WASHINGTON – When Senator Kyrsten Sinema rose to the Senate floor on Friday to vote against including a minimum wage increase in President Biden’s pandemic aid bill, she knew it would attract the ire of progressives in her own party.
Ms. Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, did it anyway, punctuating her defection from the party line with a thumbs down.
Senators often use the motion to register their opposition to the legislation, and she was one of eight on the Democratic side to vote against the salary increase. But Sinema’s gesture drew a singularly scathing response from lawmakers and liberal activists, who accused her of voting cruelly to deny workers higher wages.
The reaction captured the latent anger that progressives harbor towards Sinema, a former Green Party activist who became a centrist and emerged as an impediment to her highest aspirations in the 50-50 Senate, where she is one among a handful of moderates that have exaggerated size swing.
Her refusal to embrace progressive priorities such as accelerating the increase in the minimum wage as part of the stimulus bill, along with her opposition to changing Senate rules to kill the obstructionist – which effectively requires 60 votes to advance any major legislation – has made her a target for liberals across the country.
Perhaps nowhere is the rage hotter than among progressive activists in Arizona, a state where demographic change has brought about rapid political change. Liberal Democrats worked last year to hand over the state’s critical electoral votes to Biden and to turn the remaining Senate chair held by Republicans, all in the hope of ensuring a Democratic-controlled Washington that could approve long-standing priorities currently constrained by obstruction. .
“We want her to be the best possible senator,” said Dan O’Neal, the state coordinator for the Progressive Democratic Party of America in Arizona. “But we want her to start voting as a Democrat, not as a Republican.”
Ms. Sinema had previously signaled her discomfort with the approval of the minimum wage proposal as part of the pandemic relief bill, a justification that she cited when explaining his vote on Friday, arguing that the Senate should hold a separate debate on the matter.
The change was in line with her general approach in Congress, where she served three terms in the House before winning the Senate election in 2018. She emerged as one of the few real wildcards in her party, with a perpetual asterisk next to her. name on the Democrats ID card.
It is the culmination of a large-scale political transformation by Ms. Sinema, a former social worker and lawyer. The woman now known as a committed centrist ran for the Arizona Legislature nearly two decades ago as a Green Party activist; protested the Iraq war with Code Pink, the left-wing social justice movement; and once warned of the dangers of capitalism and the “almighty dollar”.
His allies argue that the change came from Sinema’s desire to play a productive role as a legislator.
“She realized she could do things by working in the middle and it had more of an impact,” said Robert Meza, a Democratic member of the state of Arizona who served with Sinema during his tenure there. from 2004 to 2010. “Left groups, the business community – started to listen to it more. She realized, ‘Hey, I actually have more power in the middle.’ “
In Washington, although some of her moderate colleagues were very public about her political preferences and legislative ultimatums, Ms. Sinema remained largely inscrutable, refusing most interview requests from publications not based in Arizona (including for this article) and refusing to predict how she is thinking of voting for any bill or candidate.
She is known as a rebel in the sober and boring senate, where her colorful wigs and peculiar fashion sense – she appeared on a recent day wearing a hot pink shirt with the phrase “DANGEROUS CREATURE” – belie the preference for keeping her opinions for itself and operate behind the scenes.
Biden’s stimulus plan
Even as Democrats struggled to save Neera Tanden’s doomed nomination, Biden’s choice to head his budget office, Sinema never revealed how he would vote.
In the stimulus negotiations, Ms. Sinema emerged as a key mediator behind the scenes, listening while her colleagues argued about their differences and silently trying to lead them to a happy medium.
On Friday, as the Senate stalled after Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat from West Virginia, hesitated about the size and duration of federal unemployment payments in the aid package, Sinema pleaded with him not to sink the bill.
“We have achieved almost everything,” Sinema told him in the Senate floor, referring to the changes that Democratic leaders made to the plan to appease the moderates.
Separately, she was working with Republicans to secure a $ 25 billion aid fund for independent restaurants and to put tighter protection bars around how states could use stimulus financing.
“She has developed many conversational relationships with many people on the other side,” said Sen. James Lankford, Oklahoma Republican. “This is useful only to be able to enter into a dialogue when things get tough.”
It’s a battle-tested approach in Arizona, where Sinema defeated Martha McSally, a Republican, in 2018, largely displaying her centrist credentials and emphasizing her reach across the corridor to attract moderate voters. Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, defeated McSally again in November, closely following the handbook that Sinema helped write.
“It was no accident that this happened,” said Meza. “She is a great chess player.”
But her history as a liberal has only sharpened the resentment she inspires among progressive activists.
“It is beyond my understanding that someone could go from a Code Pink activist to say, ‘Yes, there are some good things that Trump did and I vote with him sometimes,'” said Jenise Porter, an Arizona activist who helped draft a resolution censoring Ms. Sinema in 2019 for not voting according to party lines.
Ms. Sinema’s political evolution began a year after her passage through the State Legislature and, by the time she was in Congress and running for the Senate, she had established herself as a pragmatic and bipartisan operator. She cited Senator John McCain as a political idol and wrote a book – partly how to do it and partly political memoirs – that included tips like “no one likes a rigid and humorless activist”.
“The bomb sniper can’t make many friends (understandably), and she certainly can’t work with all the people she’s throwing bombs at,” she wrote in the book, “Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win – and last ”.
It is in this spirit that Ms. Sinema vehemently opposed the removal of the obstruction, a position that earned her entry into a small club alongside Manchin, who is under strong pressure from the left. She said little about her views on the matter, but went on to send inquiring constituents – of whom there are many, some more furious than others – lengthy explanations defending her position.
“The debate on the accounts must be a bipartisan process that takes into account the views of all Americans, not just one party,” wrote Sinema in one of these missives. “Regardless of the party that controls the Senate, respecting the views of minority senators will result in better legislation and common sense.”
Having never served in the majority party of a legislature until this year, Ms. Sinema has been practicing this approach for years. She is known to her colleagues as a social butterfly and seems to enjoy making friends with lawmakers across the hall, an exceptionally rare tendency and skill among politicians.
“She is very engaging, brilliant, very outspoken,” said Jonathan Rothschild, a Democrat and former mayor of Tucson. “Every time I have been with her, she has the ability to make you feel like one of the most important people in the world.”
She also refrained from litigating differences with colleagues in public, an attribute that has won the adoration of members of the other party.
Matt Salmon, a former conservative Republican congressman from Arizona, said that his relationship with Sinema reached a tipping point during a particularly tense period in his political career, after he initially expressed reluctance to endorse marriage equality after his son left. declared gay.
When a local reporter asked Ms. Sinema, who is bisexual and has long been lobbying for equality in marriage, her reaction, Salmon braced herself for the worst. Instead, he recalled, Mrs. Sinema replied that she knew how much he loved his son.
“From that moment on, I probably would have stepped on fire for her,” said Salmon, emotionally. “She had the opportunity to cut my throat and let me bleed to death politically.”
“Everyone expects that when someone has the position they have, it goes without saying that you are going to exploit it to the fullest,” he continued. “But she doesn’t do that, and it increases her strength.”
Emily Cochrane contributed reports.