If you thought Sen. Kyrsten Sinema would slink away from reelection, think again

As I’ve watched Arizona Republican Bill Gates draw the sympathy of Democrats after his PTSD diagnosis and now his farewell tour from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, I’ve thought to myself more than once, “He ought to walk a day in Kyrsten Sinema’s shoes.” 

Like Gates, Sinema got hit with a torrent of insults, threats and abuse from people in the same party.

Unlike Gates, Sinema got little sympathy from mainstream news media. In fact, quite the opposite. The big newspapers and networks piled on.

No doubt there are Democrats today who lament the mistreatment of Gates even as they relish the abuse their own party heaped on Sinema.

Kyrsten Sinema relishes her independence

But if Sinema was rattled by any of this or emotionally scarred, she isn’t sharing. Nor does she show it.

She’s as hard-charging and determined as ever, engaged in what many suspect is her so-far-unannounced run for reelection.

On May 1, she was on the pages of The New York Times Magazine, breezing through one of the marbled porticoes of the U.S. Capitol complex, decked out in white-on-black polka dots and breathing deeply her newfound independence from the major parties.  

Now a registered independent, she is free from Democratic party bosses and hardline activists who used to put her in the stocks every time she broke from the party’s grand strategy: Give nothing. Take everything.

Sinema doesn’t roll like that. 

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Democrats may hate Sinema, but they need her

She was a student and now master of bipartisan politics. If deals are being made in modern Washington, she is often at the center of them. 

She was a major catalyst of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the bipartisan gun act, the first major policy breakthrough on firearm violence in roughly three decades.

Then after censure by the Arizona Democrats and essentially forced exile by her national party, she found her way back to the beating center of Beltway decision-making by playing a key role in the debt-ceiling negotiations. 

Democrats may hate her, but they needed her in the formation of that deal.

Sinema and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin “played an integral role in jump-starting discussions and assembling the particulars of the deal, particularly the legislation’s work requirement, spending and energy provisions,” Politico reported.

When it was over, the far left and far right had been pushed aside and the middle stamped the deal, Politico reported. For Sinema and Manchin “it’s a capstone to (their) outsized imprint on government.” 

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She's campaigning, all right – with actions

In 2024, Sinema will likely attempt the same trick of running through the middle while pushing aside the partisan Democrat Ruben Gallego and the partisan Republican, probably Kari Lake.

Sinema would bring to the race a record of extraordinary accomplishment in just three-and-a-half years in the U.S. Senate.

That kind of performance so soon in her career, that ability to bridge divides and make deals when the country is so sharply divided, make her a rare talent.

And if this Arizona senator who refused to toe her party line, manages to break free from all parties and win on her own, she will be a force to reckon with.

Will she run for reelection? 

She probably already is. She’s already begun to punch back at Ruben Gallego, but mostly she is campaigning the way she knows best, by getting things done.

Today she is working to forge a bipartisan agreement on one of the most intractable problems of the last quarter-century — immigration.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist at The Arizona Republic, where this column first appeared.