Sen. Kyrsten Sinema poses for a portrait in her office on Capitol Hill Dec. 8, 2022. It's all about her all the time.
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> 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.
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“Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she said.
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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.”
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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. . .
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.
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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.”
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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 has a well-established iconoclastic reputation.
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.” . .
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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.”
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✓ 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.
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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. . .✓ 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.
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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.”. .
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05 June 2021
"Sangria on Ice": Is Sinema Changing Her Behavior Lately or Losing Her Substance Sacrificed to Flamboyant Fashion?
Who Is Kyrsten Sinema Telling to F— Off?
Her style has overtaken her substance.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema spent her Sunday sipping sangria in a pink newsboy cap and a ring that says “Fuck Off.” The Arizona Democrat got someone to take a photo of her, ring proudly displayed in the foreground. Then, she posted the image to her Instagram stories.
Sinema’s outfit, which also included oversized fuchsia glasses and gigantic earrings containing a charm of what appears to be a skull and butterfly, is right in line with her sartorial M.O. The former Congresswoman and first-term senator has long been the flashiest dresser in the Capitol, and during the pandemic, her wardrobe has gotten even weirder.* She’s worn several highlighter-hued wigs on the Senate floor to hide her grown-out dye job as she stayed home from the salon. (According to her spokesperson, the wigs were a reminder to constituents to practice COVID-19 precautions.) In February, she wore a pink sweater emblazoned with the phrase “Dangerous Creature,” a nod to a line from one of romance novelist Lisa Kleypas’ books: “A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.”
I’ve always been a fan of Sinema’s flamboyant getups, which have gotten more daring over the course of her tenure—not because I particularly like the clothes she wears, but simply because they make Congressional fashion a lot more interesting. Her eschewal of the traditional array of solid neutrals and jewel tones, sheath dresses, and conservative pumps would seem to suggest a healthy disregard for fusty, outdated customs—both explicit and implicit—of political dress, which were devised with a certain race, class, and gender of politician in mind. That’s probably the exact interpretation Sinema intended: It supports her self-presentation as an independent-minded outsider, beholden to no party or standard of Congressional dress. One would be forgiven for assuming that a neon-wigged, go-go boot–clad, “Dangerous Creature”–wearing senator was a hippie-dippie liberal, but one would be wrong. Sinema’s weirdo wardrobe isn’t an outgrowth of some anything-goes progressive ideology, but rather a matching complement to her weirdo politics, which have drastically changed over the years and don’t seem to coalesce into any discernible, deeply-held ideology at all.
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"Speaking about President Joe Biden’s stalled legislative agenda, Sen. Bernie Sanders accused Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin of using “sabotage” to block both Build Back Better and legislation that would shore up voting rights against Republican voter suppression. The GOP meanwhile, he said, is “laughing all the way to election day.”
✓ “You got 50 Republicans who don’t want to do anything except criticize the president,” Sanders said on CNN’s State of the Union. “You have, sadly enough, two Democrats who choose to work with the Republicans rather than the president and who have sabotaged the president’s efforts to address the needs of working families in this country. Is it frustrating? It sure is.”...
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