Kyrsten Sinema, the former Democrat from Arizona who is an independent in the US Senate, said on Tuesday she would not run for re-election this year.
“I love Arizona and I am so proud of what we’ve delivered,” Sinema said in a video posted to social media. “Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year.”
The news is a boost for Sinema’s old party, as it faces a tough task in seeking to maintain control of the Senate in the November elections.
Ruben Gallego, a US Marine Corps veteran and congressman, is the clear leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in Arizona but has lagged in polling behind the extremist, election-denying, pro-Trump Republican nominee, Kari Lake.
Both parties will now court Sinema’s remaining supporters.
Sinema’s ideological journey from the Green party to the Democratic left and on to sitting as a centrist independent has been a source of incessant speculation and reporting, not least as to what she might do next. She said last year she would not become a Republican but otherwise kept her plans to herself.
Sinema also stoked tremendous frustration among progressives.
Wielding significant power in a closely divided Senate, she and Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, exerted great influence over policy priorities for the Biden administration.
The two senators were on board for Covid relief and infrastructure legislation but also acted to block an attempt to weaken the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60-vote supermajorities for most legislation, a near-impossible target in so partisan and closely divided a chamber.
Activists and Democratic party officials knew filibuster reform was necessary for passing voting-rights protections meant to counteract Republican-led voter suppression in key states. Sinema’s own state Democratic party formally censured her on the issue.
In a western sun belt state shifting from Republican red to Democratic blue – or perhaps to swing-state purple – Sinema first sat in the US House, then won her Senate seat in 2018, becoming the first non-Republican to represent Arizona in the upper chamber since 1994.
To win that seat she beat Martha McSally, the Republican successor to John McCain, a giant of US politics who held the seat for 31 years and was the GOP presidential nominee in 2008.
In March 2021, Sinema courted controversy – and progressive fury – with a gesture apparently learned from or used in tribute to McCain, a senator widely known as a political maverick, willing to buck his own party.
In 2017, McCain’s famous “thumbs down” gesture on the Senate floor defeated a Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
Three years later, Sinema used the same gesture to express her opposition to raising the minimum wage.
In December 2022, Sinema announced her switch to become an independent, enraging the left again.
On Tuesday, Nina Turner, a former campaign chair for the Vermont senator and former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, said: “Kyrsten Sinema’s legacy as a senator will be that she upheld the filibuster, tanking legislation enshrining voting rights, reproductive rights, doubling child poverty by not expanding the Child Tax Credit, and killing raising the minimum wage increase.”
In her own statement, Sinema heralded her work across the aisle in the Senate, naming Republican allies including Mitt Romney of Utah and Rob Portman, a former senator from Ohio, but lamented that “Americans still choose to retreat farther to their partisan corners”.
“It’s all or nothing,” she said, “the outcome less important than beating the other guy. The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise is a dirty word. We’ve arrived in that crossroads and we chose anger and division. I believe in my approach, but it’s not what America wants right now.”
What America has right now is a bitter partisan divide, as jaggedly expressed in Arizona, a focal point for Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
Replace Sinema Pac, a group established to oppose Sinema, said the senator “obstructed President Biden’s agenda, got in the way of fundamental rights … and did the bidding of her wealthy donors”. Claiming credit for her departure, it said: “Arizonans deserve better.”
Steve Daines of Montana, the Senate Republican campaign chair, told CNN he was not surprised by Sinema’s announcement and claimed that polling showed Lake would benefit more than Gallego from Sinema’s exit.
“It gives us another great opportunity, another open seat on the Senate map,” Daines said.
In a statement, Lake said Sinema “shares my love for Arizona”, wished her “the best in her next chapter” and attacked Gallego as “far left” and a “radical”.
In his own statement, Gallego thanked Sinema “for her nearly two decades of service to our state” and said: “Arizona, we are at a crossroads.
“Protecting abortion access, tackling housing affordability, securing our water supply, defending our democracy – all of this and more is on the line. It’s time Democrats, independents and Republicans come together and reject Kari Lake and her dangerous positions.”
