A Few Thoughts About Sen. Kyrsten Sinema

 #372: The Importance of 'No'

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Tonight I read Senator Kyrsten Sinema's wikipedia page straight through.  A few things that go a long way towards explaining her politics:

1. She grew up in a family experiencing varying degrees of homelessness and want.  Instability makes people value certainty.  This could easily predispose her to conservatism.

2. She lost the first two elections she ran.  Then she started winning.  Loss is another path to conservatism.

3. Her first appearance on the national stage, in 2012, involved a very nasty campaign in which many embarrassing moments in her past were brought to light by her opponent.

4. Her sexual orientation means she is probably more careful about her image than would be the average politician.

5. She represents a state that is newly purple.  She can probably remember a time when Arizona was deep red, or mostly so.  Because there are so many older, more affluent retirees in Arizona, and because older voters tend to turn out in greater numbers, non-Presidential election years are particularly problematic for openly liberal politicians in purple states.  She is probably not looking forward to 2030, when she will be only turning 60.  And if she's smart, she'll be thinking about retiring in 2038.

6. Her public image, that she carefully cultivates, is fiscal conservatism combined with liberalism on social issues.  She embraces the memory of John McCain, but is an ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood.  This treading the middle path, which will likely guarantee her her seat until she no longer wants it, is difficult, made only slightly easier by making as few details as possible public.

7. She prefers to not engage with the press because that will only underline the difficulty of her middle path. Instead, she'd rather rake in campaign contributions and produce 'mainstream' ads and outreach that most everyone can agree with--thus the recent Bi-partisan Infrastructure Bill that she recently got behind in a big way.

8. Her most recent 'no' positions: against a $15 an hour Minimum Wage, against an end to the senate Filibuster, and against allowing Medicare to bargain for lower drug prices, were all opportunities to emphasize her fiscal conservatism, and are perhaps negotiable in the end.  Another Democratic senator had already nixed the Minimum Wage hike, ditto the Filibuster.  And drug price declines will, it appears, make it into President Biden's Build Back Better bill, albeit in watered down form.

9. All told, we have a cautious but opportunistic, broad strokes persona whose internal mantra might be: the less said the better.

10. What's lost amidst the dramatic gestures (her thumbs down on the Senate floor, when voting against a $15 an hour Minimum Wage was a John McCain reference), relaxed dress code, and outward self-assurance is that she probably planned her summer hijinks with her party, ahead of time; she caucuses with the overwhelmingly liberal Democrats in the Senate; and, according to the article I read, has voted 100% with the president this year. 

Update: March 16, '23: Here's a Vox piece by Christian Paz that explains her difficult though possible path to re-election since becoming an Independent.