PHOENIX — Kyrsten Sinema won Democrats a U.S. Senate seat from Arizona for the first time in a generation thanks in no small part to unity in her party and division among Republicans.
That Democratic unity of 2018 was on display again in the next two election cycles as the party picked up Arizona’s other Senate seat and won the top three state offices.
But that winning formula is in jeopardy ahead of the 2024 election because of Sinema’s estrangement and subsequent divorce from the Democratic Party, which could complicate President Joe Biden’s path to reelection and the party’s hopes for maintaining control of the Senate. She registered as an independent shortly after last year's midterm elections.
Democrats are already voicing fears that a three-way race with Sinema picking up votes from both Democrats and independents could hand the seat to a Republican such as Kari Lake, the failed gubernatorial candidate and one of the country's most prominent election deniers.
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“If there were ever a time for her to listen to her constituents for once, it’d be now,” said Alex Gomez, executive director of the Latino organizing group Living United for Change in Arizona, which has tangled with Sinema for years. “She needs to step aside. The potential candidacy of a Kari Lake presents a clear and present danger to our democracy.”
Sinema has not said whether she will seek reelection, and Lake has not announced a Senate campaign. But the race already has a Democratic candidate in U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Latino military veteran who kicked off his campaign last month after spending years as one of Sinema’s chief antagonists.
Gallego says he raised more than $1 million on his first day in the race, capitalizing on pent-up anger with Sinema among Democrats.
The Senate race is not the only new sign of Democratic division in the state. The Arizona Democratic Party last month had its first contested election for chair in 12 years, pitting a candidate backed by Gov. Katie Hobbs against one backed by most of the state’s other elected Democrats.
The party elected longtime union leader Yolanda Bejarano, who was endorsed by U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, Gallego and others, bucking the tradition of deferring to the preference of a Democratic governor. Hobbs said Thursday she had not yet spoken to Bejarano — nearly a week after the election.
The party discord in Arizona reverberates beyond the state.
Next year, Democrats, who have a narrow 51-49 Senate majority, are defending seats in 23 states — including seven where Donald Trump won at least once. That includes Arizona, where Trump won in 2016 but where Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state in more than two decades.
Sinema's political career began with roots in the progressive left and antiwar movement. She first ran for office as a Green Party candidate and lost badly, later winning a state legislative seat as a Democrat. She remade herself as a moderate in the U.S. House and parlayed that reputation into a Senate victory.
Her 2018 Senate win was fueled by a number of factors, including the state’s changing demographics, contempt for Trump among suburban women and Sinema’s spending advantage over Republican Martha McSally.
But McSally’s 2018 campaign strategists laid some of the blame for her loss on Democratic unity behind Sinema and Republican infighting. With Democrats in lockstep, Sinema had a head start on reaching out to swing voters, while McSally focused on holding the GOP together to win her primary, campaign officials wrote in a memo that circulated widely after the election.
When Sinema was sworn into office in 2019, Trump was in the White House, Republicans were in control of both chambers of Congress and Democrats were unified in opposition.
But her relationship with the party ruptured during Biden's presidency as she teamed up with fellow moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and became a roadblock for parts of the president's agenda and many progressive priorities.
She is one of the Senate’s most vociferous defenders of the filibuster rule, which requires 60 of 100 votes to pass most legislation, and which many Democrats say empowers Republicans to overrule the will of the Democratic majority.
Sinema says she's focused on crafting bipartisan deals that can outlive any one party's control of Congress and points to victories, including a massive infrastructure bill and protections for same-sex marriage.
Her transformation from liberal rabble-rouser into Democratic irritant has left the base feeling angry and betrayed just four years after her victory brought Arizona Democrats in from the cold.
“As long as Sinema’s off the team, that’s all that matters,” said Dave Crose, a 67-year-old retired mechanical engineer from Sun City who voted for Sinema in 2018 but has grown disillusioned with her. “That’s a bad thing to say, but she screwed everyone in the state, so payback’s her hell.”
By the numbers: President Biden at the two-year mark
6.5% annual inflation
6.5%: Annual inflation remains stubbornly high, but is slowly falling after reaching a four-decade high of 9.1% in June.
10.46 million job vacancies
10.46 million: The latest Labor Department figures show more than 10 million job vacancies in the U.S., nearly 1.8 jobs for every unemployed person. Jobless rate at 3.5%, matching a 53-year low. Zero recessions — so far.
$31.38 trillion national debt
$31.38 trillion: The federal debt stood at $27.6 trillion when Biden took office.
$24.2 billion in security aid to Ukraine
$24.2 billion: The amount of U.S. security assistance committed to Ukraine since the Russian invasion nearly 11 months ago.
38: The number of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, committed to send to Ukraine. A gamechanger, allowing Ukrainian forces to fire at Russian targets from far away, then drive away before artillery can target them.
2.38 million migrants stopped at border
2.38 million: For the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022, Customs and Border Protection reported stopping migrants at the U.S. border nearly 2.4 million times, a record surge driven by sharp increases in Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans. The previous high was 1.66 million in 2021.
97 federal judges confirmed
97: Confirmation of Biden's picks to the federal bench, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, outpacing the president's two immediate predecessors.
89 pardons and commutations
89: The president has granted nine pardons and 80 commutations, far more than any of his recent predecessors at this point. Donald Trump had granted 11 by this time, George W. Bush seven. Barack Obama didn't take any clemency action in his first two years.
$3.36 average gas price
$3.36: The average price per gallon that American motorists are paying at the pump has fallen since peaking at $5.02 per gallon in June. Motorists were paying a $2.39 per gallon average the week Biden took office.
666 million vaccines administered
666 million: The number of COVID-19 vaccines administered to Americans under Biden. Twenty million had received the jab before Biden took office. The vaccine was not approved until late in Trump's presidency.
15.9%: The percentage of Americans 5 and older who have gotten updated bivalent vaccine.
680,000 COVID-19 deaths
680,000: The recorded death toll from the coronavirus pandemic during Biden's term. The worst pandemic in more than a century had already taken more than 400,000 American lives by Biden's inauguration and has taken 1.1 million total since March 2020.
36 states visited
36: Biden has spread his travel across 36 states (shown here in Pennsylvania) to promote his agenda, but still needs to cross off Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
197 days in Delaware
197: There's no place like home. The president spent all or part of 197 days in his home state of Delaware, traveling most weekends to either his home near Wilmington or his vacation home at Rehoboth Beach, according to an AP tally. Beyond the weekend visits, he's also made quick trips for funerals, policy events and to cast his ballot in a Democratic primary.
6 chats with Xi
6: Biden has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping a half-dozen times since the start of his term. All but one of those were phone or video calls. They met in person on the sidelines of a summit in Indonesia in November.
22: The minimum number of times that Biden has publicly lapsed into a nostalgic recollection of an intimate conversation he had with Xi during a visit to China when Biden was vice president. Biden said Xi asked him to define America and he responded with one word: Possibilities. Biden even managed to squeeze in the anecdote during a celebration this week for the NBA champion Golden State Warriors.
21 news conferences
21: Biden held fewer solo or joint news conferences than his three most recent predecessors at the same point in their presidencies.
$1 trillion in infrastructure
$1 trillion: The amount allocated for roads, bridges, ports and more in Biden's bipartisan infrastructure legislation, arguably the most significant legislative achievement of his first two years in office.
$40 billion for bridges
$40 billion: The amount in the infrastructure bill dedicated to repair and rebuild the nation's bridges, the single largest dedicated investment in bridges since the construction of the Eisenhower-era interstate highway system.
43,000: The number of bridges in the U.S. rated as poor and needing repair, according to the White House.
1 state dinner
1: The president's lone state dinner to date honored French President Emmanuel Macron. Biden held back on some of the the traditional pomp — and partying — at the White House in the early going of his presidency because of COVID-19 concerns.
0 Cabinet departures
0: Not one of Biden's original Cabinet appointees has left the administration.
A closer look
Taking stock of President Joe Biden's first two years in office compared to his three most recent predecessors.
