U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema has all but announced another run for re-election. The Wall Street Journal reported that she recently had a staff retreat to lay out a timeline for a potential run as an independent, a year ahead of the April 2024 filing deadline in her home state of Arizona. Sinema was elected as a Senator from Arizona in 2019 as a Democrat, but then made a high-profile switch to become an independent in December of 2022.
Sinema spent her early career as a social worker. She completed a Master of Social Work degree at Arizona State University in 1999 and in 2004 earned her Juris Doctorate from Arizona State University College of Law. She then went to work as a criminal defense lawyer. She continued her education with a Ph.D. in justice studies from ASU and later an online M.B.A. from the W. P. Carey School of Business at ASU.
Sinema’s political career began in the Arizona Green Party in 2004. She came to the forefront for her progressive advocacy, supporting causes like LGBTQ rights and opposition to the war on terror. That same year, she left to join the Arizona Democratic Party. She and David Lujan won the two seats for Arizona's 15th district, with 37% of the vote for Sinema. She was re-elected three more times.
Sinema was an assistant Minority Leader for the Democratic Caucus of the Arizona House of Representatives in 2009 and 2010. She was then elected to the Arizona Senate where she served for two years before being elected to a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2012. A centrist, she joined the New Democrat Coalition, the Blue Dog Coalition, and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, amassing one of the most conservative voting records in the Democratic caucus.
In 2018, Sinema won the Senate election, defeating Republican nominee Martha McSally to replace Jeff Flake, who was retiring. Sinema was the first woman elected to the Senate from Arizona, as well as the first openly bisexual and the second openly LGBTQ woman to be elected to the House of Representatives and to the Senate.