Now that Kyrsten Sinema from the Sinema Party has self-deported herself from the Senate, I thought this was a great time to share my 2023 interview with Sacha Haworth from the Replace Sinema PAC.
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Transcribed excerpts from our discussion.
SER: You were communications director for Kyrsten Sinema’s 2018 Senate campaign back when she was a Democrat and you’re now senior adviser at Replace Sinema formerly Primary Sinema. This transition makes an awful lot of sense to me and perhaps for a lot of people listening or watching but could you please walk us through how you got where you are now.
SACHA HAWORTH: So how did I get here? Yeah, I did serve as Kyrsten Sinema's director on her Senate campaign in 2018 for maybe about six months and we fundamentally did not agree on how to talk to the press. By that I mean I wanted her to and she did not.
I shall we say was radicalized against her when she refused to do away with the archaic rule that is the filibuster, refused to help advance a progressive with a lowercase “p” agenda in order to codify Roe v. Wade after it was overturned by the Supreme Court and after she refused to codify voting rights.
After, of course, claiming to be pro-choice and claiming to be like John Lewis’s best friend who had recently passed away at that point. And it just culminated for me personally after having watched her use her position of power in less than agreeable ways to me.
One of her first votes, I believe, in the Senate was condemned by NARAL because she voted to confirm an anti-choice Trump judge. I just found her to be using her position of power — I don’t mean to be hyperbolic — for evil. I don’t believe she is out there advocating for the people who got her elected. I think she’s using her position to advance her interests and to keep herself in the luxurious lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed.
After her random op-ed saying why she will never vote to abolish the filibuster, I reached out to the folks who were already running the, at that time, Primary Sinema PAC, and I offered my help, and … I’ve come on board.
And since then, she has switched political parties and become an independent, claiming that it’s because that’s what Arizonans want, but really it’s in order for her to get more relevance
SER: I don’t want to do the mind-reading of “is she all there?” to be blunt, but I can usually understand what [Ron] DeSantis is doing. Here’s what Ted Cruz is doing. I have no idea what [Sinema] is doing.
SACHA: Part of the reason for that is she simply does not hold town halls. She simply does not answer reporters’ questions. She simply does not consider herself to be accountable publicly to the people who got her elected.
I mean, we have not seen her give a legitimate town hall, by that, I mean one that is open to the public, not like constituency-based, so not in a seniors’ home or run by her staff or like a veterans’ home.
Not that those people don't deserve town halls, but I’m not talking about a particular interest group, right? I’m talking about a public town hall that is announced in advance. She has not done one of those in years, years, like even before she was elected to the Senate.
And whereas you have a senator who she’s often sided with, Joe Manchin, who we could have plenty to complain about him as well, but one thing you can’t complain about is that he will at least explain where he stands. And he’ll at least return the president’s phone calls!
And Mark Kelly, her colleague from Arizona, just got reelected as a Democrat in Arizona. You do not have to be some maverick fake independent to get elected statewide in Arizona. We just got a Democratic governor elected, right? Her choice to cast off the last political label that she found after having been a Green Party activist for a while and find another label smacks to me of self-interest and self-preservation because she knows how to read a poll. She read a poll that said she couldn’t win a primary. She has a five percent approval rating amongst Democrats — also something that makes her different from someone like Joe Manchin — and she’s like all right I’ll give this independent thing a go and if it doesn’t work I’ll just call up one of my private equity CEO donors and they’ll find me a seat on a corporate board
Bonus: My 2023 Interview With Sacha Haworth From Replace Sinema PAC