'Replace Sinema': PAC spent 4 years trying to boot centrist ex-Dem from the Senate

15 March 2024

The two centrist senators who have frustrated progressives the most during the Biden era — Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) — will be vacating the U.S. Senate in January 2025.

Both senators have decided against seeking reelection. Democratic strategists aren't optimistic about West Virginia: Manchin was a rare example of a Democrat who could win statewide in the deep red state, and Republicans are likely to flip that U.S. Senate seat.

Democrats, however, are feeling much better about Arizona, where the Senate nominees are likely to be liberal Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and far-right MAGA Republican Kari Lake. Sinema won't be running as an independent.

In an article published on March 15, Politico's Michael Schaffer details a progressive group's campaign to get her out of the U.S. Senate.

"For nearly four years," Schaffer reports, "Sinema was on the receiving end of a relatively unusual political-money phenomenon in the capital's politics industry: the single-target PAC, an outfit geared towards creating precisely the outcome that became real when the senator announced her exit. For better or worse, it is a model that probably won't stay rare for long. And whatever you think of Sinema, the effort against her is also likely to speed up some of the most brutal trends in politics, another way for deep-pocketed donors to further wage permanent war on rivals who might not always make such obvious targets."

The Politico reporter adds, "Other political committees might beat up on a senator in the name of an issue or to help a particular rival. The Replace Sinema super PAC, by contrast, existed solely to run robust oppo research on, buy ads against, pitch unflattering media stories about and otherwise hound, harry and hector one solitary elected official: Sinema, who had enraged progressives with hostile stances on the filibuster, the minimum wage and Joe Biden's 'Build Back Better' bill, among other things."

Sinema spent most of her political career as a Democrat — first in the Arizona State Legislature, then in the U.S. House of Representatives, and most recently, in the U.S. Senate. But Sinema, realizing that an aggressive primary challenge from Gallego was a strong possibility, left the Democratic Party and went independent. And she subsequently decided against seeking reelection at all.

Schaffer notes that Replace Sinema, originally called Primary Sinema, targeted the centrist senator "for four of her six years in the upper chamber."

Sacha Haworth, Replace Sinema's senior adviser, told Politico, "There are a lot of things out there dedicated to taking out Democrats or Republicans, but this was a single mission dedicated to taking out one senator who was uniquely bad. There probably wasn't a negative headline over the last two years that we didn't have something to do with."

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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