WASHINGTON – When Senator Kyrsten Cinema walked the floor of the Senate on Friday to vote against it, a minimum wage increase in President Biden’s bill on pandemic should be helped, she knew she would draw the anger of progressives within her own party.
Me. Arizona Democrat Cinema did it anyway and pushed her apostasy off the party line by an inch.
Senators regularly use the motion to register their opposition to legislation, and she was one of eight on the Democratic side to vote against the pay rise. But the gesture of me. Cinema drew an exceptional screaming response from liberal lawmakers and activists, who accused her of explicitly using her voice to deny workers higher wages.
The setback captured the provocative anger that progressive people were facing Mrs. Cinema, a one-sided activist of the Green Party, has become central that has emerged as an obstacle to their highest aspiration in the 50-50 Senate, where she is one of a handful of moderates who are extraordinarily large. sway.
Her refusal to accept progressive priorities, such as speeding up the minimum wage increase due to the stimulus bill, along with her opposition to changing the Senate rules to kill the filibuster – which actually requires 60 votes to pass any important legislation promoted – made her a target for liberals across the country.
Perhaps the anger is nowhere hotter than among progressive activists in Arizona, a state where demographic change has brought about rapid political shifts. Liberal Democrats worked last year to get the state’s critical election votes to Mr. Bid to turn around and turn around the remaining Republican seat held by the Republican, all in the hopes of securing a Democratic-controlled Washington that could succeed long-term priorities currently curtailed by the filibuster.
“We want her to be the best senator possible,” said Dan O’Neal, Arizona’s Progressive Democrat coordinator for the United States. “But we want her to start voting like a Democrat, not a Republican.”
Me. Cinema had earlier indicated its discomfort with the approval of the minimum wage proposal as part of the pandemic bill, a rationale she quoted when she explained her vote on Friday, arguing that the Senate should hold a separate debate on the issue.
The move was in line with her general approach in Congress, where she served three terms in the House before winning the 2018 Senate election. She appeared to be one of the few true wild cards in her party, with an eternal star next to it. her name on Democrats’ whip card.
This is the culmination of a full-scale political transformation by Ms. Cinema, a former social worker and lawyer. The woman now known as a devoted centrist presented to the Arizona legislature nearly two decades ago as an activist for the Green Party; protests the war in Iraq with Code Pink, the left-wing social justice movement; and once warned of the dangers of capitalism and the ‘almighty dollar’.
Her allies argue that the shift stemmed from the desire of Ms. Cinema to play a productive role as legislator.
“She realized she could do things in the middle, and it had more impact,” Robert Meza, a Democratic member of Arizona State House, told me. Cinema served during her tenure there. from 2004 to 2010. “The left groups, the business community – they started listening to her more. She realized, “Hey, I actually have more power in the middle.” ‘
While some of her moderate colleagues were very public about their policy preferences and legislative ultimatums, Ms. Cinema in Washington remained largely unexplored and most interview requests from publications that were not in Arizona (including for this article) refused and refused to see how she thinks about voting on a given bill or nominee.
She is known as a maverick in the intoxicated and stuffy Senate, where her colorful wigs and quirky fashion sense – on a recent day – showed up in a warm pink shirt with the phrase “DANGEROUS CREATION” with a preference for to retain her. opinions to herself and operate behind the scenes.
Biden’s stimulus plan
Even while the Democrats were fighting for the doomed nomination of Neera Tanden, the election of Mr. Biden, to run his budget office, save me. Cinema never announced how she would vote.
In stimulus negotiations, Ms. Cinema emerged as a key behind-the-scenes mediator, listening as her colleagues splashed over their differences and quietly tried to lead them to the middle ground.
On Friday, when the Senate came to a standstill after Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat from West Virginia, swore about the size and duration of the federal unemployment payments in the aid package, Ms. Cinema begged him not to sink the bill.
“We got almost everything,” she said. Cinema on the Senate floor said and referred to the amendments the Democrats proposed to the plan to resign moderates.
Separately, she has worked with Republicans to raise a $ 25 billion aid fund for independent restaurants and to put in place strict safety rules around how states can use stimulus funding.
“She’s developed a lot of conversational relationships with a lot of people on the other side,” said Sen. James Lankford, a Republican from Oklahoma. “It’s useful just to be able to enter into conversation when it’s going hard.”
This is a battle-tested approach in Arizona, where Ms. Cinema Martha McSally, a Republican, was largely defeated in 2018 by showcasing her centrist credentials and emphasizing her outreach across the aisle to arouse moderate voters. Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, called Mrs. McSally defeated again in November, and now to the play me. Cinema helped to write.
“It was not a coincidence,” he said. Meza said. “She’s a great chess player.”
But her history as a liberal has only sharpened the sense of resentment she inspires among progressive activists.
“It’s beyond my comprehension that someone from a Code Pink activist could go on to say, ‘Yeah, there are some good things Trump has done and I sometimes agree with him,'” Jenise Porter said. an Arizona activist who helped draft a resolution said. wished Sinema in 2019 because she did not vote according to party lines.
Me. Cinema’s political evolution began a year into her time in the State Legislature, and by the time she was in Congress and presented herself to the Senate, she had established herself as a pragmatist and two-party operator. She cites Senator John McCain as a political idol, and writes a book – partly how and partly political memoirs – that contains tips such as “no one likes a humorless and rigid activist.”
“The bomber can not make many friends (understandably) and she certainly can not work with all the people to whom she throws bombs,” she wrote in the book, “Unite and Conquer: How to Build.” Coalitions that win – and last. “
In spirit, Mrs Sinema strongly opposed the elimination of the filibuster, a position that her starter in a small club with Mr. Manchin, who is under pressure from the left, has earned. She said little about her views on the issue, but sent very lengthy explanations to the polling voters – many of whom were more angry than others – to defend her position.
“Debates on bills should be a two-pronged process that takes into account the views of all Americans, not just one party,” she said. Cinema written in one such mission. “Regardless of the party that controls the Senate, respect for the opinion of senators from the minority party will lead to better legislation with common sense.”
Having never served in the majority party of a legislature until this year, Mrs Sinema has been practicing the approach for years. Known among her colleagues as a social butterfly, she seems to want to forge friendships with lawmakers across the aisle, a tendency and skill that is extremely rare among politicians.
“She’s very engaging, she’s very bright, she’s very candid,” said Jonathan Rothschild, a Democrat and former mayor of Tucson. “Every time I was with her, she had the ability to make you feel like you were one of the most important people in the world.”
She also refrained from disputing disputes with colleagues in public, a feature that won her worship of members of the other party.
Matt Salmon, a conservative former Arizona Republican congressman, said his relationship with Ms. Cinema reached a turning point during a particularly busy period of his political career, after initially expressing reluctance to endorse marital equality after his son came out homosexual.
When a local reporter Mrs. Cinema, who is bisexual and has long campaigned for marital equality, is asking for her response, Mr. Salmon focused on him in the worst way. Instead, he recalled, Mrs Sinema replied that she knew how much he loved his son.
“From that moment on, I would probably have walked for her with hot coals,” he said. Salmon became emotional. “She had the opportunity to cut my throat and make me bleed to death politically.”
“Everyone expects that when someone has the position she has, it goes without saying that you are going to take advantage of the boss out of it,” he continued. “But she does not, and that adds to her strength.”
Emily Cochrane contribution made.