Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema Decides to Leave Party Ranks to Register as an Independent
The majority won on Tuesday at the polls in Georgia, which has never been released, has not lasted long for the Democrats. Two days later, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced this Friday that she will leave the Democratic Party to become an independent, without even intending to join the Democratic parliamentary group as such, as do two other independents, Bernie Sanders and Angus. King.
That leaves the formation of Joe Biden once again in the hands of Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia who has sabotaged the president’s agenda in these two years in office, taking advantage of the Solomonic division of the Senate that forced Democrats to vote in unison so that Vice President Kamala Harris could break the tie with her vote.
Manchin and Sinema have always been the ‘spoilers’ of the party since Biden came to the White House, thanks to that tight distribution of seats. They are also the result of a political process that forces the formation to nominate conservative candidates in those states of deep America in which they would not win with a centrist ideology. In the end, everything is a political calculation. The same thing that the senator from Arizona has done when she has understood that she will not be able to win in primaries the candidates who aspire to steal her position, such as congressman Ruben Gallego.
Cruella Devil’s role in the polls had not made her very popular among Democrats, although it may help her win the vote of the more centrist Republicans. Polls reveal that in a hypothetical matchup, Gallego would inflict a humiliating loss of more than 20 points by winning 47% to 24%, according to the Arizona Public Opinion Research poll, which also compared her to state superintendent Kathy Hoffman, also 20 points above.
With no intention of challenging her
None have publicly expressed their intentions to challenge her, though it’s not hard to see them coming. In a Facebook post, expressly promoted by his campaign, the congressman echoed the rumors last July by acknowledging that “a lot of people” are asking him if he will run against her in the 2024 primaries. “We know that many of you You hope he does and he thanks you,” his advisers wrote when asking for donations for his re-election. “If he’s going to run against her he first needs to win outright this November and build a strong grassroots movement.” Gallego was re-elected by 77% to 23%.
Sinema must have thought that the only space left for him in the current political panorama is that of the independent figure. The mythical ‘maverick’, which has become more popular in today’s times of political disenchantment. “Registering as an independent is a reflection of who I have always been,” he said in a video released yesterday by his office. “Nothing will change”. And in that she agrees with the leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, who after meeting with her has agreed to keep her in the position she has in the House committees, in exchange for her support to appoint their presidents. Without that, Schumer would have had to agree to those appointments and even his own with the opposition, as he did in January 2020, at the cost of further concessions. Hence the friendly tone of his statement.
Kyrsten is independent and always has been. I am convinced that she will be an effective senator and I am looking forward to working with her in the productive sessions of a new Democratic majority, “he encouraged. “We will maintain our majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to approve nominees,” she summed up.
#Democrats #lose #majority #Senate #days #winning #polls #Georgia