Kyrsten Sinema, the shapeshifting US senator bedevilling Joe Biden

American radio presenter Michelangelo Signorile couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

It was 2012, and the New York broadcaster was on air, interviewing Democrat firebrand Kyrsten Sinema, the US Senator now best known for obstructing Joe Biden’s legislative agenda.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema before her swearing ceremony in with US Vice President Mike Pence in 2019.Credit: Reuters

About seven years earlier, Sinema had been the first person to “come out” as bisexual on the floor of the Arizona state legislature, earning recognition and endorsements from progressive donors and LGBTI activists across the country.

But now, she had loftier goals: to run for the federal House of Representatives, in a seat that happened to fall in a conservative district of her state. And much to Signorile’s “shock” she was acting as though her very public coming out never happened, declaring to the listeners of his Sirius XM radio program: “I gotta be honest, I’m not sure I remember it…”

Signorile points to that interview as a telling example of Kyrsten Sinema the shapeshifter, the mysterious maverick, the study in contrasts.

Once a pixie-haired, tutu-wearing “radical” who cut her political teeth in the Arizona Green Party, the 45-year-old is now a Democrat centrist and kingmaker power in an evenly-divided Senate.

Along with West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, Sinema last year helped torpedo Biden’s so-called Build Back Better legislation, a $1.75 trillion package of social and climate change reforms, in a move viewed by some to be at odds with her past as a social worker and environmentalist.

Not always all smiles: US President Joe Biden, centre, addresses a group of senators including Senator Kyrsten Sinema.Credit: Bloomberg

She also voted against the inclusion of a $15 an hour minimum wage hike in Biden’s COVID relief bill and shot down her party’s bid to raise the corporate tax rate, despite once warning about the dangers of capitalism and the “almighty dollar.”

And last week, Sinema and Manchin again sided with Republicans to block the president’s voting rights reforms, by refusing to tweak the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires at least 60 votes to pass most bills. Support for voting rights is both a longstanding Democratic position, and a flashpoint between the party and the Donald Trump-influenced GOP today.

Yet this week, when Congress resumes, she is expected form part of a bipartisan group supporting a much narrower set of improvements to America’s complex voting system.

As one Democratic strategist told The Age: “It’s hard to know what she wants.”

So who exactly is Kyrsten Sinema, the elusive politician at centre of Joe Biden’s flagging fortunes? How did she morph from being focused on social justice to a conservative, GOP-friendly obstructionist? And in the face of Democrat censure motions, threats of a primary challenge, and the withdrawal of support by powerful former allies, what is her end-game?

Senator Kyrsten Sinema has her allies scratching their heads.Credit: AP

Sinema’s office did not take up a request for an interview with the Senator, who rarely does one-on-ones with the media and has a tendency to avoid journalists in Washington, unlike many of her Congressional colleagues. However, those who know or observe her have several theories about her political transformation.

The first paints Sinema as ambitious opportunist - the kind of politician willing to sell her soul to the highest bidder in the pursuit of power.

She doesn’t appear to have a shortage of donors, either, with federal electoral data showing fundraising contributions from dozens of billionaire supporters over the past five years, including Gap heir Robert Fisher, crypto moguls Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and hedge fund manager Louis Bacon.

The second theory is that Sinema knows she has burnt too many bridges in her own ranks, and is now setting herself up for life after the Democrats. A highly paid lobbyist perhaps? A corporate executive? A future independent candidate or even a Republican?

And then there’s the view that she genuinely believes in bipartisanship and compromise when it comes to legislating. After all, as she told NPR last year, the all-or-nothing approach to politics “often leaves you with nothing”.

Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, pictured on Capitol Hill last November.Credit: AP

Gilbert Romero, a progressive activist who used to intern for Sinema and remains close friends with some of her staff, said he personally believes that the Senator’s voting record “miscalculated” the mood of her Arizona constituency, which was once conservative white territory but is now becoming “younger, more diverse, and more brown”.

“But this is also a woman who has a PhD, a masters of social work, is a law professor, runs marathons, and is incredibly hard-working,” he adds. “We can all question her intentions - just don’t doubt her intelligence.”

Working hard is something Kyrsten Lea Sinema learnt to do from a very young age, having grown up in poverty but managing to survive “thanks to help from family, church and, sometimes, even the government”.

At least that’s the story she often tells. Born into a middle class family, she says her life took a dramatic turn after her father lost his job and she ended up moving with mother and stepfather to Florida where they lived in an abandoned gas station without running water or electricity.

But even this narrative of personal hardship, which was central to Sinema’s campaign bid for the Senate, has been thrown into doubt. Records uncovered by The New York Times in 2018 revealed that her mother and stepfather in fact paid electricity and water bills, while the Washington Post also wrote an article that year quoting Sinema’s step-aunt, who insisted that “the child grew up being taken care of”.

Sinema began her political career in the Arizona Green Party, working for Ralph Nader, the environmentalist who ran as a third-party candidate in the contentious 2000 election that George W Bush narrowly won against Al Gore.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson outside the office of Senator Kyrsten Sinema in Phoenix in July, protesting her opposition to ending the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation. Credit: AP

Nader was blamed for siphoning off support for Gore in Florida, triggering the controversial recounts that lead to the 2000 election’s outcome.

As an activist, she championed LGBT rights, opposed the death penalty; and protested the Iraq war with left-wing group, Code Pink. Signorile recalls her early political years as a “bouncy, countercultural, progressive firebrand,” which is why he was so shocked when she appeared to downplay her sexuality during their interview in 2012.

“Suddenly it felt like I was speaking to a suburban soccer mum,” he tells The Age.

But Sinema was always a woman on a mission, and she switched to the Democrats in 2004, where she won a seat in the Arizona state legislature before moving to the US House of Representatives in 2012, and onto the Senate in 2018.

In person, the Senator’s fashion sense also stands out, particularly among the pantsuit-wearing conformity of the US Capitol.

She embodied Marilyn Monroe at her Senate swearing-in ceremony in 2019, with platinum blonde curls, a classy sleeveless white top, a pencil skirt and stilettos.

She also wore bright white a year later at Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial - this time in the form of a short, caped dress - and donned brightly coloured wigs throughout the pandemic, which her spokeswoman explained was “social distancing in accordance with best practices, including from salons”.

Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.Credit: AP

Even the ringtone on her mobile phone made a statement: a song from the musical Hamilton, which contained the lyrics: “you don’t have the votes”.

Sinema’s motives can perhaps be gleaned from her 2009 book, Unite and Conquer. In it, she describes how she entered the Arizona state legislature in 2004 as a “bomb-thrower” only to spend her first few years in office feeling as though she had not accomplished enough.

“I’d spent all my time being a crusader for justice, a patron saint for lost causes, and I’d missed out on the opportunity to form meaningful relationships with fellow members in the legislature, lobbyists, and other state actors,” she wrote. “I hadn’t gotten any of my great policies enacted into law, and I’d seen lots of stuff I didn’t like become law. It was just plain sad.”

Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is a fan of the filibuster.Credit: Getty Images

These days, the self-described bomb-thrower no longer has to worry about having an impact. Indeed, while Republicans attacked her relentlessly during her campaign for the Senate, some are now among her staunchest defenders. During the Build Back Better debate last year, Minority Whip John Thune and former football coach Tommy Tuberville even suggested she was “saving the country”.

Democrats and left-leaning activists, on the other hand, are livid. While Sinema will not face voters again until 2024 - as her Senate seat is not one of the 34 up for grabs at this year’s midterm elections - some in the party are already suggesting primary challenges against her.

Left-leaning EMILY’s List was among the first to withdraw its support after last week’s voting rights debate, followed by the Arizona Democrats issuing a censure against her in symbolic condemnation.

What puzzles colleagues and critics alike is that unlike Manchin, whose West Virginia seat is still filled with Trumpists, Arizona is no longer an epicentre of deep red Republicanism.

Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Biden.Credit: AP

In 2016, the state voted for Trump and had two Republican senators, including the late Republican moderate John McCain. But in 2020, Biden became the first Democrat presidential candidate to win the state in 25 years, and it now has two Democratic senators for the first time in almost 70 years. Yet as Arizona appears to be tilting left, Sinema, the study in contrasts, seems to be tilting right.

“Maybe she genuinely believes that bipartisanship and compromise is the most important thing for any political leader to do, but it’s extremely misguided” says Kai Newkirk, a Democrat activist who is part of SinemaPrimaryPledge.com, one of several fundraising initiatives threatening to find a primary challenger to oust the Senator.

“We’re we’re not dealing with a bunch of Republican Senators who are in the mould of John McCain at his best. We’re dealing with a post-January 6 Republican Party, which has an extremely right-wing faction. She has to take a side.”

Some believe Sinema already has. For others, she remains an enigma.

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