“Vox’s platform is founded heavily on nationalism and a return to “tradition” on social issues: The Spanish nation, to hear the party tell it, should prioritize its residents and practices like bullfighting rather than welcoming migrants, should be skeptical of efforts to advance gender equity, and should be actively opposed to LGBTQ rights, including gay marriage. Key stances Vox has championed include claiming that gender violence doesn’t exist, pushing to reverse a trans rights law that just took effect this year, banning abortion, and closing shelters housing foreign minors.”
“Sinema’s decision reflects a tradition of Arizona politics, where registered independents rival the state’s registered Republicans as the state’s largest voting group. The state is split nearly evenly into thirds among the two major parties and independents.
Based on initial exit polls, the makeup of this year’s electorate reflected some of this dynamic: Independents made up the largest group of voters in the Senate race, and they backed Democratic incumbent Mark Kelly by more than 15 points. Republicans, the next largest group, backed candidate Blake Masters by a smaller margin than they backed the 2020 election-denying gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Sinema has said that her decision to change parties is meant to reflect this dynamic: “I promised I would never bend to party pressure,” she wrote in her op-ed. “Arizonans — including many registered as Democrats or Republicans — are eager for leaders who focus on common-sense solutions rather than party doctrine. … It’s no wonder a growing number of Americans are registering as independents. In Arizona, that number often outpaces those registered with either national party.”
Arizona’s partisan breakdown isn’t expected to change dramatically before 2024, and Sinema’s decision makes the state’s upcoming Senate race wide-open. Sinema isn’t announcing a reelection effort yet, only saying that she does not plan to run for president. But if she does run, her move could work to her advantage.
She faced an uphill challenge by running as Democrat — she wasn’t leading in any hypothetical polling conducted in 2021 or 2022 when matched up against leading alternative Democratic candidates, like Rep. Gallego, Rep. Greg Stanton, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, or Tucson Mayor Regina Romero. Her favorability ratings remained low during the last year in both public and private Democratic polling from the Kelly campaign, according to a Democratic operative who was familiar with those results. Now, by unaffiliating herself with the state party, she could avoid what likely would have been a bruising primary contest that she would have lost.”
“Facing a potential primary challenge on her left from Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, Sinema stood a real chance of losing renomination if she sought reelection as a Democrat (she might’ve been in trouble against a more center-left Democrat, too, like Rep. Greg Stanton). Tellingly, Yoshinaka’s study found the prospect of facing a highly competitive primary in one’s own party can play into leaving that party.”
…
“if Sinema’s chances of winning a Democratic primary were mediocre at best, it’s unclear how much stronger her path would be as an independent. It’s hard to imagine Republicans deciding not to field a major candidate against Sinema even if she’s an independent, but it’s possible she is hoping that the potential complications of a three-way race discourage a high-profile Democrat like Gallego from running. In that scenario, perhaps Democrats line up behind her in a head-to-head race against a Republican.
However, Gallego has already responded to Sinema’s switch by sending out fundraising texts that say he’s considering a Senate run. Now, Sinema might be able to put together a mishmash coalition of Democrats, Republicans and independents to win a three-way contest. After all, that Suffolk poll found that Republican likely voters also had a slightly more positive view of her than Democrats (35 percent favorable, 40 percent unfavorable), while independent likely voters had net-positive attitudes (42 percent favorable, 27 percent unfavorable). And she could attract plurality support if Democrats and Republicans nominate candidates who are viewed as too far left or right. That’s a possibility, too, as Gallego is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Arizona Republicans just nominated far-right contenders Blake Masters and Kari Lake in the 2022 Senate and gubernatorial races, respectively.
But Sinema could certainly also find herself running in last place. Yoshinaka’s study found party switchers suffer an electoral penalty in their first general election after switching, with an average decline of 4 to 9 percentage points in vote share. Having upset Democrats, Sinema might lose most of their support to the Democratic pick, and there’s no guarantee that many Republicans back her over their party’s nominee, even if that candidate is highly problematic.”
…
“The difficulties Sinema is likely to encounter speak to why senators rarely switch parties, and why it’s even more unusual for them to become — and stay — independent. Sinema is just the 10th senator since 1951 to formally switch parties while in office”
“Republicans across America are pressing local jurisdictions and state lawmakers to make typically sleepy school board races into politicized, partisan elections in an attempt to gain more statewide control and swing them to victory in the 2022 midterms.
Tennessee lawmakers in October approved a measure that allows school board candidates to list their party affiliation on the ballot. Arizona and Missouri legislators are weighing similar proposals. And GOP lawmakers in Florida will push a measure in an upcoming legislative session that would pave the way for partisan school board races statewide, potentially creating new primary elections that could further inflame the debate about how to teach kids.
The issue is about to spread to other states: The center-right American Enterprise Institute is urging conservatives to “strongly consider” allowing partisan affiliations to appear on ballots next to school board candidates’ names, as part of broader efforts to boost voter turnout for the contests. A coalition of conservative leaders — including representatives of Heritage Foundation, Manhattan Institute and Kenneth Marcus, the Education Department civil rights chief under former Secretary Betsy DeVos — have separately called for on-cycle school board elections as part of sweeping efforts to “end critical race theory in schools.”
In Florida, school boards are among the last elected officials who blocked policies of Gov. Ron DeSantis. If Republicans succeed in pushing the state to strip school board elections of their nonpartisan status and gain more representation on school boards, they could break the last holdouts who regularly defy the governor.”
…
“Making school board races partisan could make an already heated political landscape even more contentious”
…
““I do think party labels would produce more informed voters,” West said. “But, at the same time, it would likely accelerate emerging trend of nationalization of local education politics.””
“And despite the differences, the three parties are unified around some big things. All three are fairly socially progressive, for example, on things like LGBT rights, and the coalition has proposed an agenda including greater protections for trans people and ending restrictions on blood donations from gay men. The parties, too, may have different ideas of what progress means, but they are coalescing around the idea that Germany has to move a bit forward, and faster, to tackle challenges like climate change.”
…
“The coalition wants to lower the voting age in Germany to 16. It wants to legalize weed, an issue Merkel never really got behind. Climate change was a big issue among all parties during the 2021 elections, and this agreement speeds up the timeline for Germany to abandon coal, from 2038 to 2030. The plan also calls for social investments, like building 400,000 affordable housing units and raising the minimum wage to 12 euro an hour.”
“There were once plenty of senators who represented states that voted for the other party for president. Between 1960 and 1990, roughly half of all sitting senators fit into this group. But over the last three decades, that number has plummeted”
…
” Likewise, in an earlier political era, many senators shared their state with a senator from the opposite party. Not only did this serve to reinforce the electoral reality that either party could win a state, but it also gave such senators an obvious bipartisan partner in the Senate, particularly on issues of concern to their home state. Today, though, only 12 senators..have a colleague who’s from the other party.”
…
“because Senate elections were more about local issues, both parties were able to compete nationally. Voters didn’t care as much whether they sent a Democrat or a Republican to Washington. What mattered was whether they sent somebody who could represent their state well. And senators could prove their worth by bringing home federal funding for roads and bridges — just the kind of issue that used to facilitate bipartisan dealmaking.
But today’s political campaigns and voters care far less about roads and bridges. They care far more about national culture-war issues — and which party controls the majority in Congress. As a result, Democrats can’t win in much of the Southeast and the Mountain West, and Republicans are now perpetual losers in the West and the Northeast. Only the Southwest and the Midwest remain competitive, and that’s only because state populations are currently balanced between liberal cities and conservative exurbs.
It’s also why bipartisanship in the Senate is waning. Republican senators in solidly Republican states do not have to worry about winning over some Democrats; the senators’ general election win is all but assured. Rather, the most likely way they could lose is if they face a primary challenge to their right. And the most likely way they could draw such a challenger is if they were to publicly work with Democrats.”
…
“even for senators who want to publicly prove their bipartisan bona fides, the problem is that party leaders like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell prefer votes that draw sharp contrasts between the two parties. Divisive partisan politics help with campaign fundraising in an era of increasingly ideological donors (both big and small). And high-stakes elections mobilize and excite voters. Bipartisanship, in contrast, muddles the stakes and blurs the lines.”
…
“Biden worked harder than Trump to foster a bipartisan deal. But arguably, it was the Democrats’ threat of eliminating the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation that pushed McConnell into supporting a bipartisan agreement in a way that bolstered Sinema and Manchin’s faith in bipartisanship. This is hardly a sustainable formula for bipartisan dealmaking on major issues.
To be sure, Congress can still accomplish some lower-profile bipartisan lawmaking (like a recent major upgrade of our drinking-water and wastewater systems) through what Matthew Yglesias and Simon Bazelon have dubbed “Secret Congress.” It turns out that members of Congress can still work across party lines when issues are relatively noncontroversial and there is not much media attention.
Indeed, if you look beyond the partisan media’s name-calling, you can find surprising amounts of bipartisan activity”
…
“But “Secret Congress” works only because it’s secret, and it’s secret only because the issues are not high-profile enough to draw the public spotlight. But if the only bipartisanship that happens in Congress happens on uncontroversial one-off issues, this leaves the most important issues of the day to wither on the shoals of a 60-vote threshold in the Senate or, more commonly, in the gridlock of a divided government.”
…
“partisans are the most hostile to compromise — especially those individuals whose racial, religious and cultural identities line up most strongly with one party. But the partisan sorting that has aligned these identities so closely with one party over the last several decades is precisely the reason why voters have come down so hard on politicians who compromise. The more that national political conflict is centered on abstract moral issues and the identity of the nation, the more any compromise feels like a surrender.
To recreate the conditions that allowed bipartisanship to flourish in the Senate once upon a time seems unlikely anytime soon. Instead, the most bipartisan-oriented senators are the most endangered. Manchin is a dying breed. His eventual replacement in West Virginia will almost certainly be a Republican.”
“Most Democrats in Congress are united around the Democratic agenda, but a small number of senators and representatives have so far been able to hold up its passage. “I need 50 votes in the Senate. I have 48,” President Biden said last week, regarding his social spending bill. As for who is standing in the way, his blame was clear: “Two. Two people.”
Those two people are Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. The two moderates have forced Democrats to water down several priorities (such as election reform and the $3.5 trillion budget bill) and are blocking more ambitious reforms entirely (such as abolishing the filibuster). But while congressional observers — from the commander-in-chief on down — usually mention Manchin and Sinema in the same sentence, it’s a mistake to lump together their resistance to their party’s priorities. Manchin’s centrism is unsurprising: He has been a conservative Democrat his entire career, and his home state of West Virginia is so red that it might be politically impossible for him to move left, even if he wanted to.
But neither is true of Sinema. Once a staunch progressive, Arizona’s senior senator has taken a hard turn to the right. On the surface, that appears to have been an effort to make her more electable by courting moderate and conservative voters. If so, she may have overcompensated: Arizona is no West Virginia, and no other swing-state senator has vexed Democratic leadership so thoroughly. In fact, Sinema’s established such a firm anti-progressive reputation that she may have lost the support of enough Democrats to endanger her reelection just the same.”
…
“Democrats are lucky that Manchin is in the Senate at all. Because of how red West Virginia is, a typical senator from the state would almost certainly be a Republican.2 Indeed, based on Trump’s margin in West Virginia in 2016, we’d expect that a generic replacement for Manchin would have voted in line with Trump’s position 89.3 percent of the time during his presidency. Manchin, though, voted with Trump just 50.4 percent of the time — a lot for a Democrat, but not a lot considering the partisanship of his home state.
Using the same methodology, we’d have expected a generic replacement for Sinema to vote with Trump just 39.8 percent of the time — a reflection of the purpler partisanship of her state and her congressional district at the time. Yet Sinema voted with him 50.4 percent of the time too, as much as Manchin. That made her the only Democratic senator who voted with Trump significantly3 more often than expected based on the politics of senators’ states. Her voting record during the Trump years looked more like Manchin’s, Sen. Joe Donnelly’s, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s or Sen. Claire McCaskill’s — all Democrats from substantially redder states.”
…
“If Sinema is acting moderate for electoral reasons, she clearly disagrees with the conventional wisdom about how moderate a swing-state senator needs to be. On one hand, maybe she has a point: Donnelly, Heitkamp and McCaskill all lost reelection in 2018, as did Sen. Bill Nelson, whose home state of Florida is about as purple as Arizona but who voted with Trump less often than Sinema did. All four voted with Trump significantly less often than we’d have expected given the partisanship of their state, suggesting that Sinema’s strategy of hewing closer to expectations might have been smarter. (Although this doesn’t justify her approach of voting with Trump more often than expected.) On the other hand, political science research has found that candidates and congressional aides are really bad at assessing where voters stand on the issues. One 2013 study found that politicians overestimated by several percentage points how conservative their constituents were, in direct contradiction of Sinema’s entire theory of the case.”
…
“Sinema is presumably betting that Democrats who dislike her will vote for her regardless, and that at least some Republicans who like her will vote for her, too.”
…
“If Democratic opinion of Sinema sinks low enough, she could even be in danger of losing in a primary.”
…
“It may be her donors. In a September report, liberal group Accountable.US found that Sinema raised at least $923,065 from business interests that opposed Biden’s budget reconciliation plan, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a longtime Sinema ally. She’s also been the recipient of large donations from the pharmaceutical industry, which critics have blamed for her opposition to letting Medicare negotiate down drug costs. Of course, it’s possible that the causation is reversed — that such interest groups are donating to her because they like her positions on these issues.”
…
“Another explanation for Sinema’s centrism could be that she genuinely believes in it. In her 2009 book “Unite and Conquer,” Sinema described how she was initially frustrated at her inability to get things done in the state legislature — so she decided to stop being a “bomb-thrower” and start working with Republicans. Perhaps now, after so many years of embedding with the GOP to get things done (this is the first time she has ever served in a legislative chamber controlled by Democrats), she has internalized the conservatism of her peers — and even embraced bipartisanship as a policy goal unto itself. (That would explain her fierce opposition to ending the filibuster and her dogged negotiation of a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill earlier this year.)”