Eight times Kyrsten Sinema let down the LGBTQ+ community — and others
| 01/24/25
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U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema at President Joe Biden's State of the Union address in 2023
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Kyrsten Sinema, the first out bisexual in Congress — first in the U.S. House and then the Senate — came into office as a progressive but eventually moved rightward, or at least far enough toward the center to disappoint many of her early supporters. The Arizona Democrat turned independent was a champion of the filibuster, a rule under which 60 senators must vote to end debate on a bill before voting on the bill itself. That helped stall much legislation backed by liberals and LGBTQ+ Americans. Sinema, who didn’t run for reelection to the Senate in 2024, continued to defend the filibuster in her farewell speech, delivered in December. She’s been succeeded by Democrat Ruben Gallego, who beat Republican Kari Lake in November. Some of Sinema’s actions showed that “when it comes to politics, visibility and representation will only take you so far,” The Advocate’s Christine Linnell wrote in an opinion piece in 2021. Here’s a look at the actions that most let down those who initially welcomed her presence in Congress.
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Sen. Kyrsten Sinema speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on February 5, 2024, in Washington, D.C.
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Most significant for LGBTQ+ people is that the Equality Act has never passed the Senate, despite passing the House twice — in 2019 and 2021. The act, which would have outlawed anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination nationwide in employment, housing, public accommodations, and more, didn’t come to a vote in the Senate in either year. The chamber had a Republican majority in 2019, but in 2021 it had a 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice President Kamala Harris ready to break a tie and President Joe Biden promising to sign it. It stalled in a Senate committee, but it wouldn’t have overcome the 60-vote threshold set by the filibuster. Sinema, then a Democrat (she became an independent in 2022), and another Democratic senator, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, opposed lifting the filibuster, although Sinema supported the bill itself. “The filibuster compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between opposing policy poles,” Sinema wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in 2021.
Bought by Election Transparency Initiative, a highway billboard sign thanks Sinema for "protecting the filibuster."
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In January 2022, voting rights legislation — designed to override restrictions adopted in several states — could not pass because it fell short of the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster. The Senate debated weakening the filibuster rule to allow the voting rights bill to pass by a simple majority, but Sinema and Manchin voted against the move, as did all Republicans, so the bill died. Restrictions on voting rights often particularly affect poor people and voters of color.
Sinema at a Senate committee hearing in 2022
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The Women’s Health Protection Act, meant to write the right to abortion into federal law, failed to overcome the Senate filibuster when it came to a vote in May 2022. Democratic legislators were moved to take action after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion showed the court intended to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationally. The high court followed through with a final opinion in June 2022. Senators voted 51-49 against advancing the bill, with Manchin joining all Republicans in opposing the move. Sinema is pro-choice and voted to advance the legislation, but still, it was the filibuster that stalled it — and which she continued to support.
A Tucson activist expresses her feelings toward Kyrsten Sinema
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In 2021, Sinema voted against a provision in the coronavirus relief package that would have increased the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. “And she didn’t just vote against it, but went out of her way to get Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s attention before giving a sassy thumbs-down on the floor of the Senate,” Linnell wrote in her Advocate commentary. When in Arizona’s legislature before joining Congress, she supported an increase in the state minimum wage — if the state minimum wage is different from the federal one, employers have to pay whichever is higher. But she said the federal minimum wage increase should be considered separately from coronavirus relief. It wasn’t raised — it has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009. “Sinema’s vote shines a light on the fact that women are more likely to work minimum wage jobs that keep them in poverty — especially LGBTQ+ women and women of color,” Linnell added.
Kyrsten Sinema leaves the Capitol October 28, 2021
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Sinema has been criticized for her spending of campaign funds on luxuries. She “has filled her campaign coffers with Wall Street cash — but some donors are miffed she’s spent more than $100,000 of it on luxury hotels, private jets, limos and fine wines” over the previous two years, the New York Postreported in 2023. “This appears to be an outlier,” Thomas Jones, president of the American Accountability Foundation, told the Post. “There’s a decent number of fundraiser-type events at nice restaurants and steak houses, but Sinema’s spending appears outside the norm. Donors generally want candidates spending their money on winning their races — not on expensive meals and fancy destinations.” The foundation is a conservative group, but Sinema has been criticized from the left as well. Some Democratic donors wanted their money back, but Sinema and her staff had ceased responding to them, according to the article.
Then in December 2024, a watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission seeking an investigation of Sinema and her main campaign committee, Sinema for Arizona, “for apparent direct and serious violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act,” as the complaint stated. “Throughout 2024, and in violation of FECA, Senator Sinema appears to have used her principal campaign committee, Sinema for Arizona, to fund her personal travel, including domestic chartered and international flights as well as meals, catering, and lodging related to trips to Europe, Boston, the California wine country, and several other locations, which appear unrelated to any campaign or official business,” the document continued.
Sen. Mitch McConnell speaks with reporters in his office in the Capitol.
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In 2022, with her popularity dipping across party lines in Arizona, Sinema touted her friendship with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. “In today’s partisan Washington, it might shock some that a Democratic senator would consider the Republican leader of the Senate her friend. But back home in Arizona, we don’t view life through a partisan lens,” Sinema said in a speech at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center, which is named for McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky. He praised her as well. “I’ve only known Kyrsten for four years, but she is, in my view — and I’ve told her this — the most effective first-term senator I’ve seen in my time in the Senate,” he said in introducing her. “She is, today, what we have too few of in the Democratic Party: a genuine moderate and a dealmaker.”
President Joe Biden speaks outside the White House with a bipartisan group of senators after meeting on an infrastructure deal June 24, 2021. From left are Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA).
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Once she became an independent, Sinema spent some time ridiculing Democrats in front of Republican audiences. In a meeting with Republican lobbyists in 2023, she said she stopped attending Democratic caucus luncheons because “old dudes are eating Jell-O, everyone is talking about how great they are. I don’t really need to be there for that. That’s an hour and a half twice a week that I can get back,” Politico reported. In various venues, she called House liberals “crazy people,” touted her good relationships with Republican senators, and spoke of Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, “in harshly critical terms,” the Politico article continued.
Tulsi Gabbard speaks at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference
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It’s said that politics makes strange bedfellows, but maybe this relationship wasn’t so strange. In 2023, it was reported that Sinema’s security, both for her campaign office and her Senate office, was provided by Vrindivan Gabbard Bellord, the sister of former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. There are some similarities between Sinema and Gabbard — both left the Democratic Party and became independents, but Gabbard then went further and became a Republican. She’s now Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence. Gabbard has also swung from being anti-LGBTQ+ to LGBTQ-supportive and back to anti-LGBTQ+. Sinema likely got to know Bellord through Gabbard, so the formation of their relationship was understandable, but the large sum, in the hundreds of thousands, that Sinema paid to Bellord raised ethical questions, some campaign finance experts said. Brendan Fischer, executive director of Documented, a watchdog group, told The Daily Beast it’s “exceptionally rare” for the same person to be paid for the same work with both political campaigns, funded by private contributors, and a public office, where taxpayer monies pay for staffing. Under Federal Election Commission regulations, candidates can use campaign funds for personal security, but the amount paid to Bellord is “eye-opening,” added Saurav Ghosh, a former campaign finance attorney now at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. He noted that if Sinema is Bellord’s only client, that is “one of the biggest red flags.” Sinema did not respond to the Beast’s requests for comment.