To win the first Senate seat for Democrats in Arizona in 30 years, it really helped that Kyrsten Sinema had a lot of things going for her:
1. Kyrsten Sinema is wicked smart and well educated. She graduated as valedictorian at her high school at 16, and has an MSW, a law degree, and a Ph.D. in Justice Studies.
2. Ms. Sinema has a ton of experience in politics. She was elected to the State of Arizona House once, the State of Arizona Senate once, the U.S. House three times, and now has been elected to the U.S. Senate.
3. She is an incredibly warm human being.
4. She is athletic, being the only person in Congress to have done an Ironman triathlon.
5. She was fortunate enough to launch her bid for the Senate in a Democratic wave year.
6. She was fortunate enough to have as an opponent for the Senate Martha McSally, who was unwise enough to vote against Obamacare repeatedly while serving as a Congressperson in Arizona, a state loaded with retired people who depend upon medical care. Obamacare expanded medicaid which helped older, poorer Arizona citizens. In addition, Sinema promised to protect Medicare.
Even with all of that going for her, there was one other thing that she had to do to win the Arizona U.S. Senate seat—she had to run as a moderate. This was pretty easy for her since she has been, in general, a moderate politician since about 2004. You see, there are places in Arizona where you can run as a big time Progressive, just not that many of them. Arizona’s 3rd Congressional district, a district which encompasses a lot of the West side of Tucson, is one of them.
Arizona’s 3rd District is the home of wonderfully Progressive Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva. There are a lot more Democrats in this district than Republicans, so Mr. Grijalva can run and operate as an unapologetic Progressive and keep getting re-elected easily over and over again. However, in most of Arizona, it is about 100 times easier for a Democrat to win running as a moderate Democrat than a Progressive Democrat, since Arizona is loaded with Republicans, Conservatives, and Moderates who like to vote for Republicans.
Kyrsten Sinema learned this the hard way when in 2002, her first time running for public office, she ran under the Green Party ticket for the Arizona state house and only got 8% of the vote. That was all it took for her to learn what a massive uphill battle it can be to run as a Progressive candidate in Arizona when you are not in a Progressive district like Mr. Grijalva. Since then, Ms.Sinema has run six political races in Arizona as a moderate Democrat and never lost again. As I said, she is wicked smart.