Kyrsten Sinema’s Party Switch Is All About Her Political Survival

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s switch from Democrat to independent won’t change much in the Senate, but it has significant implications for 2024.

Sinema will continue voting with Democrats most of the time. She’ll maintain her chairmanship of two subcommittees, both of which are standard assignments for a first-term senator. Republicans are no closer to having a majority in 2023 than they were at 5:59 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, before stories announcing her decision went live on conducted by a bipartisan duo of pollsters in October, found that just 37% of Arizona voters had a favorable opinion of her, and 54% had a negative opinion.

Sinema’s numbers were matched only by Blake Masters, the Republican venture capitalist who lost to Kelly in November’s Senate race. Kelly, Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs (D), GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, Biden and former President Donald Trump were all more popular than Sinema with Arizona voters.

Functionally, Sinema’s announcement will have little to no impact in the Senate. While her desk is located on the Democratic side of the Senate floor, she spends most of her time on the Republican side, where she is friendly with many GOP senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). She rarely attends Democratic caucus meetings, generally avoids partisan messaging events and only endorsed Hobbs a few weeks before this year’s election.

Sinema has been a key bipartisan dealmaker in the past two years, helping negotiate and steer through several notable bills into law. Most recently, she helped win over 12 Republican “yes” votes for legislation codifying protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. She also successfully pushed for major infrastructure and gun law reforms.

Most of those laws are popular in public polling, and a well-funded campaign could use them to improve Sinema’s public image.

Progressives, who largely lined up behind her Senate bid in 2018, have found much to complain about her time in the Senate, however. She opposed eliminating the filibuster, including to pass voting rights legislation. And she helped block major progressive priorities, including a $15 minimum wage and efforts to close a tax loophole benefiting rich investors. Broadly, she has adopted liberal positions on social issues and conservative positions on economic ones — especially those with bearing on the financial services and pharmaceutical industries.

And the party’s left flank, emboldened by statewide victories in a GOP-leaning midterm year — including Sen. Raphael Warnock’s recent win in the Georgia runoff — is very explicitly not behind her ahead of 2024.

“With Senator Warnock’s re-election, Kyrsten Sinema’s ability to be the center of the political universe has ended within the Democratic Party,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva, a progressive who serves as the dean of Arizona’s congressional delegation, said in a statement.

“This is a predictable outcome for Senator Sinema as she has entirely separated herself from any semblance of representing hardworking and struggling Arizonans,” Grijalva said. “Her alignment with wealthy and corporate interests has crippled her ability to support the Democratic agenda.”