Kyrsten Sinema sure looks like she’s not going to run for re-election

The clock is ticking on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (I-AZ) decision to run for re-election as U.S. senator from Arizona. With an April 8 filing deadline rapidly approaching, there are plenty of reasons to think that Sinema may have decided she’s done with the Senate.

In a race where candidates are expected to spend some $300 million, Sinema seems to have pretty much given up on fundraising. In the last quarter, she raised a measly $595,000, which is little more than couch money in modern politics. The leading contender for the Democratic nomination, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), raised nearly five times as much.

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Such a pitiful amount is a sign that Sinema isn’t even really trying. In the past, she’s easily raked in big bucks from lobbyists. While she has virtually no chance of winning re-election as an independent, she could steal enough votes from the Democratic nominee to allow the Republican to win, and GOP donors who supported her in the past would be happy to throw money at her to further that effort if it was serious.

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Perhaps even more interesting is how the out bisexual senator is spending her money. She has spent only $7,700 for a campaign staff of just four, which would be many times larger if she were running.

Meanwhile, Sinema is spending outsized amounts of money on security. A private security firm in Phoenix is on a $100,000-a-month retainer. At the same time, Sinema also paid Tulsi Gabbard’s sister, whom she had hired for security, more than $230,000 from August to December last year. Since 2022, Sinema has paid TOA, the business owned by Gabbard’s sister, $1.2 million.

Security has been an obviously special concern for the senator ever since she hid in a bathroom to avoid a confrontation with activists. “She’s Howard Hughes-level paranoid,” one former staffer told the New York Post, referring to the mentally ill entrepreneur portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator.

Sinema’s security guards benefit from her fearfulness. She spent more than $1,500 last quarter so that they could cover her at events she was attending, including nearly $500 at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.

Sinema has always had champagne taste, and her spending continues to reflect that. She has used taxpayer money to charter private flights 11 times since 2020, at the cost of more than $200,000. It’s an expense few senators ever incur and certainly not at such an extravagant rate.

Sinema was asked on Face the Nation yesterday exactly what her re-election plans are. She dismissed the questions, saying she was spending her time working on an immigration bill.

“And I think that the endless questions about politics and elections are really exhausting. And it’s what makes Americans really hate politics. So what I’ve committed to my constituents is to stay laser-focused on the policy on actually solving real problems,” Sinema said.

That’s hardly the response of someone champing at the bit to run again. With every passing day, it looks as if Sinema has realized she has no chance of winning re-election as a third-party candidate. Instead, she can get a big fat paycheck working for a pharm company or some other industry she sucked up to while sinking President Joe Biden’s agenda. Or maybe she wants to run on the No Labels national ticket.

The main thing is that her days in the Senate look to be drawing to a close. She will save herself the humiliation of placing third in a three-way race, but she’ll be rewarded with a big payday after all the damage she did in the past six years.