Kyrsten Sinema Is Leaving the Democratic Party Because It Would Be Hard for Her to Win a Primary

Senator Kyrsten Sinema announced her decision to leave the Democratic Party in a carefully orchestrated media campaign featuring a profile, an op-ed, and a video touting herself as an “independent voice.” Beyond the lofty language, what this really reflects is the fact that it would be a challenge for her to win in a Democratic primary.

Outright switching parties didn’t make much sense. Sinema is still effectively a Democrat. She backed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion left-wing spending spree that helped fuel inflation, and his climate and Obamacare-expansion bill, and is radically pro-abortion. Overall, she has voted against her party just 3 percent of the time. She just hasn’t been willing to go whole hog in embracing radical actions to advance progressivism. Most notably, she has opposed ideas such as blowing up the filibuster and packing the courts, and her objections created roadblocks that contributed to the death of Biden’s $3.5 trillion progressive wish list branded as Build Back Better. That has made her a hate figure among the progressive activists who control the Democratic Party, who even took to following her into a bathroom to harass her.

So, looking toward a potential 2024 reelection campaign, there was a very real chance that Sinema could have followed the same fate as Joe Lieberman in 2006. The former Connecticut senator had taken heat from his party for remaining supportive of the Iraq War, and he lost the Democratic nomination to an anti-war darling of the left, Ned Lamont. After losing, instead of backing Lamont in the general, Lieberman switched parties and won as an independent, further angering liberals.

Sinema’s action appears to be a preemptive strike. By acting now, she avoids having to go through a tough Democratic primary she could very well lose, and then face the decision of having to leave the party in a position of weakness. This way she gets ahead of the story and has more time to make her case to voters.

Keep in mind, when Lieberman became an independent, he did so after having already served three terms as senator, in a state that was much more Democratic than Arizona, and with an issue (the Iraq War) that motivated a lot of Republicans to cross over and vote for him. In that election, the Republican candidate ended up with less than 10 percent of the vote.

So clearly, Sinema wanted to get a head start in branding herself as an independent to Arizonans. Assuming she decides to run, Democrats will have to make a difficult decision as to whether to run their own candidate, and risk splitting the vote and losing the seat to a Republican, or accepting somebody who will vote with Democrats on most issues. A situation in which there’s Sinema as an independent as well as a Democratic candidate on the November ballot is one in which you can see a Kari Lake get elected to the Senate.