Kyrsten Sinema

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Kyrsten Sinema (2018)

Kyrsten Sinema (born July 12, 1976 in Tucson , Arizona ) is an American politician of the Democratic Party . Since January 2019 it belongs to the United States Senate in place of Jeff Flake on. From 2013 to 2019 she represented Arizona's 9th Congressional constituency in the US House of Representatives , previously she was a member of both the House of Representatives and the Arizona Senate .

Family, education and work

Sinema's father Dan Sinema Sr. was a lawyer and her mother Marilyn looked after their three children. The family lived in a ranch house at the foot of the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona, where they attended Winifred Harelson Elementary School . Her father lost his job in the early 1980s recession and faced demands from clients and tax authorities that put the house in brief foreclosure. In 1983, the parents divorced, the father filed for bankruptcy some time later, and her mother fell into poverty. Both parents remarried and argued over custody; the mother married Andrew Howard, a teacher at Sinema's elementary school, and settled with him and the children in rural DeFuniak Springs on the Florida Panhandle in 1984 . Since the mother and stepfather could not immediately find permanent work, they lived for almost three years in an abandoned gas station, which Sinema later referred to as temporary homelessness and, because of the question of whether the family had to do without running water and electricity, a topic in the Senate election campaign has been. The strict Mormon family was temporarily dependent on food stamps and church meals and worked in the church or helped with the harvest. The family's situation improved in 1987 when the mother and stepfather got permanent jobs and the family was able to move into a farmhouse on a Mormon community loan . In addition to school, Sinema showed an interest in sport and work groups and also attended the Okaloosa-Walton Junior College at the age of 14 .

After graduating from Walton High School in DeFuniak Springs as a co-valedictorian at the age of 16 - a year earlier than usual - she attended Brigham Young University at the 1994 with the help of a Pell Grant and scholarship she received a bachelor's degree in social work. After working for a non-governmental organization in Kenya , she moved to Phoenix in 1995 , where she attended Arizona State University and received her Masters in Social Work in 1999 and a Juris Doctor in 2004 . In 2012 she was there with a thesis on the genocide in Rwanda , in which they Giorgio Agamben's reflections on the state of emergency applying an end, for Ph.D. PhD. She was a social worker in the Washington Elementary School District before becoming a criminal defense attorney and law professor.

Political career

State-level beginnings

In the early 2000s she supported the Green Party presidential candidate , Ralph Nader , was a spokeswoman for that party at the local level, called for the abolition of the death penalty and organized anti-war demonstrations after 9/11 . In the course of the Iraq war in 2003, she declared that the true friends of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush .

Sinema ran for Phoenix City Council in constituency 8 in 2001 and as an Independent in constituency 15 for the Arizona House of Representatives in 2002 , but was not elected. In 2004 she was re-elected as the Democratic candidate in the latter, won the mandate and was re-elected in 2006 and 2008. In 2010, she stepped down from that mandate to run for the Arizona Senate. In the election she won the mandate that her Republican rival candidate Bob Thomas had previously held.

Sinema, who professes her bisexuality , campaigned against Proposition 107 , a planned legislative initiative in Arizona in 2006 , which would have banned the recognition of same-sex marriages and registered partnerships . She chaired the state-wide Arizona Together campaign and halted the legislative initiative by approaching Republicans in Parliament so the initiative was dropped. In 2008, Sinema also led the campaign against Proposition 102 , a toned down version of Proposition 107, which, however, was approved by a majority of voters on November 4, 2008.

In the 2008 presidential campaign , Sinema supported Barack Obama and was a delegate at the Democratic National Convention in Denver .

Congressman

Sinema announced in June 2011 that it was interested in running for the US House of Representatives but not for the US Senate in the 2012 election. She was in contact with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee , the campaign arm of the Democrats in Congress, from late 2010 , and lived in the same area as then Democratic Congressman Ed Pastor , but ruled out the challenge of a mandate party colleague. On January 3, 2012, Sinema announced that it would run for the United States House of Representatives in November of that year in the newly created 9th Congressional constituency of Arizona. On the same day, she gave up her seat in the Arizona Senate. David Lujan moved up to her seat .

Sinema prevailed against Republican Vernon Parker in the 2012 House election and took office on January 3, 2013 as the first openly bisexual MP. When she was sworn in, she renounced a Bible, was the first member of Congress to not belong to any religious community, and described herself as secular , but refused to call herself an atheist . After two re-elections in 2014 and 2016 , she performed her mandate until January 3, 2019. Sinema was a member of the finance committee and two sub-committees.

United States Senator

Sinema at an election campaign event in August 2018

In September 2017, Sinema, known as a successful fundraiser, announced that she would not run for her previous mandate again in the 2018 election, but would run for the seat in the United States Senate , which was previously held by Republican Jeff Flake . Flake refrained from running in the election in October 2017 because he was challenged from the right as a prominent critic of President Trump within the party.

Sinema won her party's nomination on August 28, 2018 with 80.5 percent of the vote against the left-wing candidate Deedra Abboud, while in the Republican primary, the former congressman Martha McSally, who is considered moderate, defeated two right-wing favorites with 52 percent, Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio , prevailed. In October 2018, Arizona's largest daily newspaper, The Arizona Republic , declared its support for Sinema and praised its non-partisan approach. The newspaper had never endorsed a Democratic candidate for a state-wide position before.

Sinema and McSally competed against each other in the main election on November 6, 2018, the outcome of which was considered completely open. The candidate of the Green Party , Angela Green, who shortly before election day announced her withdrawal from the election and her support for Sinema, received a good 2 percent of the vote. After falling behind on election night, Sinema took the lead during the November 8 count and was declared the winner by the Associated Press on November 12 ; McSally admitted defeat. Sinema ultimately had a lead of almost 56,000 votes (50 to 47.6 percent).

Sinema took up her Senate mandate on January 3, 2019. Instead of the Bible, as usual, she swore by a book containing the constitutions of the United States and Arizona. When she was sworn in, she was the only member of Congress who stated that she had no religious affiliation. This is the first time that Arizona is represented by a woman in the US Senate. Sinema is the first openly bisexual female senator and won a Senate election in Arizona for the first time for the Democrats since 1988 and an open seat for the first time since 1976 (both Dennis DeConcini ).

In the Senate, Sinema belongs to the committees for trade , homeland security , banking , aging and veterans affairs as well as several sub-committees, including the one for aerospace as a ranking member .

Positions

While Sinema had shown left-wing liberal voting behavior in the Arizona's legislature , she moved into the political center in the US House of Representatives , which brought her reproaches from her own party, as she voted for President Donald Trump's proposals most often from the Democratic parliamentary group .

She is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition , an association of conservative Democrats, and names the centrist Democratic Senator Joe Manchin as a role model. During Donald Trump's presidency , she supported his security policy measures to curb illegal immigration and largely refrained from criticizing the controversial president. Unlike any other Democratic Congressman in Arizona, she did not support her party's left-wing gubernatorial candidate, David Garcia, in the 2018 election . Nevertheless, Sinema is still considered progressive in many political areas . In her book Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win and Last , published in 2009 , she explained her political approach as saying that pragmatism is necessary to achieve progressive goals. Sinema was sometimes accused of opportunism from the left .

Web links

Commons : Kyrsten Sinema  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Rebekah L. Sanders: The congresswoman who grew up in a gas station. In: The Arizona Republic , September 30, 2017
  2. ↑ a b c d Jonathan Martin: A Senate Candidate's Image Shifted. Did Her Life Story? In: The New York Times , September 24, 2018
  3. ↑ Li Zhou: The attacks on Arizona Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema's upbringing, explained. In: Vox.com , October 10, 2018.
  4. ^ Peter O'Dowd: A New Congresswoman's Dissertation On Genocide. In: KJZZ.org , December 27, 2012
  5. ↑ Kyrsten Sinema: Who Must Die: The State of Exception in Rwanda's Genocide. Dissertation, Arizona State University, 2012 (PDF) .
  6. ↑ Craig Outhier: Phoenix Democrat Kyrsten Sinema. ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Phoenix Magazine , February 2011, p. 39 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.phoenixmag.com
  7. ↑ a b Kyle Trygstad: Arizona State Senator Interested in House bid. In: Roll Call , June 9, 2011
  8. ^ Rep. Kyrsten Sinema: biography. In: AZLeg.gov. Retrieved February 18, 2012
  9. ↑ Gay-marriage-ban foes raise straight issue anew. In: Arizona Daily Star , May 2, 2008.
  10. ↑ Michelle Garcia: Bi Politician Announces Congressional Bid. In: The Advocate , January 4, 2012.
  11. ^ Peter O'Dowd: Sinema, First Openly Bisexual Member Of Congress, Represents 'Changing Arizona'. In: National Public Radio , January 1, 2013.
  12. ↑ Elizabeth Flock: First Member of Congress Describes Religion as 'None'. In: US News & World Report , January 3, 2013.
  13. ↑ Ronald J. Hansen: Rep. Kyrsten Sinema enters Senate race, hoping to unseat Jeff Flake. In: AZCentral.com , September 28, 2017
  14. ↑ Republican Sen. Jeff Flake won't seek reelection. In: CNN.com , October 24, 2017.
  15. ^ Arizona Primary Election Results. In: The New York Times , August 29, 2018.
  16. ↑ Taegan Goddard: Arizona's Largest Newspaper Backs Sinema. In: Political Wire , October 21, 2018.
  17. ↑ See the aggregated polls Arizona Senate - McSally vs. Sinema. In: RealClearPolitics.
  18. ↑ Yvonne Wingett Sanchez: Is Green Party candidate potential spoiler in Martha McSally-Kyrsten Sinema Senate race? In: Arizona Republic , November 8, 2018.
  19. ↑ Simon Romero: Kyrsten Sinema Declared Winner in the Arizona Senate Race. In: The New York Times , November 12, 2018
  20. ↑ Rachel Leingang: Martha McSally concedes to Kyrsten Sinema after, hard-fought battle '. In: Arizona Republic , November 12, 2018.
  21. ↑ General Election 2018: AZ US Senate. In: Our Campaigns.
  22. ^ Ronald J. Hansen: Sinema takes Senate oath on Constitution; McSally uses Bible from USS Arizona. In: Arizona Republic , January 3, 2019.
  23. ↑ Trudy Ring: Kyrsten Sinema Wins; Will Be First Out Bi US Senator. In: Advocate.com , November 12, 2018.
  24. ↑ Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. In: Govtrack.us.
  25. ↑ Bridget Bowman: Republicans Eye Sinema's Arizona House Seat. In: Roll Call , September 29, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Sinema, Kyrsten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Democratic Party politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1976
PLACE OF BIRTH Tucson , Arizona