Bowing to reality, Kyrsten Sinema announces she won’t seek reelection to the U.S. Senate

In less than a year, Kyrsten Sine­ma will be out of the Unit­ed States Senate.

The Green-turned-Demo­c­rat-turned-Inde­pen­dent announced today that she won’t be seek­ing a sec­ond term rep­re­sent­ing Ari­zona this year, con­firm­ing wide­spread spec­u­la­tion that she was­n’t going to be run­ning again and is eager to cash out with a nice lob­by­ing gig after more than a decade in Congress.

In a video reveal­ing her deci­sion, Sine­ma tried to chalk up her deci­sion as dri­ven by polar­iza­tion and par­ti­san­ship. In real­i­ty, it was nec­es­sary because Sine­ma made her­self polit­i­cal­ly home­less. She long ago ceased to pre­tend to be inter­est­ed in rep­re­sent­ing her con­stituents, shun­ning the pub­lic and the press in favor of a tight focus on behind-the-scenes deal­mak­ing on a host of issues.

Despite her record of mak­ing peo­ple angry by betray­ing their trust and enabling Repub­li­cans to stoke the fires of divi­sion across the coun­try, Sine­ma had the gall to blame her fel­low Amer­i­cans for choos­ing “anger and division.”

“Amer­i­cans still choose to retreat fur­ther to their par­ti­san cor­ners,” said Sine­ma. “It’s all or noth­ing. The out­come is less impor­tant than beat­ing the oth­er guy. “The only polit­i­cal vic­to­ries that mat­ter these days are sym­bol­ic… Com­pro­mise is a dirty word. We’ve arrived at that cross­road and we chose anger and division.”

“I believe in my approach, but it’s not what Amer­i­ca wants right now.”

With Sine­ma out, Ari­zon­a’s 2024 U.S. Sen­ate race is for an open seat.

Democ­rats have a strong can­di­date in Ruben Gal­lego, who has been out-rais­ing Sine­ma and has the sup­port of the par­ty’s grass­roots, includ­ing a long list of activists and local elect­ed lead­ers that Sine­ma will­ful­ly alienated.

Gal­lego has been expect­ing Sine­ma’s deci­sion. He issued a state­ment thank­ing Sine­ma for her ser­vice, hav­ing already gone on the record long ago about why he believes she needs to be replaced in the Unit­ed States Senate.

“I want to thank Sen­a­tor Sine­ma for her near­ly two decades of ser­vice to our state,” said Gal­lego. “As we look ahead, Ari­zona is at a cross­roads. Pro­tect­ing abor­tion access, tack­ling hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty, secur­ing our water sup­ply, defend­ing our democ­ra­cy — all of this and more is on the line. That’s why Democ­rats, Inde­pen­dents, and Repub­li­cans alike are com­ing togeth­er and reject­ing Kari Lake and her dan­ger­ous posi­tions. I wel­come all Ari­zo­nans, includ­ing Sen­a­tor Sine­ma, to join me in that mission.”

Lake and Mark Lamb, the two Repub­li­cans also vying to suc­ceed Sine­ma, quick­ly chimed in as well. Like Gal­lego, they sound­ed very unsurprised.

“As a Jour­nal­ist, I cov­ered Kyrsten Sine­ma for many years,” Lake said. “We may not agree on every­thing, but I know she shares my love for Arizona.”

Mean­while, Lam­b’s camp said: “Kyrsten Sine­ma’s strength has always been in attract­ing the large num­ber of inde­pen­dent vot­ers in Ari­zona. We expect most of those inde­pen­dent vot­ers to vote for Sher­iff Mark Lamb in a gen­er­al election.”

Pub­lic opin­ion research sug­gests it’s Gal­lego who has the advan­tage, how­ev­er. Recent sur­veys con­duct­ed by Noble Pre­dic­tive Insights and Emer­son have found Gal­lego ahead in a three-way matchup with Lake and Sine­ma. Sine­ma knew that even if she ran, her per­son­al brand would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly car­ry her. Nor did she seem enthused about actu­al­ly get­ting out and campaigning.

As a Sen­a­tor, Sine­ma has been insu­lar and inac­ces­si­ble to the peo­ple, pre­fer­ring to spend time with pow­er­ful lob­by­ists and a small cir­cle of friends instead.

Local elect­ed offi­cials in Ari­zona have com­plained about not being able to get a hold of her. She has not held a sin­gle town hall event since becom­ing a Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor, leav­ing activists and con­stituents extreme­ly frustrated.

Many signed on to an effort com­mit­ted to boot­ing Sine­ma from the Sen­ate — orig­i­nal­ly known as Pri­ma­ry Sine­ma and lat­er the Replace Sine­ma Project.

“We start­ed this effort to Replace Sine­ma over two years ago to hold Sine­ma account­able for betray­ing the Ari­zo­nans who elect­ed her,” the group said.

“Sine­ma obstruct­ed Pres­i­dent Biden’s Build Back Bet­ter agen­da, got in the way of fun­da­men­tal rights like abor­tion care and vot­ing, and did the bid­ding of her wealthy donors who fund her lux­u­ry lifestyle. We suc­ceed­ed in first push­ing her out of the par­ty — by mak­ing clear she couldn’t win a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry — and now we’ve also helped push her out of the Sen­ate. Good. Ari­zo­nans deserve better.”

Sine­ma’s ally in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, mav­er­ick Sen­a­tor Joe Manchin of West Vir­ginia, has also decid­ed against seek­ing reelec­tion in 2024. He con­tem­plat­ed run­ning for Pres­i­dent but has decid­ed against that as well. With Sine­ma and Manchin gone, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus will no longer have a pro-fil­i­buster fac­tion any­more. Whether Democ­rats can hold onto the major­i­ty in the Sen­ate is anoth­er mat­ter. The par­ty has twen­ty-three seats to defend and few pick­up oppor­tu­ni­ties, while Repub­li­cans are only defend­ing eleven seats in states that Trump won.

If the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is able to run the table and the Biden-Har­ris tick­et gets a sec­ond term, Democ­rats would come into 2025 with anoth­er nar­row major­i­ty — but one with­out the pres­ence of the rene­gade duo of Sine­ma and Manchin. That would open the door to long-over­due reforms of Sen­ate rules need­ed to unlock progress on issues where Repub­li­cans have unapolo­get­i­cal­ly used the fil­i­buster to bury leg­is­la­tion that would make Amer­i­cans freer, hap­pi­er, and healthier.