Time's running out: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema faces big reelection deadline in 1 month

If Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is to even try to win a second term, she has reduced her path to a few urgent weeks of signature-gathering followed by about seven months to cut into a steep polling deficit with a thin cash edge.

Sinema, I-Ariz., hasn’t publicly said whether she intends to seek reelection, but the formal window to do so continues to dwindle, suggesting to a wide swath of political observers on the left and the right that she won't do it.

Sinema consistently has sidestepped questions about her future since she left the Democratic Party in December 2022. She now faces Arizona’s April 1 deadline to submit at least 42,000 signatures to qualify for the November ballot and hasn’t filed the necessary paperwork to officially begin collecting any of them.

Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republicans Kari Lake and Mark Lamb face far smaller signature thresholds as candidates running for major parties and who face primaries to qualify for the November ballot.

A Sinema spokesperson declined to discuss the matter, extending a silence that seems at odds with a campaign needing to quickly sell the public on another six years for Sinema.

The task of collecting signatures takes weeks and is now in a period when trying to do so becomes far more expensive. Accounting for the reality that some signatures inevitably are disqualified, experts in such matters have said that Sinema’s campaign would need to gather far more, perhaps upward of 60,000 before the deadline.

That task would cost at least $1 million and perhaps far more, the experts told The Arizona Republic last month.

The cost only rises as others are competing for the same service under the same deadline and as Arizona’s spring training visitor bulge makes it more expensive to import the needed help to gather names.

There are other signs that Sinema’s campaign isn’t ready for a big push.

By the end of 2023, her campaign listed four people on its payroll at a cost of less than $8,000 over the final three months of the year.

Five other incumbents facing what are expected to be difficult reelection bids easily outspent Sinema’s campaign in the same period.

That group, all of whom are Democrats, spent between $202,000 and $389,000 on payroll or salaries.

The smallest operation, belonging to Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., had 16 paid staffers. Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Sherrod Brown of Ohio each had 27 paid staffers.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who is retiring, outspent Sinema’s campaign on payroll nearly 2 to 1.

And Sinema’s seatmate, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who won’t face voters again until 2028, outspent her 9 to 1 and had two more people on his staff than she did.

Sinema spent months playing a leading role in trying to negotiate a bipartisan border security bill that immediately flopped when former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to oppose legislation that would give President Joe Biden an election year achievement.

Still, her efforts may have helped her standing with potential voters.

Sinema has fared better in several recent polls, pulling in more than 20% support in each. Even so, she remains more than 10 percentage points behind the leader in each poll.

Sinema’s campaign had more than $10 million in cash entering January, but her fundraising has sputtered and her cash total hasn’t changed much in nine months.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Is Kyrsten Sinema running for reelection? Big deadline is 1 month away