announced a Senate campaign. But the race already has a Democratic candidate in U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Latino military veteran who kicked off his campaign last month after spending years as one of Sinema\u2019s chief antagonists.
\nGallego says he raised more than $1 million on his first day in the race, capitalizing on pent-up anger with Sinema among Democrats.
\nThe Senate race is not the only new sign of Democratic division in the state. The Arizona Democratic Party last month had its first contested election for chair in 12 years, pitting a candidate backed by Gov. Katie Hobbs against one backed by most of the state\u2019s other elected Democrats.
\nThe party elected longtime union leader Yolanda Bejarano, who was endorsed by U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, Gallego and others, bucking the tradition of deferring to the preference of a Democratic governor. Hobbs said Thursday she had not yet spoken to Bejarano \u2014 nearly a week after the election.
\nThe party discord in Arizona reverberates beyond the state.
\nNext year, Democrats, who have a narrow 51-49 Senate majority, are defending seats in 23 states \u2014 including seven where Donald Trump won at least once. That includes Arizona, where Trump won in 2016 but where Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state in more than two decades.
\nSinema\u2019s political career began with roots in the progressive left and antiwar movement. She first ran for office as a Green Party candidate and lost badly, later winning a state legislative seat as a Democrat. She remade herself as a moderate in the U.S. House and parlayed that reputation into a Senate victory.
\nHer 2018 Senate win was fueled by a number of factors, including the state\u2019s changing demographics, contempt for Trump among suburban women and Sinema\u2019s spending advantage over Republican Martha McSally.
\nBut McSally\u2019s 2018 campaign strategists laid some of the blame for her loss on Democratic unity behind Sinema and Republican infighting. With Democrats in lockstep, Sinema had a head start on reaching out to swing voters, while McSally focused on holding the GOP together to win her primary, campaign officials wrote in a memo that circulated widely after the election.
\nWhen Sinema was sworn into office in 2019, Trump was in the White House, Republicans were in control of both chambers of Congress and Democrats were unified in opposition.
\nBut her relationship with the party ruptured during Biden\u2019s presidency as she teamed up with fellow moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and became a roadblock for parts of the president\u2019s agenda and many progressive priorities.
\nShe is one of the Senate\u2019s most vociferous defenders of the filibuster rule, which requires 60 of 100 votes to pass most legislation, and which many Democrats say empowers Republicans to overrule the will of the Democratic majority.
\nSinema says she\u2019s focused on crafting bipartisan deals that can outlive any one party\u2019s control of Congress and points to victories, including a massive infrastructure bill and protections for same-sex marriage.
\nHer transformation from liberal rabble-rouser into Democratic irritant has left the base feeling angry and betrayed just four years after her victory brought Arizona Democrats in from the cold.
\n\u201cAs long as Sinema\u2019s off the team, that\u2019s all that matters,\u201d said Dave Crose, a 67-year-old retired mechanical engineer from Sun City who voted for Sinema in 2018 but has grown disillusioned with her. \u201cThat\u2019s a bad thing to say, but she screwed everyone in the state, so payback\u2019s her hell.\u201d
\nFor Democrats, long shut out from the halls of power, winning was enough to paper over ideological divides, but now they have shown they can win and it wasn\u2019t a fluke.
\n\u201cWhen you have power, everyone wants a piece and there\u2019s actually something to fight over,\u201d said Barrett Marson, a Republican political consultant in Phoenix aligned with the party\u2019s establishment wing.
\nOne thing Democrats have going for them: Republicans aren\u2019t likely to be any less divided than they\u2019ve been since Trump took over the party in 2016.
\nWith the Sinema vs. Gallego drama raising some uncomfortable questions, Democrats in Arizona and Washington have tried to put off picking sides.
\nSenate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said after Gallego\u2019s announcement that \u201cit\u2019s much too early to make a decision\u201d about the 2024 race.
\nKelly also declined to wade too deeply into the dynamics of a potential three-way race, saying \u201cthere\u2019s plenty of time\u201d to sort it out.
\n\u201cI\u2019m not going to get ahead of Sen. Sinema on this,\u201d he told reporters at the Capitol. \u201cI\u2019m going to work with both of of them.\u201d
\nNotably, however, Hobbs subtly suggested she would not be supporting her old friend Sinema. Hobbs and Sinema are both former social workers who campaigned together for the state Legislature a decade ago, Sinema getting elected to the Senate and Hobbs to the House.
\nCongratulating the new Arizona Democratic Party leadership team on Twitter, Hobbs wrote that she looks forward to helping the party \u201cwin back our US House & Senate seats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Apnews<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aDemocrat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kyrsten Sinema won Democrats a U.S. Senate seat from Arizona for the first time in a generation thanks in no small part to unity in her party and division among Republicans. That Democratic unity of 2018 was on display again in the next two election cycles as the party picked up Arizona\u2019s other Senate seat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2031,1753,2297],"class_list":["post-5389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-arizona","tag-party","tag-sinema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5389"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5391,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389\/revisions\/5391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}