Analysis: How much trouble is Kyrsten Sinema really in?
(CNN)Over the weekend, the Arizona Democratic Party voted to formally censure one of its own — Sen. Kyrsten Sinema — after she opposed changing the filibuster rules to allow major voting rights legislation to pass the Senate with just 50 votes.
The move was made as a “result of her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy,” according to Arizona Democratic Party Chair Raquel Terán.
On one level, the censure is purely symbolic. It amounts to a sort of slap on the wrist to the senator for behaving in a way that some party insiders dislike. On the other, it speaks to a broader question: How much political trouble is Sinema actually in? Or, put another way: Is she in real jeopardy of losing her seat in a reelection race?
“Sinema needs to watch out for a potential Democratic primary,” longtime Democratic strategist Paul Begala said over the weekend. “I do think she is in some political peril.”
Which is, in the main, true. Arizona Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has been public about his frustrations with Sinema and his interest in taking her on. “To be honest, I have gotten a lot of encouragement from elected officials, from senators, from unions, from your traditional Democratic groups, big donors,” Gallego told CNN’s Manu Raju last week. “Everything you can imagine under the sun.”
As a Hispanic member of Congress with a clearly liberal voting record, there’s reason to think that Gallego, if he ran, would be a potentially formidable primary foe.
That said, there’s reason to be at least somewhat skeptical about predictions of Sinema’s certain doom. Several reasons, in fact. Consider this:
1) Sinema is not up for reelection until 2024. Time is a great healer of political wounds. What may look, in the moment, like a political death sentence, can look very different two years on. Sinerma didn’t get this far in politics — she’s held seats in the Arizona state House and state Senate as well as in the US House prior to the Senate — by having a tin ear, politically speaking. (Worth noting: Sinema’s first experience in politics was as a spokeswoman for Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy for president in 2000. And she first ran for office in 2002 as an independent for state House; she lost.)
2) She won’t get caught flat-footed. Sinema, more than two years before her next race, ended September 2021 with more than $4.4 million in the bank. Gallego, for what it’s worth, had $786,000 in the bank.
3) The primary process helps her. In Arizona, voters unaffiliated with either party can choose which primary they want to vote in. And those voters are the fastest growing bloc in the state’s electorate. Sinema will aggressively court those unaffiliated voters, which, in theory, should be more in line with her centrist policies than hardcore Democratic loyalists.
4) She’s a strong general election candidate. Arizona is no Democratic stronghold. Yes, Joe Biden carried it in 2020 — but by less than 11,000 votes. Sinema’s centrism is, in a general election context, a major help. There are simply not enough Democrats in the state to put a candidate (like, say, Gallego) over the top without appealing more broadly to the middle of the electorate.
None of that is to say that Sinema isn’t in real trouble and/or won’t face a serious primary challenge in 2024. She almost certainly will — whether it’s from Gallego or some other more liberal alternative.
What it is to say is that two years is a very long time in politics. And Sinema is a tested and able politician.
Writing her political obituary today is extremely premature.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/24/politics/kyrsten-sinema-censure-arizona-democrats/index.html
