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.
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
Cozy knits, sparkly bobbles and Santa hats were all the canine rage on Sunday, as hundreds of sausage dogs and their owners converged on central London for an annual parade and get-together. The dachshunds’ gathering in London’s Hyde Park came after a previous “Sausage Walk” planned for Halloween had to be postponed, because it had become so popular organizers needed to apply for an events licence. “It was going to be too much fun so they canceled it,” laughed Nicky Bailey, the owner of three sausage dogs: Una and her two 19-week-old puppies Ember and Finnegan, wearing matching red coats and silver
RSS