Arizona Advocacy Network and Progressive Democrats of Arizona announcement:
Join with three National Civil Rights Leaders
* Rev. Jesse Jackson – Rainbow Push
* Barbara Arnwine – Transformative Justice Coalition
* Rev. Dr. William J Barber II – Poor Peoples Campaign
Where: Kachina Park (North 42nd St and E Campbell Ave map)
When: Monday, July 26th @ 9:00 am
March: 1.5 miles to Sinema’s office – 3333 E. Camelback Rd. Phoenix
Register here: https://www.mobilize.us/progressarizona/event/402621/
These national know civil rights leaders are coming to Phoenix to lead a rally, march, and nonviolent sit-in at Senator Sinema’s office. They’re coming because they know that this is a historic moment. We need our Senator, Kyrsten Sinema, to end the filibuster, pass the For the People Act and other bills protecting our freedom to vote, and act to improve the lives of working people, including raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Our democracy is at stake, and there’s absolutely no time to waste.
please sign up here – Register now and get all the details.
Sponsored by the Arizona End the Filibuster Coalition – the coalition includes over 40 political, community, church, and labor groups here in Arizona
for more information and how you can help contact us – dan@pdamerica.org
Can’t make the march, and sit-in event – please help by donating for bail and legal costs – Contact the coalition legal team – Dan 480-650-0746
https://twitter.com/AZadvocacy/status/1417876952673775621
Senator Sinema’s support for the Senate filibuster rule which is obstructing passage of much needed federal voting rights legislation not surprisingly is hurting her with her Arizona constituents. Mother Jones reports, New Poll: Arizona Democrats Love Biden and Kelly. Kyrsten Sinema? Not So Much.:
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s support for the Senate filibuster appears to be doing real damage to her political brand back home.
[A]ccording to a new survey shared with Mother Jones from the progressive polling and policy firm Data for Progress, her stance has left her far less popular in Arizona than either President Joe Biden or her recently elected Senate colleague, Mark Kelly—and perhaps even vulnerable to a primary challenge.
According to the survey, which was conducted from June 28 to July 6th, Sinema is viewed favorably by 38 percent of voters, compared to 47 percent for Kelly and 51 percent for Biden—all of whom were elected in recent years by similar margins to Sinema. (Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s favorability sits at 44 percent.) The numbers are more stark when you look at the partisan breakdown. Sinema is viewed favorably by just 42 percent of Democrats (with 39 percent viewing her unfavorably), while Kelly, who was elected narrowly last fall, is at 75 percent favorability with just 17 percent viewing him unfavorably. Biden? He’s doing just fine according to Arizona Democrats, with 95 percent viewing him positively.
Beyond the toplines, though, there are some ominous numbers for Sinema’s long-term standing back home. Democratic voters overwhelmingly support a $15 minimum wage according the survey; Sinema drew the ire of activists this spring for casting a largely symbolic vote against adding such a minimum-wage hike to the coronavirus stimulus package. They support getting rid of the legislative filibuster and overwhelmingly back the PRO Act, which would expand rights and protections for labor unions, but which Sinema has not signed onto.
After voters were read a script linking the filibuster to Republican obstruction, 66 percent of Democrats said that if given the chance in a 2024 Senate primary, they would “vote for a different candidate who would get rid of the filibuster.”
Acting like a stooge for the obstructionist Sedition Party has had one side benefit for Sen Sinema:
The poll also indicates she’s far more popular among Republicans than either Kelly or Biden. More than twice as popular, in fact. And this isn’t the first recent poll to pick up on such a divide. Another Arizona survey last month—this time of registered voters—showed a similarly stark gap. That survey, from pollster Bendixen & Amandi, found that while Kelly, like Biden, was overwhelmingly popular among Democrats and overwhelmingly unpopular among Republicans, Sinema’s numbers among the two parties were almost identical: She was viewed favorably by 52 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of Republicans.
That’s not a total surprise, given both her current role in Washington as a check on the Democratic party and her longstanding political brand. Although she was once a progressive state legislator who condemned the “false pressure to get to 60” votes for major legislation in DC, Sinema has cultivated a reputation in the Capitol as Republicans’ best Democratic friend—someone who is averse to public expressions of partisanship, and who has called the late Republican Sen. John McCain a political idol. She started a bipartisan spin class while serving in the House, and her ability to win the votes of people who have voted Republican in the past is part of the reason she’s in office now. She has even drawn praise from none other than Jan Brewer, the arch-conservative former governor who was a frequent target of Sinema when the latter was a member of the state legislature.
Sinema won’t be up for reelection until 2024, and there’s a lot that can change for her and her party between now and then. But numbers like these aren’t exactly the kind of thing that will scare any prospective primary challengers away. As Democratic critics in her home state ramp up their pressure campaign and mull whether to back a primary challenge if she doesn’t change her mind, it appears her reputation among her constituents—at least among members of her own party—is starting to take a real hit.
Having citizens lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech, to assembly, and to petition their senator for action on voting rights at her office arrested for trespass, as occurred last month, Activists Arrested For A Peaceful Protest At Senator Sinema’s Phoenix Office, is not going to win her any friends with anyone other than the most jackboot authoritarians in the Sedition Party. Is this really who Sen. Sinema wants to align with?
Sinema should try meeting with these voting rights activists, and to hold a voting rights town hall to hear directly from her constituents, instead of meeting privately with Chamber of Commerce lobbyists bearing campaign contributions for her obstructionism. U.S. Chamber rewards Senators Manchin, Sinema for opposing Biden initiatives.
You can take the man out of the Senate, but you can’t take the Senate out of the man. Disappointing. “Biden says ditching the filibuster would throw Congress ‘into chaos’ and lead to gridlock.”, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/us/politics/biden-filibuster-chaos.html
President Biden on Wednesday night defended the filibuster, a procedural tactic that stands to hold up much of his agenda in the Senate, even as he reiterated that he viewed it as a relic of Jim Crow.
“There’s no reason to protect it other than you’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done,” he said at a CNN Town Hall in Cincinnati. “Nothing at all will get done.”
Mr. Biden said there was too much at stake to risk that level of “chaos” that a fight over the filibuster would ignite, including voting rights legislation he still wants to see passed. He also said waging a war against the filibuster would play into the hands of Republicans seeking to hold up his agenda. “Wouldn’t my friends on the other side love to have a debate about the filibuster instead of passing the Recovery Act?” he said.
[On] Wednesday night, he reiterated his support for a return to the talking filibuster: the requirement that opponents of legislation be required to occupy the floor and make their case against it, but he made it clear that he thought a filibuster fight was only a distraction.
“I’ve been saying for a long, long time the abuse of the filibuster is pretty overwhelming,” he said.
But when it came to passing voting rights legislation, he added, “I want to make sure we bring along not just all the Democrats, we bring along Republicans who I know know better. They know better than this. What I don’t want to do is get wrapped up right now in the argument whether or not this is all about the filibuster.”
“[I] don’t want the debate to only be about whether or not we have a filibuster, or exception to the filibuster, or going back to the way the filibuster had to be used before.”
The New York Times reports, “More than 30 former top Senate Democratic aides call for changes to the filibuster rules.”, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/us/politics/senate-filibuster.html
Hoping to build momentum for a change in Senate filibuster rules, more than 30 former chiefs of staff to Democratic senators have written an open letter calling for “repeal or reform” of the procedural tactic they say no longer serves its original purpose.
The 31 signers of the letter, who worked for more than 25 current and former Democratic lawmakers, conceded that they and their former bosses had embraced the filibuster in the past. But they argued that the maneuver is now being abused as a blunt-force instrument to stall most legislation.
“Over the course of the past 20 years, the filibuster has put a chokehold on the Senate,’’ said the letter, to be published on the website of the anti-filibuster group Fix Our Senate. “Legislation is now routinely filibustered, transforming the Senate from a place of meaningful debate and progress into a legislative graveyard.”
The letter also said that the main arguments typically cited for maintaining the filibuster — that it fosters bipartisanship, protects minority rights and prevents wild swings in policy with changes in power — no longer hold true.
The filibuster, once used sparingly, was never intended to be a way for the minority to routinely block legislation by preventing bills from advancing, they wrote.
“Many of us stood shoulder to shoulder with our former bosses when they filibustered legislation, and it was a valuable tool,” said Eric Mogilnicki, a chief of staff to former Senators Edward M. Kennedy and Paul Kirk of Massachusetts. “But it shouldn’t be that overwhelming the filibuster is the only way to pass legislation.”
Mr. Mogilnicki organized the letter along with Drey Samuelson, once the top aide to former Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota.
The former aides banded together on the issue after Senate Republicans in recent weeks blocked several top Democratic priorities through a filibuster, including a sweeping voting rights bill as well as bipartisan legislation to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by supporters of Donald J. Trump.
“We know that repealing or reforming the filibuster rule will someday lead to policy outcomes that we deeply dislike, and that might have been blocked under current Senate rules,” the letter states. “But we believe in a Senate where the people’s business can be done.”
While support has grown among Democratic senators for abolishing the 60-vote threshold for advancing legislation, filibuster opponents in the party currently lack the minimum 50 votes that would be required to overturn the rule.
How many votes are required to end the filibuster, 51 or 60?
A simple majority vote.
The Arizona Mirror reports, “Anti-poverty advocates urge Sinema to act on voting rights, minimum wage, filibuster”, https://www.azmirror.com/2021/07/14/anti-poverty-advocates-urge-sinema-to-act-on-voting-rights-minimum-wage-filibuster/
The Poor People’s Campaign announced on Monday the beginning of a weeks-long push calling on Congress to end the Senate filibuster and pass voting rights legislation, with a particular focus on senators like Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema.
The anti-poverty campaign, “A Season of Nonviolent Moral Direct Action,” will run each Monday until Aug. 2. Advocates are urging Congress to enact the sweeping “For the People Act,” an elections overhaul which passed in the House with the backing of Democrats but was blocked by Republicans in the Senate.
Advocates also want the restoration of the Voting Rights Act, which was gutted in a 2013 Supreme Court decision, and passage of an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
On Monday, the campaign focused on a massive call-in to every member of the U.S. Senate.
“This is not just a Black civil rights issue,” Bishop William J. Barber II, the co-chairman of the Poor People’s Campaign, said. “It’s also an issue for everyone who cares about democracy. Our democracy is at stake.”
Barber called on President Joe Biden to travel to Arizona and West Virginia to make the case there for ending the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation. Two Senate Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, have publicly voiced their opposition to eliminating the filibuster, a Senate procedural requirement that a bill meet a 60-vote threshold to advance rather than a simple majority.
“Which side are you on?” Barber asked, referring to Sinema and Manchin. “What is happening in the Senate is an attack not just on Black people, but on everyone, especially poor and low-wage people, and on democracy itself.”
[B]arber also urged the president to visit Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called a special session to pass a restrictive voting law. State Democrats are planning to flee the state for several weeks to prevent a quorum to block the special assembly.