Draft:Kyrsten Sinema

Kyrsten Sinema is a Democratic Senator from Arizona, elected in 2018. She succeeded the retiring, defeated , and became the first Democratic Senator to represent Arizona since 's retirement in 1995. Before that, she represented Arizona's 9th district (based in suburban Phoenix) for eight years in the House, and before that served in Arizona's state Senate and House. Alongside Joe Manchin, she is currently one of the two Democrats in the Senate most responsible for holding up Joe Biden's agenda. However, while Joe Manchin was always seen as being conservative for a Democrat, being more business-friendly in a state that was at the time dominated by labor unions, Kyrsten Sinema is a different beast entirely. She actually got her start in politics in the Green Party, and was a vocal anti-war activist who wrote an essay critical of capitalism. But somewhere along the way, she became much more conservative, to the point where she infamously opposed an increase to a $15 minimum wage. This leaves many to wonder why a bisexual, openly nonreligious former Green Party member could turn into such a thorn in the side of progressives.

Progressive roots
Until the average American realizes that capitalism damages her livelihood while augmenting the livelihoods of the wealthy, the Almighty Dollar will continue to rule. It certainly is not ruling in our favor. Sinema got her start in politics working for Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign. Her first attempt at running for public office was in 2002, when she ran as a Green Party-affiliated candidate but placed last in a field of five candidates, receiving 8% of the vote. In the next year, however, she would become a vocal anti-war activist, co-founding Local to Global Justice, which had held 15 anti-war rallies by the start of the Iraq War; she was even willing to work with anarchist groups to hold the rallies. She was also a supporter of universal health care.

In 2004, she joined the Democratic Party, and would be elected to the Arizona State House of Representatives later that year. She was still seen as pretty progressive, especially known for her opposition to anti-immigration bills (being a social worker who had worked with many immigrants on the border) and support of LGBTQ+ rights (being bisexual herself). In 2006, she sponsored the DREAM Act and campaigned against Proposition 107, which would have constitutionally banned all gay marriage and civil unions in the state. That year, she said she was "the most liberal member of the Arizona State Legislature" to a radio host. Sinema was also one of the only lawmakers in her state to tackle mass incarceration, and attended a prison reform rally in 2008. That same year, she opposed another proposition to ban gay marriage in the state, which would sadly pass but ultimately be declared unconstitutional six years later.

A turning point
In 2009, Sinema was promoted to an Assistant Minority Leader in the Arizona State House. 2009 wasn't a good year for the state of Arizona. Due to a combination of the effects of the Great Recession and number of ill-advised tax cuts, Arizona had a severe budget deficit, one of the worst in the nation. Additionally, Barack Obama had chosen the Democratic Arizona Governor as his Secretary of Homeland Security, and she was succeeded by the Tea Partier, giving Republicans full control of Arizona. Sinema realized that it would be difficult to convince Republicans to raise taxes, and instead shifted her focus to trying to limit the damage of the budget cuts instead of trying to avoid them entirely, going as far as voting with the rest of the House Appropriations Committee against considering increasing taxes as a solution. The proposed cuts weren't enough for Governor Brewer, and when she requested even more severe cuts to the budget, she told the press that there were still areas of the budget to cut beyond the proposed cuts. However, this attempt at reaching across the aisle was an abject failure, and the Democrats were eventually kicked out of the budget negotiations, and a budget that had severe cuts to areas like healthcare and education passed along party lines. Despite the failure, the budget crisis would mark a shift in Sinema's rhetoric, and instead of a progressive seeking to make meaningful change, she fashioned herself as a negotiator who would work across the aisle and get things done. Perhaps the biggest signal of her shift was when she defended then-President of the Arizona Senate, who was responsible for Arizona's notoriously harsh anti-immigration laws, during the successful 2011 effort to recall him, and even said she would like him to run for Congress, which came across as betrayal of her past support for undocumented immigrants. However, there was a likely reason for this - she was eyeing a competitive House seat.

On the national stage
As a result of the 2010 census, Arizona gained an additional House seat. This new House seat was split between Tempe, a liberal college city, and more conservative portions of Phoenix, meaning that it was competitive. In 2012, Sinema, who two years earlier had made it from the Arizona State House to the Senate, decided to make a run for the House, and she came out on top of a three-way primary. While the Republicans tried to use her past as an activist against her, Sinema was able to use her bipartisan rhetoric to win over moderate voters, as well as the fact that her opponent was a Tea Partier. Ultimately, she won by four points. Upon being elected, Sinema would join a number of neoliberal and fiscally conservative congressional groups, including the Blue Dog Democrats, the New Democrats, and Third Way, the lattermost of which she would become an honorary co-chair.