U.S. Senator Sinema leaves Democratic Party, registers as independent

[Achilles]

U.S. Senator Sinema leaves Democratic Party, registers as independent

1/3] U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) walks from her hideaway office to the Senate floor at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. August 2, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

Reuters
December 9, 20226:47 AM EST
Last Updated 36 min ago


WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - Arizona U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema said on Friday she had switched her political party affiliation to independent, leaving the Democratic Party just days after it won a U.S. Senate race in Georgia to secure 51 seats in the chamber.

"I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington. I registered as an Arizona independent," she said in a op-ed for local media outlet Arizona Central.

Sinema, in a separate Politico interview published on Friday, said she would not caucus with the Republican Party. If that holds, Democrats could still maintain greater governing control in the closely divided chamber.

Democrats had held the Senate 50-50 with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris holding a tie-breaking vote. U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock's victory in Tuesday's run-off election in Georgia had handed them their 51st seat.

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Two other current senators - Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine - are registered independents but generally caucus with Democrats.

Sinema on Friday said her shift came as a growing number of people in her Western U.S. state were also declaring themselves politically independent, rejecting both the Republican and Democratic political labels.

"Like a lot of Arizonans, I have never fit perfectly in either national party," she wrote.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ari...co-2022-12-09/

[Green Man]

The perils of party switching

By CHARLIE MAHTESIAN

12/09/2022
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly/2022/12/09/the-perils-of-party-switching-00073355

SWAPPING JERSEYS— The detailed choreography surrounding Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s party switch today obscures the fact that it’s a familiar Washington story. Since the 1990s, close to two dozen D.C. lawmakers have looked to the horizon and decided their long-term political interests were better served by changing sides.

Yet their collective experience suggests party switching rarely ends well — and that their carefully laid plans don’t always work out in ways they imagined.

For some, particularly the Southern pols who saw the region’s political realignment coming, ditching their party turned out to be a smart play — there’s no better example than Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who left the Democratic Party in 1994, the day after the GOP won control of the Senate. In the years since then, Alabama has become one of the reddest states in the nation. And Shelby, who is retiring at the end of this term, has never been threatened at the ballot box.

In 2001, Vermont GOP Sen. Jim Jeffords also made the most of his flip — in becoming an Independent who caucused with Democrats, he gave Democrats a Senate majority for 18 months and received a key committee chairship in return. When his seat was up in 2006, he declined to run for reelection — paving the way for Bernie Sanders’ election to the Senate.

Other party-switching senators met harsher fates. New Hampshire GOP Sen. Robert Smith — who flipped from Republican to Independent and back to Republican again within the span of a few months in 1999 — lost in a primary after the GOP largely abandoned him. Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, a one-time Democratic vice presidential nominee, remains loathed in some quarters of the party long after changing his party designation to Independent Democrat for his final Senate term.

The most recent Senate party switcher, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter in 2009 (from Republican to Democrat), revealed the degree to which the dynamics of party-switching have changed over the years. Like Sinema, Specter was a centrist thorn in his party’s side who faced a serious primary election threat. Unlike the Arizona senator, however, Specter sought refuge within the Democratic Party after getting assurances of support from top party leaders including President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden. But by then, the two major parties had become so ideologically hardened that there was limited interest in accepting converts. Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak, who was already in the race to challenge Specter, declined to drop out of the 2010 primary to accommodate him. Specter ultimately fell short against Sestak, losing all but three counties.

Specter, who passed away two years later, wrote in his book “Life Among the Cannibals” that he felt betrayed by the Obama administration and other top Democrats, who he believed failed to follow through on pledges of support.

Sinema’s gambit is different — and more suited to the current climate. As an independent, if she chooses to run for reelection in 2024, she no longer has to face a tough primary challenge from the left, most likely from Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego. The onus is now on the Democratic Party — they will have to decide whether to risk splintering the vote by supporting a Democratic candidate against her in a potential three-way race.

The calculus behind her party switch suggests the lessons of Specter’s experience — and former Alabama Rep. Parker Griffith’s defeat in 2010 — remain relevant.

Griffith, who was elected to the House as a Democrat in 2008 but flipped parties and ran for reelection as a Republican two years later, was crushed in the GOP primary by Rep. Mo Brooks.

“ I am a man without a country ,” Griffith would later say.

“It’s hard to be a Democrat or a Republican, because they are both so dysfunctional,” he said. “So you choose the cleanest dirty shirt.”

[Hoppalong]

[QUOTE=Achilles;2869916]9/[/QUOTE

Sinema says she won’t caucus with Senate Republicans, so Democrats will still hold the majority next year. And she is expected to continue casting most of her votes with Democrats while separating herself on certain issues. “Nothing’s going to change for me,” Sinema declared in a video announcing her decision.
A look at what Sinema’s decision means:
WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE SENATE
Not much. Democrats will still be in charge, and day to day operations won’t change for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Sinema is still holding her Democratic committee assignments, meaning she can’t upend the party structure too much.

[Idaho Bullwinkle]

..........And will always vote with the Democrats.

[lonewolfinoregon]

If she looses her chair seats in the new SENATE, then she has gone "ROGUE" and abandoned the "DEMOCAT PLANTATION"!!!!

[dmatic]

What are those earrings dangling from her lobes? Rattles from a snake?

[lonewolfinoregon]

What are those earrings dangling from her lobes? Rattles from a snake?

Never noticed until you brought it up..

They do seem to resemble rattlesnake "RATTLE"!!!