Sinema Out!

Bye Sinema.

The winners and losers of 2024.

The moderate senator announced she will not seek reelection. If one thing comes forth, you have two extremely annoying candidates running for the Arizona U.S. senate seat.

Elected in 2018, as the first woman and first openly bisexual senator in U.S. History. 

Before that she was elected as a Democrat. Previously she was a Green Party member who once heckled moderate Democrats for their support of the Iraq War. She began a transformation from a pink wig wearing progressive to a luxury loving corporate lobbyist.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) joins Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sen. Laphonza Bulter (D-CA), Sen. Mike Bruan (R-IN), Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) in retirement.

Sinema announced today she won’t be seeking reelection in November, meaning that Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego is set for a one-on-one race against Kari Lake, the likely Republican candidate.

“Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year,” Sinema said in a video released by her office.

Lake, an election denier, said in a statement Tuesday that she and Sinema “may not agree on everything” but that she respected her for having “the courage to stand tall against the Far-Left in defense of the filibuster—despite the overwhelming pressure from the radicals in her party like Ruben Gallego who called on her to burn it all down.”

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 deal that Sinema spent months negotiating. She had hoped it would be a signature achievement addressing one of Washington’s most intractable challenges as well as a powerful endorsement for her increasingly lonely view that cross-party dealmaking remains possible.

The infamous curtsy.

But in the end, Sinema’s border-security ambitions, and her career in Congress, were swallowed by the partisanship that has paralyzed Congress.

Sinema tried to build her Senate career in the mold of John McCain, the Arizona Republican whose willingness to buck the GOP infuriated his party’s base but endeared him to the state’s more moderate voters.

But she ended up hewing closer to the path of Jeff Flake, a former Arizona Republican senator who stood against then-President Donald Trump and became a pariah in in his party. Like Sinema, Flake declined to run for a second term after it became clear he could not survive a primary.

Flake endorsed Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 against Trump and was rewarded with an appointment by the president as ambassador to Turkey.

Sinema did not 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 2018 election marked the first time in a generation that Democrats had won a Senate seat from Arizona. It was the start of a period of ascendance for a Democrats in a state long dominated by the GOP.

In the Senate, she has been at the center of many of the biggest bipartisan congressional deals of Biden’s presidency, from an infrastructure package and a new gun law to protection for same-sex marriages.

She worked with members of both parties and she tried to find compromises, often preferring to hang out on the Republican side of the Senate floor to talk to GOP lawmakers. And she became known for diving into the details of policy, keeping spreadsheets and notebooks filled with detail during negotiations.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican who often sat at the negotiating table with Sinema, said she will miss her in the Senate. “I like people who are willing to reach across the aisle and get things done,” Collins said.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who has at times had a strained relationship with Sinema, said the Arizona senator “blazed a trail of accomplishments in the Senate.”

Sinema has been a reliable vote for Democrats on most nominations and legislation. But with the party hamstrung by razor-thin majorities, she refused to give her blessing to some of the progressive movement’s top priorities.

How to be a Karen.

Her support for maintaining the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires 60 of 100 votes to pass most legislation instead of a simple majority, has been a particular source of frustration for progressives, who say it gives Republicans a veto despite the Democratic majority. Sinema says it forces the bipartisan compromise that most voters crave.

She single-handedly thwarted her party’s 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’s 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 to Instagram a photo of herself at brunch 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. 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 challenger.

In 2022, before she became an independent, leaders of the Arizona Democratic Party censured Sinema, a symbolic move that carried no practical impact but was emblematic of the rupture of her relationship with the party.

Sinema’s political career began as an anti-war activist. A self-described “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 and became a prolific spokesperson against Republican bills. Witty, pithy and accessible, she was on speed dial for journalists covering the Legislature.

But she came to believe that she could be more effective building bridges with the Republican majority than publicly excoriating them, she wrote in her 2009 book, “Unite and Conquer.” It was the start of her move toward the center and the persona that has formed her national brand.