Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was done in by politics and her own ego

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced what has been obvious for a while now. She’s not running for reelection.

Sadly, I doubt there will be many around the state who will miss her.

She was the first Arizona Democrat in three decades to win a U.S. Senate seat, campaigning on a pledge to work with anybody to get stuff done.

Since then, she’s done just what she promised. She charted a middle course, in search of solutions that have bipartisan support.

Then she learned a hard lesson.

That’s not what we really want. Or if it is, it’s not enough.

Sinema forgot Democrats who helped her

You’ve got to dance — at least on occasion — with the ones who brung ya, and too often, Sinema’s dance card was filled with Wall Street bigwigs and pharmaceutical giants.

I can’t remember the last time I saw her hobnobbing around Arizona with the hoi polloi.

“Kyrsten Sinema went from being a politician who listened to her constituents by having humans answer her phones, holding town meetings, having an email address where people could contact her to dropping a citizen proof firewall between her and her constituents,” one former Sinema supporter told me.

“Suddenly you couldn’t call and get a person or even send an email to her. Those of us who worked to get her elected felt shut out and used.”

That’s a sentiment you’ll hear a lot in the Grand Canyon State — along with the word “betrayed” from Democrats who were aghast when she held firm on the filibuster after Joe Biden’s election, refusing to allow progressive proposals to flow forth with a mere majority vote.

The strongest signal yet: That Sinema won't run again

Democratic consultant Matt Grodsky said Sinema might have weathered that discontent had she remembered who sent her to Washington.

“Going back to 2019, there was no attempt to keep ties with the people who put her there,” he said. “Had she stayed close, the party could have had her back on some of her more centrist moves, but the ice-out killed her base.”

In December 2022, she left the Democratic Party, becoming an independent, but by then the Democratic Party had already left her.

Still, she played a key role in the Senate

Even so, Sinema deserves respect, if not a second term.

She played a key role in some of the most consequential initiatives to pass during one of the most polarized periods in our history — bipartisan bills to help veterans, fund infrastructure, address gun violence, protect same-sex marriage and boost the production of semiconductors.

She might have even been able to gain some measure of control over the U.S.-Mexico border, had Donald Trump not needed a sledgehammer with which to bash Joe Biden and the Democrats.

“It is an unmatched record to run on,” Democratic strategist Stacy Pearson told me recently. “And it’s exactly what she told the voters she was going to do.”

It is exactly what voters in the middle say they want … and yet Sinema trailed a distant third behind hard right Kari Lake and staunchly liberal Ruben Gallego.

That must have been a blow to the ego of a woman who is 8 for 9 in elections — the losing one being her first, when she ran for the Legislature as a Green Party candidate in 2002.

The sad part is that Sinema's right

Sinema, in announcing her retirement, sounded disillusioned and a tad bitter.

“These solutions are considered failures either because they are too much, or not nearly enough,” Sinema said, referring to her legislative achievements.

“It’s all or nothing. The outcome, less important than beating the other guy. The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise is a dirty word.”

Here is the saddest part of all.

She’s right.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @LaurieRoberts or on Threads at laurierobertsaz.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kyrsten Sinema won't seek reelection. Blame politics and her own ego