In addition to the Arizona Democratic Party Chairperson Raquel Teran, there have been other reactions to the announcement of Senator Kyrsten Sinema registering as an Independent.
Arizona House Representative Ruben Gallego, often mentioned before today as a candidate for the Democratic Senate Nomination in 2024, posted on social media:
My statement on Kyrsten Sinema abandoning the Democratic Partyhttps://t.co/QdrRf2mO5W pic.twitter.com/f0P3WZAdvA
— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) December 9, 2022
Later, in the day, Representative Gallego sent out a fundraising letter telling supporters he is considering a run for the Senate.
Arizona Secretary of State Elect Adrian Fontes was more magnanimous, posting:
My statement regarding this morning's news. pic.twitter.com/0zuQAMujCN
— Adrian Fontes (@Adrian_Fontes) December 9, 2022
Mathew Grodsky, Vice President and Director of Public Affairs of Matters of State Strategies commented:
“This will certainly shake things up for the 2024 election. The musical chairs will begin now.”
Very interesting that there are now 3 Independent US Senators, from Arizona, Maine & Vermont. We will see who will run for this Arizona Senate seat in 2024 from the Democratic and Republican parties, to face off with incumbent Senator Sinema in the General Election.
The same could be said of Rev Raphael Warnock.
Aaron Fritschner
@Fritschner
This is a Mark Kelly appreciation post.
Sometimes a stark contrast helps you appreciate even more what an exceptionally good thing you have.
He an excellent Senator and it rules that he just won six more years!
7:27 AM · Dec 9, 2022
I wish there were words to describe how fed up I am with that wretched woman.
Somehow this feels like a gut punch to the Democrats. According to Sinema, nothing changes as far as the “work” she is doing in the Senate. It’s business as usual. So why do this?
Sinema must know by now she couldn’t get re-elected to catch dogs. No matter how you slice the electorate in AZ, her disapproval is over 50 percent. She’s not going to be the new John McCain. She has not built a coalition of conservative voters across party lines. And unless she’s delusional, she can’t possibly be thinking she can get re-elected as an independent.
Sinema’s name is the very definition of political corruption. She pulled a bait and switch on the voters and sold her vote. She is a traitor. Now she’s on the TV, gaslighting the whole nation, telling us that she’s always been “an independent voice for Arizonans”, serving their best interests, and “will continue to do so.”
It’s difficult to imagine what she has accomplished by this except to tell the Democrats she doesn’t like them either. We know how the voters feel about her and I would think it’s not much different among the Democrats in Congress.
Her last card to play is to become a Republican, and that certainly doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.
But if she were smart, she would cash out and walk away. According to Open Secrets, her cash on hand is just under 8 million. That’s not a bad payday for a sell-out.
I mean if Arizonans were paying the slightest bit of attention when she deliriously delightedly deployed the McCain mocking thumbs down, this is just the latest narcissish play. No surprises here. At all.
If she was truly heading down this path, why not wait until the new committes are formed and seated in the 118th Congress? Why now? For aaaaall those headlines!
She is behaving in a truly reprehensible and utterly without integrity manner and without a shred of respect for every single person who worked the soles of their shoes to oblivion knocking doors, lost their voices calling in her behalf doing GOTV, and gave thousands upon thousands of small dollar contributions to get her elected.
But hey! The AZ Chamber LOVES it …
She’ll get tons of signatures from her GOP base. And we’ll defeat her anyway.