Rep. Ruben Gallego Slams Sen. Kyrsten Sinema For Being Consistently Inconsistent

Rep. Ruben Gallego says he has known Sen. Kyrsten Simena since they were both in their mid-20s coming up in Arizona politics, and the only thing she’s ever been consistent on is inconsistency.

Rep. Gallego will be at the AZ Deliver For Voting Rights Mobilization today to support voting rights legislation.

Poliitco reports, POLITICO Playbook: Civil rights leaders fume after meeting with Sinema:

On Wednesday at 3:30 p.m., a group of major civil rights leaders hopped on a Zoom call with Sen. KYRSTEN SINEMA to discuss the latest push for voting rights legislation. The participants — which included Rev. AL SHARPTON, NAACP President DERRICK JOHNSON, NAACP Legal Defense Fund President SHERRILYN IFILL and MELANIE CAMPBELL, president of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation — came with the goal of pushing the Arizona Democrat to support filibuster reform.

The previously unreported meeting was described to me by multiple people who attended or are familiar with the discussion, and was confirmed by Sinema’s office.

— What they told Sinema: Over the course of an hour, the civil rights leaders impressed upon the Arizona senator that time was running out for voting rights, and that they needed her to support a filibuster carveout for the issue. They wanted Sinema to understand that they felt her stance was divorced from political reality: no major voting rights bill will win 60 votes in this partisan climate. “You cannot say you ‘fought’ [for the bills], and not change the rules to make it happen,” in the words of one person who attended the meeting.

— What Sinema said: The senator politely listened and held to a message they’d heard from her before. She said she understood where they were coming from, and supports the voting rights bills, but believes that a filibuster carveout would be bad for the country, and that Republicans could well use it to hold a simple-majority vote to undo whatever voting legislation Democrats passed.

What a dumbass! Your actions will put the “Grim Reaper of Democracy,” Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, back in control of the Senate in 2023. His very first order of business in his Senate reorganization will be to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule so that authoritarian Republicans can enact their “enabling acts” to impose a permanent GQP tyranny of the minority. That this clueless woman does not seem to comprehend this is just dumbfounding. For Mitch McConnell, this must feel like stealing candy from a baby.

What Sinema didn’t say, according to participants, was that she was planning on definitively drawing that line in the sand the following day on the Senate floor minutes before Biden’s lunch with Senate Democrats, effectively ending any chance of enacting Dems’ voting rights bills this year.

While previous meetings between Sinema and the civil rights leaders ended with mutual respect and a promise to continue talking, this time, given the senator’s remarks on Thursday, sources say the relationship has soured. The civil rights leaders are frustrated with Sinema and, in the words of one person familiar with the meeting, “pissed.” [And rightfully so.]

“The timing of her speech … showed an insensitivity, at best, and contempt, at worst, of our efforts and the efforts of the president,” Sharpton told me.

In a statement to Playbook, a spokesperson for Sinema’s office said that “Senator Sinema is grateful for the chance to hear from these leaders — and as she said in her remarks [Thursday], she believes that different people of good faith can have honest disagreements about policy and strategy, and that honest disagreements are normal and do not reflect a lack of dialogue.” [Word salad.]

But some of the attendees feel that Sinema’s Thursday speech undercut any sense that the senator was truly interested in a dialogue. “It was almost like she said that she wanted to be able to tick off the box that she ‘talked to major civil rights leaders’ before she did what she did,” one attendee said.

Poliitco further reports, Sinema speech turbocharges primary challenge buzz:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) had hardly finished throwing cold water on President Joe Biden’s voting rights push on Thursday when Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) headed to the House floor to deliver a speech of his own.

“Today the House showed where it stands. We won’t shrink from protecting our democracy and the voting rights of all Americans. It’s past time for the U.S. Senate and Sen. Sinema to do the same,” Gallego said during his speech, after the House passed a voting bill and Sinema said she would not support changing Senate rules to pass it in the chamber.

It’s no coincidence Gallego called out his state’s senior senator by name. The midterm elections are still 10 months away, but some Arizona Democrats are already living in 2024, when Sinema is up for reelection. Gallego has been floated as a potential Sinema primary challenger, especially as she enrages progressives with her reluctance to change Senate rules or eliminate the filibuster.

Sinema’s speech added fuel to the fire. The Primary Sinema PAC, dedicated to knocking her out of office in 2024, told Morning Score it was on track to hit its largest fundraising day ever on Thursday, although a spokesperson did not say how much money it actually raised after her speech.

Overall, the PAC has raised $250,000 since it launched at the end of September, the group shared first with Score. Primary Sinema PAC received an additional $400,000 in seed money from the progressive donor group Way to Win. The PAC also released a memo Thursday claiming there is “no excuse for Sinema’s obstruction.” (The money it raises doesn’t go to a specific candidate, but rather “will go to support grassroots groups on the ground in Arizona who are leading the fight to hold Sinema accountable,” according to its website.)

Meanwhile, another effort to draft Gallego into the Senate race says it saw a fundraising bump after Sinema’s and Gallego’s speeches. The Run Ruben Run draft committee saw three times the number of contributions it had averaged over the last month, and four times its daily average, but declined to share any dollar amounts.

Gallego himself has taken steps toward running in recent months, such as hiring fundraiser Taylor Hennings, consulting with national donors and conducting polling. Currently holding a safe House seat in Phoenix, Gallego has had little incentive to raise money in the past; he only had $786,000 in campaign cash on hand at the end of last September, his most recent disclosure. Sinema had $4.5 million in her war chest as of Sept. 30.

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Sinema caught some heat Thursday from the leader of her state’s Democratic party. “We are disappointed to say the least that Senator Sinema has chosen to protect an antiquated rule over her constituents,” Arizona state Democratic Party chair Raquel Terán said in a statement.

The Arizona lawmaker could be vulnerable to a primary challenge. A Data For Progress poll conducted in October found 70 percent of likely Arizona Democratic primary voters disapproved of Sinema’s job performance, while only 25 percent approved.

The Sinema fallout wasn’t limited to Arizona. Some liberal Senate candidates in other states, like Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and former Rep. Abby Finkenauer of Iowa, used Sinema’s speech to tout their own progressives bonafides. Fetterman said in a statement that “Democrats need to vote like Democrats,” while Finkenauer called Sinema a “sellout.”

I will reiterate my call for Kyrsten Sinema to resign, and allow Arizona Democrats to appoint a real Democrat to her Senate seat. She obtained her Senate seat under false pretenses, and she has betrayed the voters of Arizona who elected her to office. She does not deserve to continue to hold her Senate seat another day longer.