The Arizona Democratic Party on Saturday passed a resolution threatening a no-confidence vote against Sen. Kyrsten Sinema if she does not support President Biden’s agenda and the elimination of the filibuster to accomplish that agenda. Eighty-one percent of the State Committee Members present voted in favor of the resolution, which passed with 415 votes in favor and 99 opposed after a floor amendment that strengthened the Executive Board’s hand in enforcement.
Adam Jentleson, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. said it was a big deal that opposition to Sinema is “making the jump from the far left to the mainstream of the party.”
“Sinema is not generating this kind of opposition because she’s blocking lefty priorities,” he tweeted. “She is gutting and undermining Biden’s agenda, and hurting all Dems including Mark Kelly, who is up for re-election next year. Republicans are having a field day using her stances to hit him. His seat could decide the majority in 2022.”
The entire resolution is published on the Arizona Democratic Party website.
Coconino County Democratic Party Chair, Ann Heitland, had this to say:
When I voted for this resolution, I was not speaking to Senator Sinema. Our audience is not Senator Sinema. Our audience is the voters of Arizona.
In 2020, we experienced record turnout and AZ voters elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on a Build Back Better agenda.
Joe Biden, not Senator Sinema, is the leader of our party.
Midterms are always more difficult. But I’d like to point out one year when they were not. Franklin Roosevelt was elected with Democratic majorities in 1932 and those majorities delivered on FDR’s campaign promises. 1934 was a landslide for Democrats. The country was still in a terrible crisis, but voters saw that Democrats were fighting for them and sent supermajorities to keep up the fight.
Senator Sinema will not be on the ballot in 2022 but what she does in the next three months will be. If Congress does not deliver on President Biden’s campaign promises, our job of electing Democrats to Congress and Statewide offices will be infinitely harder.
As leaders of the Arizona Democratic Party, we must have President Biden’s back. With this resolution, ADP has declared that we support his agenda and support any legitimate way to get that agenda enacted into law, including eliminating the filibuster.
If we don’t do that, the voters will see us and our candidates as just more cynical politicians. Politicians who take the cautious road. Politicians who take lobbyists’ money and do the lobbyists’ bidding instead of working for Arizonans.
If that’s how we are seen, the turnout in 2022 will be disastrous for us and we will lose. Given the positions that our senior Senator has taken, this resolution is needed for Democrats to win in 2022. Of course, her changing her positions would be even better, but that is not in our control. Distancing our party from those positions is in our control.
When a Forbes reporter asked Senator Sinema for comment on the resolution, the spokesperson said, “we do not” have a comment.
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