Sinema’s switch: Betraying voters, or mirroring them?

In explaining her political trajectory, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema once described her younger progressive self as “the patron saint of lost causes,” saying she’d learned the hard way about the need to build diverse coalitions to get things done.

Time will tell whether her latest shift – leaving the Democratic Party to chart her own path as an independent – will be another “lost cause” or a shrewd move in today’s political environment.

The first Democrat in decades to win a Senate race in Arizona in 2018, the bisexual former anti-war activist had long ago left behind her progressive crusading, carving out a niche in Washington as a bipartisan negotiator. She spearheaded bills on everything from infrastructure to same-sex marriage, which often required compromising on liberal priorities. She also held up key aspects of President Joe Biden’s legislative agenda, including his $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” bill.

Her iconoclasm infuriated colleagues in Washington and former supporters back home, some of whom famously chased her into a bathroom last year. “People worked very hard to get her elected and they feel betrayed,” says Sacha Haworth, Ms. Sinema’s 2018 campaign communications director, who is now senior adviser to a super PAC focused on ousting her in 2024. 

In raw political terms, Ms. Sinema’s defection allows her to avoid what would almost certainly have been a difficult primary fight, forcing Democrats to decide instead whether to field a candidate in a three-way race that could give Republicans an edge. Still, the Arizona senator casts herself as not a spoiler but a trailblazer – a politician who is actually responding to voters’ very real fatigue with partisanship, and providing, as she put it, a “place of belonging” for them. 

In some ways, the numbers back her up. Independent voters now constitute the biggest political bloc in the United States, and they have a particularly strong presence in Arizona, where the share of active voters who don’t identify with either party has grown nearly every year since 2000, from 18% to 32%. By stepping outside the two-party system, Senator Sinema could resonate with the rising number of voters who feel politically homeless. 

“Voices that don’t feel that they fit in one party or another are still valuable voices,” says Clarine Nardi Riddle, former chief of staff for Sen. Joe Lieberman, the onetime Democratic vice presidential nominee who lost his Connecticut primary in 2006 and went on to win reelection as an independent. “Independent voices can help with problem-solving. They can bring different perspectives – and consensus perspectives,” Ms. Riddle adds. 

Democratic frustration

Many Democrats, including in Arizona, see “consensus” as a euphemism for selling out. They are frustrated that at a time when their party held the presidency and controlled both chambers of Congress, one enigmatic senator from Arizona was able to “sabotage” key provisions they believed would help support working families and shore up voting rights. They accuse her of protecting wealthy investors while torpedoing universal child care; one group, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, mocked her as leaving the Democratic Party “to spend more time with her Wall Street family.”

Some are also furious that she – together with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin – refused to end the filibuster, which effectively allowed the GOP to hold the party’s agenda hostage. In a Senate divided 50-50 over the past two years, the filibuster meant Democrats needed the support of 10 GOP senators to advance most legislation, rather than being able to use Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote to pass bills with a simple majority. 

Supporters counter that the main reason Senator Sinema was able to get elected as a Democrat in the first place is that she already had a track record of working across the aisle. After an unsuccessful first year as a legislator in Arizona’s Statehouse, she changed tack, as she explained in her 2009 book, “Unite and Conquer.” 

“I’d spent all my time being a crusader for justice, a patron saint for lost causes, and I’d missed out on the opportunity to form meaningful relationships with fellow members in the legislature, lobbyists, and other state actors,” she wrote. “I hadn’t gotten any of my great policy ideas enacted into law, and I’d seen lots of stuff I didn’t like become law.”

She went on to form broad coalitions to defeat a same-sex marriage ban by engaging not only LGBTQ activists but also teachers and older unmarried couples whose domestic partners stood to lose their benefits. She also got a law passed to prevent mothers from being kicked out of public areas for breastfeeding, by framing it around motherhood rather than women’s rights, which engaged more conservative women who lobbied their representatives.  

The Arizona senator has always done a good job of “reading the room,” says independent pollster Mike Noble. “Democrats couldn’t win statewide in Arizona for the life of them until Sinema came along and said, ‘Hey, this is how you win.’” 

Since then, however, Democrat Mark Kelly has won election to the Senate twice – once in a special election, and again this fall, by a relatively comfortable 5 percentage points. 

“Mark Kelly just proved that you can run as a Democrat and win,” says Ms. Haworth, Senator Sinema’s former campaign communications director. “You don’t have to be some fake independent.”

Senator Kelly is also far more popular, enjoying 89% favorability among Democrats – nearly triple Senator Sinema’s rate, and he polls 8 points higher than her among independents, at 50%.

A growing number of independent voters

Still, the independent voter trend is real. Thom Reilly, co-director of Arizona State University’s Center for an Independent and Sustainable Democracy and co-author of the recently released book “The Independent Voter,” says Senator Sinema is reflecting the views of a lot of Arizonans as well as a national trend of voters leaving the two-party system. Some 42% of Americans now identify as independents, giving them a double-digit edge over Democrats and Republicans, according to Gallup polling earlier this year.  

“Sinema is responding to a large number of individuals that are increasingly frustrated with the parties,” Professor Reilly says. 

In the Senate, Ms. Sinema joins Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, both of whom are independents but caucus with Democrats. One of the more elusive members, Senator Sinema rarely attended Democratic caucus meetings even as a member of the party, so it’s unlikely she will now. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said she would retain her committee assignments. 

Ms. Riddle, Senator Lieberman’s former chief of staff who is now chair of government affairs and strategic counsel practice at Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, says Senator Sinema’s new affiliation could help her former party bring others under their umbrella.

“She has the ability to help broaden the party,” says Ms. Riddle, a co-founder of No Labels, an advocacy group that encourages bipartisan cooperation. 

In an op-ed for The Arizona Republic explaining her decision, Senator Sinema implied her track record of bipartisan legislation shows she prioritizes problem-solving more than many of her colleagues in Washington.

“When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than they are on improving Americans’ lives, the people who lose are everyday Americans,” she wrote. “Arizonans – including many registered as Democrats or Republicans – are eager for leaders who focus on common-sense solutions rather than party doctrine.”

A small club

The Senate has seen its share of mavericks over the years, most of whom were content to buck their party from within. One of the most prominent was the late Sen. John McCain. The Arizona Republican challenged his own party’s orthodoxy on everything from immigration to campaign finance reform; Senator Sinema has called him a “personal hero.” 

But independents have been relatively rare in the Senate, with Ms. Sinema becoming just the 14th in history. 

In the 1950s, liberal Republican Wayne Morse fell out of favor with the GOP and declared himself an independent, pulling his chair into the center aisle of the Senate to make a point. He later became a Democrat, but retained an independent streak; he was one of only two senators to oppose the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which gave the president authority for escalating U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. 

Half a century later, Jim Jeffords of Vermont upended the chamber when – frustrated with President George W. Bush, who took office in 2001 after a disputed election that ended with Supreme Court intervention – he left the GOP to become an independent and caucus with Democrats. His move gave Democrats the majority overnight, and all the newly appointed Republican committee chairs had to step down. 

“It was like an earthquake,” recalls former Senate historian Donald Ritchie. “People were very upset.”

But Democrats would have their own challenges a few years later, when Senator Lieberman got reelected as an independent. Though he caucused with Democrats, he now represented a broader cross section of voters and leveraged his status to extract concessions. 

Ross Baker, a Rutgers political scientist who spent time as a scholar-in-residence in Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office, said the Connecticut senator “was always a pain in the neck” for Democratic leadership.

“Placating Joe Lieberman to pick up a vote was a very painful thing for Reid to have to do,” he says, recalling in particular protracted negotiations over the Affordable Care Act with the senator from Connecticut, home to large health insurance companies. 

Senator Sinema’s legacy as an independent will be up to her, says Professor Baker. 

“She can basically support Democratic positions on most major issues, and on occasion march to her own drummer,” he says. But, he adds, “if she becomes kind of defiant about her independent status, that’s different.”

When it comes to the workings of the Senate, Mr. Ritchie, the former Senate historian, says if they were all independents, the place wouldn’t work. But having a few can make for a healthy mix.

He compares it to seasoning. “If you’re making something and you leave out the red pepper, it’s going to be too bland,” he says. “If you put too much in, it’ll be inedible.”