Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
The Republic | azcentral.com
October 31, 2019
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema won’t say whether she will support her party’s presidential nominee in 2020, saying it is “premature” to throw her support behind anyone in the crowded field of candidates who want to replace President Donald Trump.
The Democratic senator hasn't tuned into the Democratic presidential primary debates, and it could be months before she starts paying attention to them, she told Politico in an interview published Tuesday.
“I’m not missing anything,” she said. “I prefer happiness.”
Sinema told Politico she would like to see a candidate who shares the values of most Americans.
“Let’s winnow the field below like, 20 or something, and then maybe it gets easier. Like, when it’s enough for two basketball teams, it’s too much,” she said of the debates.
Twelve Democratic presidential hopefuls arrive on stage for the fourth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season co-hosted by The New York Times and CNN at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio.
Centrist attitude irks some
Sinema's coolness about her party's presidential candidates isn't surprising.
She was often critical of President Barack Obama, avoided Hillary Clinton and has honed a political brand rooted in being nonpartisan. At the same time, she has not embraced Trump — and has criticized some of his more divisive policies.
She gave no indication in the Politico interview that she would support Trump, another GOP candidate or a third-party candidate over a contender in her own party.
But her comments on the Democratic presidential primary election are further irritating some Arizona progressives, who want to see her censured by the Arizona Democratic Party for voting with Republicans on key cabinet appointments and some legislation.
Progressives are hoping to bring a censure resolution for a vote at the party's January meeting, said Dan O'Neal, the state coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America.
"I walked in the hot sun to get her elected," said Barbara Cain, an 83-year-old progressive from Tucson. "She could at least say (she supports) any of the front leaders. Just get off the pot."
Sinema has forged a centrist reputation of working with Republicans as much as Democrats, but her voting record shows she mostly has sided with her party on substantive policy votes.
Sinema: Too soon to focus on 2020
Sinema declined to elaborate on her views of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, although her spokeswoman sent The Arizona Republic unpublished comments made by Sinema in the Politico interview. They explain why she isn’t focused on the presidential primary.
“My effort has to be 100 percent on serving the people of Arizona, and that kind of stuff is just a distraction,” she said. “It’s not relevant to the lives of everyday people. Everyday Arizonans are not thinking about it.”
Instead, she said, they are worried about access to health care for themselves and their children, insurance deductibles, and their pre-existing conditions.
O'Neal said Sinema's comments only reinforce the need for disapproval by the party.
"Logical Democrats in this day and age with Donald Trump and the crazy right-wing politics of the Republican Party, with children in cages, and war in Yemen and nutty stuff like Ukraine and everything else that's going on, anybody with logical sense would come out and say, 'Hey, I think Trump's doing this wrong ... we need to struggle and fight back against this,'" he said. "...And she doesn't do that."
Matt Grodsky, a spokesman for the Democratic Party, declined to comment on Sinema's remarks on the 2020 race. He has previously said of progressives' irritation with Sinema that the party is strong because of "our diversity of thought."
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