Arizona’s independent senator won’t run again
Ex-Democrat Kyrsten Sinema faced a 3-way primary contest in the state’s closely watched U.S. Senate race.
PHOENIX — Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced Tuesday that she won’t run for a second term after her decision to leave the Democratic Party left her politically homeless and without a clear path to reelection.
Sinema’s announcement comes after Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan bill to help secure the U.S.Mexico border and deliver military aid to Ukraine and Israel — a measure that Sinema spent months helping negotiate. She’d hoped the agreement would be a signature achievement addressing immigration — one of Washington’s most intractable challenges — as well as a powerful endorsement for her view that crossparty deal-making remains possible.
But in the end, Sinema’s border deal ambitions, and her career in Congress, were swallowed by the partisanship that has paralyzed Capitol Hill, she said.
“I love Arizona and I am so proud of what we’ve delivered,” she said in a video posted to social media. “Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year.”
Sinema’s decision avoids a three-way contest in one of the most closely watched 2024 Senate races, a hard-toforecast scenario that spawned fierce debate among political operatives about whether Democrats or Republicans would benefit in the quest for the Senate majority. Most analysts agreed Sinema would face significant, probably insurmountable hurdles if she sought reelection.
Sinema had raised money for a potential reelection campaign and significantly stepped up her public appearances in Arizona last year, but those activities had recently slowed.
During her five years in the Senate, she built a formidable campaign bank account,
pegged at $10.6 million at the end of December. But her quarterly fundraising was outpaced by that of rivals Ruben Gallego, a Democratic congressman, and Kari Lake, a Republican who lost her bid for Arizona governor in 2022.
Sinema, the first out bisexual person elected to the Senate, was a Democrat for most of her political career. But she left the party in late 2022, saying that she didn’t fit into the two-party system.
She alienated many of her colleagues and the Democratic Party’s base by blocking progressive priorities, often siding with business interests. And she went out of her way to build relationships with Republicans in an era of tribalistic party loyalty.
When Sinema declared herself an independent, Democrats feared she would split the left-of-center vote in a reelection run and allow a Republican to win.
The map in this year’s battle for control of the Senate is favorable for Republicans. Democrats must defend 23 seats, counting Sinema’s and two others held by independents allied with them, compared with just 10 seats for Republicans.
Sinema tried to build her
Senate career in the mold of John McCain’s. The late Arizona Republican’s willingness to buck the GOP infuriated his party’s base but endeared him to the state’s more centrist voters.
But she ended up hewing closer to the path of Jeff Flake, the state’s former Republican senator who stood against then-President Trump and became a pariah in his party. Like Sinema, Flake declined to run for a second term after it became clear he wouldn’t survive the primary.
Flake crossed the aisle in 2020 to endorse Democrat Joe Biden, who went on to appoint him as ambassador to Turkey.
Sinema didn’t say what the future holds for her. But in her video message announcing her departure, she blamed the current political
climate, saying, “Americans still choose to retreat farther to their partisan corners.”
“It’s all or nothing,” she said. “The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media.”
Her election in 2018 marked the first time in a generation that a Democrat had won a Senate seat from Arizona. It was the start of a period of ascendance for Democrats in a state long dominated by the GOP.
Sinema has been at the center of many of the biggest congressional deals of Biden’s presidency, from a bipartisan infrastructure package to a landmark bill to legally protect same-sex marriage.
She’s also been a reliable vote for Democrats on most nominations and bills. But
with the party hamstrung by a razor-thin majority, she refused to give her blessing to some of the progressive wing’s top priorities.
Her support for maintaining the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires 60 of 100 votes instead of a simple majority to pass most legislation, has been a particular source of frustration for progressives, who say it gives Republicans a veto despite Democrats’ majority. Sinema says it forces the bipartisan compromise that most voters crave.
She single-handedly thwarted Democrats’ longtime goal of raising taxes on wealthy investors. The year before, she received nearly $1 million from private equity professionals, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists whose taxes would have increased under the plan.
At times, she has seemed to take delight in serving as a roadblock. She curtsied while casting a vote against raising the minimum wage. A few weeks later, with backlash to that vote still fresh, she posted a photo on Instagram of herself wearing a ring that said “f— off.”
Progressives dialed up the pressure: Activists followed her into a bathroom seeking answers to their questions. Critics disrupted a wedding where she was a guest. And the Rev. Jesse Jackson was among demonstrators arrested in a protest outside her Phoenix office.
Long before she faced reelection, donors threatened to walk away, and several groups began collecting money to support an eventual Democratic challenger.
In 2022, before she became an independent, leaders of the Arizona Democratic Party formally censured Sinema, a symbolic move that carried no practical impact but was emblematic of the rupture of her relationship with the party.
Sinema began her political career as an antiwar activist. Describing herself as a “Prada socialist,” she ran unsuccessfully for local office as a member of the Green Party. She was later elected to the Arizona Legislature as a Democrat, where she became known as a witty, pithy and accessible voice against GOP bills, on speed dial for journalists covering the state.
But she came to believe she could be more effective building bridges with the Republican majority than publicly excoriating them, she wrote in her 2009 book, “Unite and Conquer,” which signaled the start of her move toward the center and the persona that has formed her national brand.