Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), who is up for re-election in two years — although she hasn’t formally confirmed she intends to campaign to hold onto the seat, doesn’t have an overwhelming base of support in the Democratic Party, from which she just departed.
A pair of prominent Democratic campaign firms, including the pollster Impact Research — whose other clients include the Biden campaign, will no longer be working with Sinema. After Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) won his race for re-election — for real this time, defeating Republican Herschel Walker in a runoff — Sinema announced she was registering as an independent instead of a Democrat, the party under which she got elected and served in the Senate for several years. Sinema established herself once in the Senate as a so-called moderate who upended key portions of the legislative agenda developed by Democratic leaders, including reforms to federal protections for voting rights named after the late Congressman John Lewis. With Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Sinema was one of just two Senate Democrats who voted against implementing reforms to Senate filibuster rules that would have allowed passing the renewed protections.
The legislation would have restored some of the Justice Department’s power to review changes to how local elections are handled before officials implement the updates, a previously stronger framework under which federal authorities could stop potentially suppressive policies before execution.
Dixon/Davis Media Group, which is an advertising firm, is the other campaign organization that is distancing itself from Sinema — although HuffPost says both the ad company and Impact Research decided on no longer working with the Arizona Senator before she announced she was switching parties. Sinema, though, will also lose access at the end of next month to NGP VAN databases of Democratic voters’ details, information used in some of the foundational elements of campaigning like door-to-door visits and mailers. Like Impact Research and NGP VAN, Dixon/Davis has a long history in Democratic campaigns. The ad company was involved with Barack Obama’s campaign for re-election to the presidency in 2012.
Sinema’s decision to switch her party affiliation won’t affect Democratic control of the Senate. Bernie Sanders and Angus King were already independents, but in the Senate they caucus with Democrats and, like those actually registered with the party, generally vote in line with party ambitions. Her decision, though, means that she can avoid a Democratic primary race if she chooses to run for another six years, instead moving to the general election as an independent. The interest some were harboring in a primary campaign against Sinema was no secret, so it’s easy to assume the change is related to ambitions of avoiding that kind of face-off.
