(New York) The enigmatic senator from Arizona Kyrsten Sinema already had no shortage of labels distinguishing her from all her colleagues, or almost. Bisexual and triathlete were two of them. And now she added another, on December 9: independent.
Until proven otherwise, his decision to leave the Democratic Party will not change the balance of power in the Senate. After Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock is re-elected, Democrats will control 51 of 100 seats, with Kyrsten Sinema pledging to remain in their group, like the other two independent senators in the upper house of Congress, Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and Angus King, of Maine.
But what then does his choice mean?
The question arises at the end of an election year that some analysts have described as that of independents. In particular, the latter saw their share of the electorate reach an all-time high during the midterm elections, at 31%, up 4% from the 2020 presidential election.
Democrats, by comparison, made up 29% of the electorate in 2022, and Republicans 36%, according to data from Edison Research, one of the organizations that conducts exit polls.
The Democratic Party therefore owes so-called independent voters to have won a seat in the Senate and limited their losses in the House of Representatives.
The role of independents has been just as decisive in Arizona, where they now represent 34% of voters. As in other states, they have helped stop Trumpist candidates for governor, senator and secretary of state, among others. And they are called to continue to grow in number.
So that’s some of the context surrounding the second political defection of Kyrsten Sinema’s career (before running as a Democrat, she was a Green Party member and follower of famed consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader).
In a text published in thearizona republicthe senator justified her decision by invoking her disgust for the partisan spirit which reigns according to her in Washington.
“It’s no wonder more and more Americans are registering as independents,” she writes. In Arizona, this number often exceeds that of those registered in the two national parties. »
When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than improving the lives of Americans, the losers are ordinary Americans. That’s why I’ve joined the growing number of Arizona voters who reject political parties by declaring my independence from Washington’s broken partisan system.
Excerpt from the text “Why I’m registering as an independent” by Kyrsten Sinema, which appeared in thearizona republic
This opinion is the same that pushes the Forward Party and the organization No Labels to consider presenting candidates for the presidential election in 2024. For them, the time has come for a third party.
“We basically have two minority parties running everything and driving us all crazy trying to play us off against each other,” one of the Forward Party founders, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, lamented recently on News Nation. who left the Democratic Party to become an independent in 2021.
For the moment, Kyrsten Sinema denies wanting to run for the presidency in 2024 as an independent candidate or under the banner of a third party, which is undoubtedly wise: no offense to Andrew Yang and his fellow travelers, the American political system remains inhospitable to this kind of candidacy.
However, if the senator from Arizona does not seek the presidency or does not leave politics in 2024, she will therefore have to defend her seat as an independent.
Her Democratic critics see this as an opportunistic choice in the image they have of her.
Since the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, Kyrsten Sinema has often infuriated them by blocking or diluting certain Democratic priorities, including raising the federal minimum wage to $15 and repealing Donald Trump’s tax cuts. She often gave them the impression that she cared more about her donors than her constituents.
Result: only 7% of Arizona Democrats are satisfied with his performance, according to a recent poll by Civiqs.
Until December 9, the other Democrats in the state promised to defeat her during their party’s primary for the 2024 senatorial election. This is part of the reality at which Kyrsten Sinema swore he hadn’t thought of when going independent. She didn’t convince anyone.
That said, Kyrsten Sinema would not be without assets facing the Arizona electorate in 2024. She could particularly boast of having played a key role in the passage of bipartisan bills. One of them resulted in November 2021 in a historic infrastructure investment plan. The other made it possible last week to enshrine in law the protection of same-sex and interracial marriages.
But the status of independent would probably not be an asset in itself. Because most independent voters really aren’t.
At least that’s what a political scientist from the University of Arizona, Samara Klar, explains in Independent Politicsa book she published in 2019 with Yanna Krupnikov, a colleague from New York.
According to the authors, between 75% and 90% of so-called independent voters have no trouble identifying with one of the two national parties, for which they almost always vote.
What repels independents is the resentment of political debates, the display of partisan divisions. This is what pushes them to display themselves publicly as independent. But in the voting booth, they mostly behave like Republicans or Democrats, depending on their ideological leanings.
In other words, their label is just a mirage.