Gov. Ducey, time to name McSally to the Senate

On Day 7 of Election Night in Arizona, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema became Sen.-elect Sinema.

While Republican Party leaders try to regain their temporarily (I hope) lost sanity and get over it, consider this:

Republican Martha McSally soon could be called Sen. McSally.

More than 1 million Arizona voters wanted to see the former fighter-pilot-turned-southern-Arizona congresswoman in the Senate.

Gov. Doug Ducey could grant them their wish.

Ducey could appoint McSally to the late Sen. John McCain’s Senate seat, the one that placeholder Jon Kyl is expected to leave by year’s end.

There would have been a time that I would have skewered the governor for appointing the loser of an election to the very job for which that person had run. Ignoring the will of voters and all that. In fact, that time wasn’t all that long ago. (September, in fact.)

The razor’s edge outcome of this race has made me reconsider.

We are living in deeply, deeply divided times and it strikes me of late that there are no real winners here.

Oh, battles are won, just as Sinema has won, becoming the first Democrat in 30 years to be elected to the Senate from Arizona. That is no small feat.

But the war continues and we in Arizona — as in America — are at each other’s throats. We have big problems in this country and we are solving ... none of them.

It’d be nice if Republicans, in their better moments, would acknowledge that Sinema is not going to morph into some wild-eyed, tie-dyed, tutu-wearing socialist. She’s going to chart a center course, just as she did for the past six years in the House, leaving the folks at MoveOn.org to grind their teeth.

It’d be nice, too, if Democrats, in their better moments, would acknowledge that McSally, if appointed, could fairly represent what continues to be a center-right state.

I was critical of her calculated decision to cuddle up to President Donald Trump, bending to the baser instincts of her party’s base after having sent signals she disapproved of Trump’s behavior. But here in the land of reality, elections are tricky things and had she not done so, we’d have had to endure two more months of Kelli Ward.

I hope that McSally would return to her congressional roots as a more moderate voice than the one portrayed during this campaign — the one that allowed her to represent the state’s most competitive district.

Ducey, who must by law appoint a Republican should Kyl resign, could apply some desperately needed salve to the open, gaping wound that is postelection Arizona.

Appoint McSally, Governor. Here’s what I said when McSally

entered the race last November:

“She’s a retired Air Force colonel — the first woman to fly combat missions, the first to command a fighter squadron. She represents a swing district in Congress yet has been President Donald Trump’s most reliable vote in Arizona’s delegation, according to FiveThirtyEight.

“She’s a fundraising machine and has shown herself willing to work across the political aisle.”

One year later, I’m guessing she is still that woman.