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.
Jade Duran once spent her weekends knocking on doors to campaign for Senator Kyrsten Sinema...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.”
I celebrated Sinema's election passionately. She has turned out to be a disgusting disappointment.
...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... as a hero, and has found support from independent voters and moderate suburban women in a state where Maverick is practically its own party.
Then we should break with her.
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.
Why did she run as a Democrat? To "break" with Democrats? To break with the Democratic presidential candidate who won her state?!
Little can proceed without the approval of Ms. Sinema...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.
Manchin...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.
So she's just breaking to break. No more specific reason. What bullshit.
In the closely divided Phoenix suburbs that were crucial to Democrats’ recent wins in Arizona, some...voters...said they had been calling and writing Ms. Sinema for months and now worried that the Democrats’ best chance to advance major policies was slipping away because of their senator.
Over the weekend, the state’s Democratic Party threatened a symbolic vote of no confidence against Ms. Sinema. Dissatisfied donors and activists are starting a Primary Sinema political action committee to raise money to fund primary challengers in 2024 if she blocks the Democratic agenda in Washington.
...
Many of the youngest activists now agitating the loudest against Ms. Sinema said they felt betrayed because she seemed so much like them. At 45, she is practically a teenager by the Senate’s octogenarian standards. She is an Ironman triathlete, the first openly bisexual member of Congress...
“I believed in what it would mean to have a queer representative who believed in the climate crisis,” said Casey Clowes, 29, who has demonstrated outside Ms. Sinema’s offices with the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led group focused on climate change. “I knocked on doors for her. I was an intern for her campaign. I really believed.”
Mary Kay Yearin, a lifelong Democrat...[said] “Her vote matters so much. She seems like a Republican in Democrats’ clothing.”
A Green bipartisan, bisexual. She's used to cross-dressing.
...
And to what end? Is a queer Greenie going to get Republican votes?
“I appreciate that she’s not way left-leaning like the rest of them,” said Pat Odell, a retired court clerk and conservative. Ms. Odell said she wanted to see a total closure of the southwestern border and wanted Ms. Sinema to reject the $3.5 trillion Democratic social-spending bill outright.
But even if that happened, would Ms. Odell actually vote for Ms. Sinema or anyone with a D beside their name?
Probably not, she said.
Probably not.
