DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema switches to independent

Sinema switches to independent, shaking up the Senate

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is changing her party affiliation to independent, delivering a jolt to Democrats’ narrow majority and Washington along with it.

In a 45-minute interview, the first-term senator told POLITICO that she will not caucus with Republicans and suggested that she intends to vote the same way she has for four years in the Senate. “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she said.

Provided that Sinema sticks to that vow, Democrats will still have a workable Senate majority in the next Congress, though it will not exactly be the neat and tidy 51 seats they assumed. They’re expected to also have the votes to control Senate committees. And Sinema’s move means Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — a pivotal swing vote in the 50-50 chamber the past two years — will hold onto some but not all of his outsized influence in the Democratic caucus.

Sinema would not address whether she will run for reelection in 2024, and informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of her decision on Thursday.

“I don't anticipate that anything will change about the Senate structure,” Sinema said, adding that some of the exact mechanics of how her switch affects the chamber is “a question for Chuck Schumer … I intend to show up to work, do the same work that I always do. I just intend to show up to work as an independent.”

She said her closely held decision to leave the Democratic Party reflects that she’s “never really fit into a box of any political party” — a description she said also applies to her fiercely independent state and millions of unaffiliated voters across the country.

Sinema has a well-established iconoclastic reputation. She competes in Ironman triathlons, moonlighted at a Napa Valley winery and often hangs out on the GOP side of the aisle during floor votes.

The 46-year-old said her party switch is a logical next step in a political career built on working almost as closely with Republicans as she does with Democrats. That approach helped her play a pivotal role in bipartisan deals on infrastructure, gun safety and same-sex marriage during the current 50-50 Senate. It’s also infuriated some Democrats, particularly her resistance to higher tax rates and attempts to weaken the filibuster.

Her move will buck up her GOP allies and is certain to embolden her Democratic critics, at home and on the Hill. Sinema said that “criticism from outside entities doesn't really matter to me” and she’ll go for a “hard run” after her announcement becomes public, “because that’s mostly what I do Friday mornings.”

Even before her party switch, she faced rumblings of a primary challenge in 2024 from Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). Becoming an independent will avoid a head-to-head primary against Gallego or another progressive, should she seek reelection. A theoretical general-election campaign could be chaotic if both Democrats and Republicans field candidates against her.

Sinema asserted she has a different goal in mind: fully separating herself from a party that’s never really been a fit, despite the Democratic Party’s support in her hard-fought 2018 race. That year she became the first Democrat in three decades to win a Senate race in Arizona, defeating former Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.).

Sinema wouldn’t entertain discussions of pursuing a second Senate term: “It's fair to say that I'm not talking about it right now.”

“I keep my eye focused on what I'm doing right now. And registering as an independent is what I believe is right for my state. It's right for me. I think it's right for the country,” she said, adding that “politics and elections will come later.”

Still, she did dismiss one possibility that her new independent status may raise for some: “I am not running for president.”

It’s been a decade since the last Senate party switch — when former Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter left the GOP to become a Democrat — and even longer since former Sen. Joe Lieberman switched from Democrat to independent. Manchin routinely bats away rumors that he’s leaving the Democratic Party.

Sinema said she’s not directly lobbying anyone to join her in leaving either the Democratic Caucus or GOP Conference, saying that she’d like the Senate to foster “an environment where people feel comfortable and confident saying and doing what they believe.”

What that means practically is continuing to work among the Senate’s loose group of bipartisan dealmakers, some of whom are retiring this year. She’s already connected with Sen.-elect Katie Britt (R-Ala.) about working together.

And she maintains a relationship with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that could come in handy with a GOP House and a Democratic Senate: “We served together for a long time, we're friends,” she said of McCarthy.

She insisted that she won’t deviate from her past approach to confirming Democratic presidential appointees, whom she scrutinizes but generally supports, and said she expects to keep her committee assignments through the Democrats (she currently holds two subcommittee chairmanships). Nor, she said, will anything change about her ideology, which is more socially liberal than most Republicans on matters like abortion and more fiscally conservative than most Democrats.

Sinema voted to convict former President Donald Trump in two impeachment trials, opposed Trump-backed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and supported Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, tapped by President Joe Biden. She also supported two Democratic party-line bills this Congress, one on coronavirus aid and the other devoted to climate, prescription drugs and taxes.

She said she maintains good relationships with Biden and the Senate majority leader as well as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who invited her to give a closely watched speech on bipartisanship in his home state several months ago.

Unlike independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine), Sinema won’t attend weekly Democratic Caucus meetings, but she rarely does that now. She isn’t sure whether her desk will remain on the Democratic side of the Senate floor.

And Sinema — who served three terms in the House and as a state legislator before her Senate election — said that Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-Ga.) Tuesday reelection victory “delighted” her. Warnock’s win will probably take some sting out of her decision for Democrats, but Sinema said she was not waiting on the results of the Georgia runoff election, which appeared to give her a party a real majority for the first time since 2014.

Her announcement is "less about the timing," she said. "It's really about me thinking how can I be most productive? How can I be true to my core values, the values of my state, and how do I continue being a really productive but independent voice for Arizona?"

Not that she wants any part in figuring out exactly how many seats they control now that she’s out of the Democratic Party.

“I would just suggest that these are not the questions that I'm interested in,” Sinema said. “I want people to see that it is possible to do good work with folks from all different political persuasions, and to do it without the pressures or the poles of a party structure.”

She approaches the Senate by looking for legislative opportunities to dive into headfirst — usually with a Republican partner. And those tactics bear fruit. She cited her work with retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) on the $550 billion Biden-blessed infrastructure law as a model. At the moment, she’s executing a similar play with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on immigration reform, another issue that’s bedeviled legislators for decades.

That duo seems to be digging in deep as federal courts threaten pandemic-era border restrictions, border crossings increase and younger undocumented immigrants still lack legislative protections from deportation.

“We are working together on definitely the most difficult political issue of all of our careers,” Sinema said of her immigration talks with Tillis. “I don't know that I can give you an answer on where we are, or where we're gonna go. What I can tell you is that we have very deep trust with each other.”

While Sinema has worked frequently with a handful of Republicans, it’s hard to imagine a GOP majority entertaining Sinema’s policy priorities in the same way the Democrats have. Under McConnell, the Senate has often focused more on judicial nominees than sweeping legislation.

Sinema said she’s not sweating how any future changes in Senate control affect her work. “Partisan control is a question for the partisans,” she said, “and not really one for me.”



https://www.yahoo.com/news/sinema-switches-independent-shaking-senate-110000180.html

She’s all republican. Not an independent. No surprise here. To bad for her she’s still Ms irrelevant on the senate floor.

I think the timing is interesting. As a voter myself if I voted for somonne based on their platform and they kept it, I wouldn't care how they identified themselves according to party affiliation.

And Spiral, she voted with Biden around 90% of the time. The problem is you never heard anything about her until it was the 10% of the time where she voted against him. I understand some people would rather dismiss and even kick people out of a political party who doesn't walk the party chalk line 100%. Just ask Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger.

I'm not a worshipper of the political parties. I do wonder what the DNC thinks about helping fund her campaign to then have her split.

There goes your 51...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

You think so? You do realize she voted with Biden 90% of the time and Bernie Sanders is an Independent too, right?

Kyrsten Sinema & Joe Manchin Vote with Biden over 90% of the Time

https://www.bonus.com/news/sinema-manchin-vote-biden/

Try again Jr.

I think the timing isn't interesting at all. I think it is/was about as predictable as it could be.

That said, I'm surprised she made the announcement as quickly as she did. I kinda expected something like this maybe a week or two from now. IMHO, she jumped too quickly, which gave away her backroom game. If she'd opted for a longer timeline before announcing, it would have looked more sober, considered. It would have been slicker, more polished. Instead, she's given us optics of the breathless excitement she's feeling for the execution of her next planned phase.

This Senator had already planned to employ an 'if this/then that' stratagem going forward.
And either choice/outcome would serve to burnish her brand, going forward:

1. If Herschel Walker wins the run-off, Sen. Sinema will hold pat- do absolutely nothing. Continue working her brand as the sometimes (strategically) independent 'X-Factor Democrat.'
2. If Raphael Warnock wins, Sen. Sinema will symbolically bolt, continue to caucus/vote Team Blue 90% of the time (like she always has), and maintain her 'Arizona Maverick Lite' brand.
3. *bonus* It also insulates her from primary challenge from the Dem party, in which she'd be very vulnerable for re-election.

This is being blasted on the news cycle as a bombshell, but it's really just a blatant and predictable example of cynical political calculus.

They get on our screens every day, then play chess like chimps... on a national scale.


Transparent as Saran Wrap.

Sinema Adds Intrigue and Democratic Fury to Arizona’s 2024 Senate Race

Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s announcement that she would become an independent left Democrats in her state, many of whom have long wanted to defeat her in a primary, facing a new political calculus.

By Reid J. Epstein, Jennifer Medina and Katie Glueck
Dec. 9, 2022

The one constant in Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s political career, from her start as a left-wing rabble rouser and Ralph Nader aide to her announcement on Friday that she was leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent, is her boundless ability to draw attention to herself.

Less than 72 hours after Democrats celebrated winning Georgia’s Senate race and the presumed 51st vote in the chamber, Ms. Sinema yanked the focus of the political world in Washington and Arizona back to her.

This time, it was not another agenda-stymieing disagreement with the party that spent millions electing her to office, but instead a declaration that she was breaking with Democrats entirely, at least in name.

“I’m going to be the same person I’ve always been. That’s who I am,” Ms. Sinema said in a two-minute video on Twitter on Friday morning, adding, “Nothing is going to change for me.”

Democrats believe — or hope — that little will change in Congress, where Ms. Sinema will keep her Democratic committee assignments and where her defection will not change her former party’s control of the Senate.

But in Arizona’s Democratic circles, distaste for the senator runs deep, and her announcement immediately shifted the spotlight to the 2024 race for her Senate seat.

Democrats in the state have long presumed that she would run for re-election and that she was all but certain to face a difficult primary challenge, possibly from Representative Ruben Gallego, who has regularly criticized her over the past two years, or from Representative Greg Stanton, who signaled his interest on Friday. Ms. Sinema, however, left her potential rivals guessing, batting away questions about future bids for office.

Hannah Hurley, a spokeswoman for Ms. Sinema, suggested that the senator had long promised to be an independent voice for the state, citing an ad from her 2018 campaign that emphasized a “fiercely independent record” and a “reputation for working across the aisle.”

“Independent, just like Arizona,” the spot said.

“She is not focused at all on campaign politics,” Ms. Hurley said of Ms. Sinema, who declined an interview on Friday afternoon.

Democrats in Arizona signaled on Friday that they still planned to support a candidate against Ms. Sinema, whether it ends up being Mr. Gallego, Mr. Stanton or someone else. National Democratic leaders were cagey on Friday about how they would approach the 2024 race or a potential independent Sinema campaign. One main worry for Democrats is that running a strong candidate against Ms. Sinema in the general election might inadvertently help elect a Republican.

Representatives for Senate Democrats’ campaign arm and for Senate Majority PAC, the leading Democratic super PAC devoted to Senate races, declined to comment on Friday afternoon about Ms. Sinema’s move. Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and majority leader, said that Ms. Sinema would keep her committee positions. “Kyrsten is independent,” he said in a statement. “That’s how she’s always been.”

And the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement that President Biden expected to “continue to work successfully” with Ms. Sinema but did not address her 2024 prospects.

Ms. Sinema was elected to the Senate in 2018, filling the seat of another party apostate, Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who declined to seek re-election after breaking with President Donald J. Trump. He is now Mr. Biden’s ambassador to Turkey.

The working assumption in Arizona political circles has long been that progressive anger at Ms. Sinema was concentrated among Democratic political activists, and that she could survive a primary from her left. But recent polling suggests that she has lost the confidence of many Arizona voters outside the center-right Chamber of Commerce types whom she has cultivated with the latest iteration of her political identity.

A Civiqs survey conducted shortly before Election Day found she had an approval rating of just 7 percent among the state’s Democrats, 27 percent among Republicans and 29 percent among independents.

Moderate Republicans uncomfortable with Mr. Trump’s politics have turned Arizona from a red state into a political battleground, swinging to Mr. Biden in 2020 and helping Democrats triumph in statewide elections last month against a Trump-backed slate of candidates. Ms. Sinema’s calculation in leaving the Democratic Party is that those voters can lift her to victory on their own.

The Trumpian makeover of the Arizona Republican Party has also alarmed Democrats who want their candidates to be a forceful opposition — not present themselves as ideologically ambiguous.

“Everything she’s done has been in the service of Kyrsten Sinema,” said Ian Danley, a progressive political consultant in Phoenix. “There’s really no other way to describe the decisions she makes. She cares about attention. She cares about setting herself up for the next thing.”

The Democratic grumbling has Mr. Gallego and Mr. Stanton leaving little pretense about their ambitions to challenge Ms. Sinema in 2024. Mr. Gallego, a Harvard graduate and Marine veteran, has been a regular presence on cable news whenever Ms. Sinema alienates the party base, and his lively and occasionally profane Twitter feed often criticizes her. On Friday, he called her decision a “betrayal” of volunteers who knocked on doors in triple-digit heat to elect her as a Democrat.

Mr. Stanton, a former Phoenix mayor who holds Ms. Sinema’s old House seat, on Friday tweeted what appeared to be a snapshot of a poll showing him leading Ms. Sinema by 40 percentage points in a hypothetical matchup.

Her decision, he wrote, “isn’t about a post-partisan epiphany. It’s about political preservation.”

Arizona’s progressive organizations and officials were already wary of Ms. Sinema during her 2018 run for Senate, but at the time no Democrat in the state had won election to the chamber in three decades. They collectively held their noses to turn out the vote for her in hopes that she would reciprocate their support once in office.

Once Ms. Sinema became the linchpin of Senate Democrats’ narrow governing majority in 2021, those groups began publicly fuming at Ms. Sinema, whom they accused of abandoning her promises on immigration, health care and the environment. Ms. Sinema dismissed their complaints, echoing her general practice of dodging journalists in Washington and Arizona.

When she theatrically turned a thumbs-down on a Senate vote in March 2021 to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, it was the last straw for her party’s base. When she skipped votes to participate in Ironman triathlons or spent weeks as an intern at a Sonoma County winery, it served only to cement her reputation among progressives that she had removed herself from the concerns of working-class Arizonans.

In the fall of 2021, activists from LUCHA, one of the groups that worked to elect Ms. Sinema, confronted her at Arizona State University. Activists followed Ms. Sinema into a bathroom and demanded that she explain why she had not done more to push for a pathway to citizenship for about eight million undocumented immigrants. The protesters said they had taken the drastic action only because Ms. Sinema did not hold town-hall meetings or answer calls from constituents. Protesters have also chased her through airports and followed her into a high-priced fund-raising event at an upscale resort.

“We are not surprised that she would once again center herself,” said Alejandra Gomez, the executive director of LUCHA. “This is another unfortunate, selfish act. It is yet another betrayal — there have been a slew of betrayals, but this is one of the ultimates, because voters elected her as Democrat, and she turned her back on those voters.”
A person familiar with Mr. Stanton’s deliberations confirmed that he was considering running for Senate in Arizona in 2024 as a Democrat. The person confirmed that the image from a poll that Mr. Stanton tweeted on Friday was from a statewide survey in which he had tested his potential candidacy for Senate.

But some of Ms. Sinema’s allies argue that she has been consistently clear about having an independent streak.

“I love that she’s going to be even freer now to just do the right thing,” said Tammy Caputi, a Scottsdale City Council member who is herself a political independent, adding that Ms. Sinema had long been leery of being “straitjacketed by partisan politics.”

She went on, “I’m hoping that Kyrsten’s decision to become an independent will spark other people to think long and hard about being overly attached to one party.”

But for many Arizonans and Ms. Sinema’s fellow senators, the big question is whether or not she will run again in 2024, which she neglected to clarify in her video announcement, an op-ed article in The Arizona Republic or news media interviews that were released on Friday morning. Because she keeps a tight political circle of advisers and speaks little to the news media, there has long been far more speculation than explanation about her motivations.

“Anybody that underestimates Senator Sinema is being foolish,” said Representative Raúl Grijalva, a liberal Arizona Democrat who said he planned to support Mr. Gallego if he ran. “She’s going to be formidable if she decides to run.”

A person familiar with Mr. Stanton’s deliberations confirmed that he was considering running for Senate in Arizona in 2024 as a Democrat. The person confirmed that the image from a poll that Mr. Stanton tweeted on Friday was from a statewide survey in which he had tested his potential candidacy for Senate.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Gallego said Ms. Sinema’s rush to announce her party switch soon after the outcome of the Georgia race fit neatly into her career trajectory.

“I wish she would have waited for the Democrats at least to enjoy a couple more days after the victory,” he said. “But, you know, she’s not known really for thinking of others.”

Mr. Gallego said he would make a decision about what office to seek in 2024 in the new year. He had just gotten off the phone with his mother, who was catching up on the news.

“She said: ‘I heard Sinema is not running. Make sure to talk to me before you do anything,’” Mr. Gallego said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/us/politics/kyrsten-sinema-arizona-senate-democrats.html

I don't think so. She and Manchin have been independent in function for a long time.

In todays polarized political landscape, I think most moderates can be viewed as independents. On the Republican side Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney could be viewed much the same.

I like political moderates. Politics is like a rope with the extremes pulling from both ends. If the pull is hard enough the rope breaks, which is kind of where we have been or are. Moderates allow some stretch in that rope that helps prevent the break and actually pulls the two ends backs together.

Now if we could only get all the rest of them to flip to independent on both sides.

I don't know if we want that. You do need some identifiers and continuity of values in the parties, but I do understand your point.

When we think independent we like to think middle ground, but take Bernie Sanders. He may identify as an independent, but he isn't middle ground, he is far left communist. I am not making that comment to spark any political debate, I am simply saying the traditional identifiers don't apply to him. He isn't middle of anything. It's his way or the highway.

Bernie a Communist? GOPers calling out left leaning socialists as commies when their own elected officials like the governor of Texas and Florida show their communist and fascist traits by illegally trafficking humans around the country. But you do you bro.

I'm not sure I see the value to her or the loss for Dems. The dems still hold the majority, Sinema mostly votes with the Dems and she says that changing parties isn't going to change her voting habits anyway. Harris still hold the tie braker.

This neither helps or hurts the Dems or Rep.

True and she waited until the Georgia runoff. She was hoping it would have more of an impact to be the swing vote. The power of the swing vote is what this was all about.

After getting little more information on the topic it seems somewhat more clear to me why she did this. First Arizona is odd in its registered voter makeup. There are actually more voters that register as independent or "other" than there are registered democrats. 1,364,178 Democrats (31.4%) with 1,449,711 "Other" (33.3%).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_Arizona

I believe she feels she has a better chance to win by drawing from the independents combined with moderate democrats and moderate republicans than running as a democrat.

Stalin on a sled? smh.

Why did her parents not name her Kristen. I think there is a scandanavian country that only allows parents to name their kids certain acceptable names.