In a year of liberal challenges to US President Donald Trump, an avowed centrist scored the Democratic Party’s biggest coup — flipping a red state’s US Senate seat.
US Representative Kyrsten Sinema won the Arizona Senate seat being vacated by Republican Senator Jeff Flake. The race against Republican Representative Martha McSally was tight enough that a winner was not decided until Monday, after a slow count of mail-in ballots gave her an insurmountable lead.
Sinema’s win achieved a long-time Democratic goal of making Arizona, with its growing Latino population, a competitive state.
Photo: AP
She did it by pointedly not running against the US president, or even critiquing his hardline immigration stance.
“She didn’t put the progressive bit in her mouth and run with it,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican strategist in Phoenix. “She spit it out and did something else.”
Sinema targeted moderate Republican and independent women by painting herself as a nonpartisan problem-solver who voted to support Trump’s agenda 60 percent of the time.
Her nearly single-issue campaign talked about the importance of healthcare and protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
She knew McSally was vulnerable there, because she backed the Republicans’ failed attempt to repeal former US president Barack Obama’s healthcare law.
Sinema tailored her campaign for conservative-leaning Arizona rather than the national environment, but it might be a guide for Democrats who hope to expand the electoral map in 2020.
While some liberals won important races in California, Colorado and Kansas, the left’s highest-profile champions disappointed on election day.
US Representative Beto O’Rourke fell short in his challenge to US Senator Ted Cruz in Texas. Stacey Abrams trailed her Republican opponent in the still undecided bitter Georgia gubernatorial race, and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who once led in the polls in the race for Florida governor, was awaiting the results of a recount.
Sinema prevailed, while the Democratic candidate for governor, David Garcia, ran as an avowed progressive and got trounced by Republican incumbent Doug Ducey.
“Kyrsten was the perfect candidate for this race,” said Democratic strategist Chad Campbell, who previously served with Sinema in Arizona’s state legislature. “We saw that with Garcia.”
Sinema first came to prominence as an openly bisexual Green Party advocate in Phoenix, and McSally raked the Democrat over her protests against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Sinema was elected as a Democrat to the state legislature in 2004 and carved out a reputation as a liberal who could work with her conservative colleagues.
By the time she was elected to US Congress representing a suburban Phoenix swing district in 2012, Sinema had completely remade herself into a centrist.
She voted against US Representative Nancy Pelosi as the Democratic leader, supported relaxed regulations on banks and a law to increase penalties on people illegally re-entering the country.
She supported a bill making it easier to deport immigrants identified by police as gang members.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS