She rarely goes to party lunches and skipped Senate votes to run the Ironman. She endorsed a primary challenger against one of her own colleagues and hobnobs with Republicans at least as much as she does with her own caucus.
Kyrsten Sinema doesn’t really fit in with her fellow Senate Democrats. Don’t even ask her whether she watches the Democratic presidential debates.
“I’m not missing anything. I prefer happiness,” Sinema declares in a 25-minute interview, a rare extended conversation with an outlet not based in Arizona. “Look how happy I am.”
Arizona’s first Democrat to win a Senate race in 30 years has done little to raise her profile in Washington; she’s more focused on trying to balance her extreme workout regime with a moderate record on par with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s.
Sinema has long cultivated a bipartisan posture. But her support for Donald Trump nominees like Attorney General William Barr and her lack of zeal for impeachment are part of a political profile drawing blowback from progressives and cheers from the GOP.
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Yet Sinema is also setting herself up to be a pivotal vote the next time the Democrats are in power. And her radical breed of centrism could be a headache for the party.
Take the liberal drive to bust down age-old Senate rules in order to pass “Medicare for All” or a “Green New Deal.” Sinema not only opposes getting rid of the 60-vote filibuster threshold for legislation, she wants to restore the supermajority requirement for presidential nominees that has been weakened by both parties.
“They will not get my vote on [nuking the filibuster],” Sinema said in her office, outfitted with shiny leather and translucent chairs and boasting a vivid shade of purple that pops from the walls. “In fact, whether I’m in the majority or the minority I would always vote to reinstate the protections for the minority. … It is the right thing for the country.”
Sinema isn’t actively trying to reshape the party. Though she captured a state that Democrats would love to seize in the 2020 campaign, she’s utterly uninterested in using her perch as senator to do cable TV hits, speak to the Capitol Hill press corps or offer general guidance to Democrats ahead of a crucial election cycle.
Yet her record speaks for itself. She voted for Barr and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and opposed attempts to roll back the Trump administration’s coal deregulation regime earlier this month.
It’s an approach that has the potential to revive the Senate’s moribund middle but has left her something of a mystery to her Democratic colleagues, even fellow moderates.
“Haven’t had a lot of interaction with her. She’s kind of doing her own thing,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a centrist senator with a more liberal voting record than Sinema’s.
Source: The new Democratic senator irritating the left and delighting the GOP
