Kyrsten Sinema's Departure From Democrats Closed More Doors than it Opened

Arizona Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced Friday she would be leaving the party, stunning the political world and leaving question marks around her future.

For Sinema, who was narrowly elected to replace outgoing Republican Senator Jeff Flake on a fervor of progressivism in the 2018 "blue wave" election, not much is expected to change.

Announcing her decision Friday, she told Politico's Burgess Everett she does not intend to vote any differently than she has in the past, nor does she intend to caucus with Republicans, a move that likely maintains the integrity of Democrats' upcoming 51-seat majority in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also said Sinema will be allowed to maintain her committee assignments in the party's upcoming majority, including her position as chairwoman of subcommittees on Aviation Safety, Operations, and Innovation and on Government Operations and Border Management.

For Arizona's voters, she said, it's the same product—just with a different label.

"Some partisans believe they own this Senate seat. They don't," Sinema wrote in an op-ed for the Arizona Republic newspaper Friday morning. "This Senate seat doesn't belong to Democratic or Republican bosses in Washington. It doesn't belong to one party or the other, and it doesn't belong to me. It belongs to Arizona, which is far too special a place to be defined by extreme partisans and ideologues."

Except on paper, some might say it already has.

Though Democrats won statewide races for Governor, U.S. Senate and Secretary of State this year, they did so by narrow margins, and against extreme partisan figures like Kari Lake, Blake Masters and Mark Finchem.

In the 2020 presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican Donald Trump by just over 10,000 votes—a relatively modest swing from the roughly 91,000 vote margin Trump had won by in 2016 in a state already trending from red to blue. And while the state legislature remains under Republican control, its margin is a narrow one, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats by just two seats in both the House and the Senate.

Statistically, Arizona is politically one of the most divided states in the nation—a philosophical gap Sinema says she hopes to bridge. Arizona has a long history of politically independent moderates in leadership, including figures like Republican Senator John McCain, and—historically—has seen regular exchanges of power in state politics, even as Republicans have controlled the governor's mansion for most of the last three decades.

"I want people to see that it is possible to do good work with folks from all different political persuasions, and to do it without the pressures or the poles of a party structure," she told Politico.

But among the Republicans Arizona has elected, the politics have also been winner-take-all in recent years, with even perceived moderates like outgoing Governor Doug Ducey and his predecessor, Republican Governor Jan Brewer, taking hardline approaches to policies like LGBTQ rights, gun rights and abortion anathema to the liberal vote.

Meanwhile, Sinema herself is already unpopular with both sides of the political spectrum. Polling from FiveThirtyEight shows Sinema's favorable rating at fewer than 40 points overall, with her highest unfavorables among members of her own party, at 57 percent.

Some figures, like progressive Arizona Congressman Ruben Gallego, have already weighed primaries against her, with polling from the progressive outfit Data for Progress showing Sinema as being highly vulnerable in a primary against a more progressive opponent, whom they say polls particularly well with left-leaning independents.

"Sinema really is finding herself between a rock and a hard place right now," Danielle Deiseroth, acting executive director with Data for Progress, told Newsweek in an interview. "She's viewed unfavorably among Democratic primary voters in Arizona. But at the same time, she'll be viewed as too far to the left than what many Republicans voters in Arizona want their candidate to be."

Though Sinema has not yet committed to running for re-election in 2024, she could face problems in a presidential election year that is already shaping up to be among the most contentious in U.S. history.

Registering as an independent saves her the prospect of losing a primary. But it also has the potential to prospectively divide the field among those that do support her, clearing the way for a Republican to win in a hypothetical three-way general election.

And while Sinema's disapproval ratings are slightly lower among Republicans—at 54 percent—and independents, at 51 percent, it is still unclear whether she will be able to siphon off the necessary support from all three groups of voters to secure a winning coalition in 2024, even as moderates from both parties found success in head-to-head elections this year.

Meghan McCain, the late senator's daughter and a columnist for the Daily Mail, suggested in a tweet that Sinema could take advantage of the state's divided electorate by walking a tight-rope between "another MAGA lunatic" from the state's splintering Republican side and a progressive nominee on the Democratic side, allowing her to win easily.

Others aren't so sure. A recent white paper from Third Way, a center-left think tank in Washington D.C., argued that while both the modern GOP and Democratic Party share high levels of disapproval, a third-party candidate on the national stage is likely not to succeed, and will likely lead to a Republican victory, largely due to GOP voters' unyielding support for former President Donald Trump and candidates in his mold and the relatively low propensity—9 percent—of "true" independents willing to vote for either party's candidate in any given year.

"It is common in politics to believe that the current moment is entirely unprecedented and an aberration from any previous time in our history," Aliza Astrow, a senior political analyst for Third Way, wrote in the report. "This attitude feeds into the belief that even though third-party candidates have never won in the past, now is the time that one might prevail. This belief is false and misguided."

Others agree.

"Given where Republicans are today, we wouldn't see too much defection from Democrats and more moderate folks going to Sinema, just knowing the stakes of the election," Deiseroth said. "We're in a much different electoral environment, thinking about the stakes of extremist Republicans in Arizona and states all across the country than we were, you know, a long time ago."

While independents face long-odds of success, they can win—particularly if they have ample name recognition.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who rose to prominence as the beloved mayor of Burlington, has long found success as a progressive-minded independent, while Maine's independent Senator Angus King has found success with the Republican caucus.

Others have found means to leverage their name recognition as independents within their own parties, including figures like West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, Maine Republican Susan Collins, and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, who openly supported her state's Democratic nominee for Congress this cycle.

But Sinema's home state, Arizona State University political science professor Fabian Neuner notes, is not like those places, particularly given recent trends and polling data in the state. Ultimately, Sinema's decision to run as an independent could—in fact—save her in 2024. That is, depending on how she orients herself in the upcoming Congress.

"A lot of this will depend on what happens next," he told Newsweek. "Will she caucus with Democrats and what will the Democratic response be? National Democrats will be weighing the above questions as well and it depends whether they conduct a primary and field a candidate or if they support her as an independent."

While she faces the immediate challenge she will need to collect many more signatures to qualify for the ballot as an independent, it allows her to campaign early and often with voters across the political spectrum. She is also well-funded and widely recognized, with a corporate donor base that will allow her to mount a broad statewide campaign with little difficulty.

Given those realities, national Democrats will likely need to think long and hard about a primary challenge against her, Neuner noted—especially given the statistical likelihood that her presence in a three-way election would more likely siphon Democratic votes rather than Republican ones and clear the way for a Republican victory.

"I don't see this as similar to the Murkowski situation," he told Newsweek. "We will know more once we have clarity on the caucusing situation and the Democrats next move but given recent polling data and entrenched partisan identities, I think a three-way race would see the Republican candidate favored."