Tag: kyrsten sinema
Nancy Jacobson No Labels

No Labels Has No Takers For Its Spoiler Campaign Against Biden

It looks like it’s time for No Labels to give up the ghost. The ostensibly centrist organization has long been floating a presidential “unity ticket” to bridge the partisan divide. However, when you can’t count on either Sens. Joe Manchin’s or Kyrsten Sinema’s ego to keep you afloat, you’re toast.

On Tuesday, NBC News published a rundown of all the potential presidential candidates besides Manchin and Sinema whom No Labels has tried—and failed—to secure for their third-party folly:

  • Former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming
  • Former GOP Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan
  • GOP Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp
  • Former GOP New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
  • Former GOP Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels
  • GOP New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu
  • Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley
  • Former Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick
  • Businessman Mark Cuban
  • Retired Navy Adm. William McRaven
  • Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

The latest person to brush off No Labels is former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, an anti-Trump Republican. He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that while “it was an honor to be approached,” he wants to spend his time on fixing the Republican Party.

Even former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory—who sparred with Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas on NBC’s Meet the Press last August—has jumped ship. McCrory, a Republican, had the group’s national co-chair until resigning last week. “I gave it my all for over a year as volunteer co-chair, but it is now time to move on,” McCrory told NBC News. That came after the group decided it was going forward with running its own presidential ticket—if they can find someone to head it up, that is.

No Labels announced last week that it was forming a vetting committee to identify their candidates for president and vice president, which means scraping the bottom of the barrel to find someone willing to associate themselves with the group. Their process, like just about everything else in the organization including who’s financing it, is being kept secret.

The organization has bled high-level staff in the past year, including its “vice chair, two vice presidents, two national co-chairs, the head of its digital operation, the director of its political field program and more,” according to NBC News. Its staff appears disgruntled too, with one anonymously telling NBC, “You are constantly being asked to sign NDAs in that organization.”

Former allies are turning on the group as well, including one of its influential early supporters, “No Labels seems to have become the victim of its own arrogance,” attorney Richard J. Davis wrote on Tuesday. Davis served as assistant secretary of the Treasury Department in President Jimmy Carter’s administration and as an assistant special prosecutor during Watergate. “Its leaders are so convinced of the righteousness of their cause that they developed a dangerous tunnel vision,” he said.

No Labels’ latest plan is to play this farce of a third-party run into August, at which time they’ll pull the plug on it if it hasn’t gained serious traction. But this plan is even being mocked by the centrist think tank Third Way.

“No Labels nominates their presidential ticket in March. Over the next four months, the candidates pour their heart, soul, and millions of dollars into gaining ballot access and persuading voters, all the while not knowing whether their party will submit their names into nomination,” Third Way pointed out in a blog post this past Thursday.

“The candidates would be running with one foot in the door and one foot out. And the No Labels Party leaders would retain an unprecedented amount of power to pull the rug out from under their campaign.”

No wonder No Labels can’t find any takers. But at least they have another four or five months to grift their high-dollar donors, which seems to be the primary motivation for No Labels’ co-founder and CEO Nancy Jacobson, who holds the key. It’s her ego trip.

“This is Nancy’s decision, and her decision alone,” a source told NBC News. “If she wants a ticket, we’re getting a ticket.”

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Kyrsten Sinema

Announcing Senate Retirement, Sinema Praises Her Own 'Civility'

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) will not be seeking another six-year term in 2024, after posting a video to her official X/Twitter account announcing her retirement from the US Senate.

Sinema bemoaned the partisan climate in Washington in the video, stating that "despite modernizing our infrastructure, delivering clean water, delivering good jobs and safer communities, Americans still choose to retreat farther to their partisan corners."

"These solutions are considered failures, either because they're too much, or not nearly enough. It's all or nothing," she said. "The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. Compromise is a dirty word."

"I believe in my approach, but it's not what America wants right now," she continued. "Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year.

Though she was initially elected as a Democrat, Sinema left the Democratic Party at the end of 2022 and has been a consistent thorn in the side of Democratic majority in the Senate since President Joe Biden took office. She and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) — who is also retiring at the end of the year — were the two deciding votes that killed Biden's signature "Build Back Better" legislative package, which would have guaranteed universal pre-K and child care to parents, paid family leave and additional funding for environmental programs, partially funding by an additional tax on the wealthiest Americans.

In March of 2021, Sinema angered Democrats as the deciding vote to kill legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. After stepping onto the Senate floor, Sinema gave the clerk a thumbs-down, with an additional curtsy, before turning around and leaving the chamber. She also rebuffed Democrats' efforts to get rid of the filibuster, allowing Republicans to maintain a blockade over any legislation that failed to garner the 60 votes needed to advance a bill to the full floor for debate after a cloture motion was invoked.

Later that year, immigration activists from the group Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) confronted Sinema in a public restroom over her refusal to back a pathway to citizenship for so-called "Dreamers," or children of undocumented immigrants who were brought across the border at a young age. LUCHA defended the bathroom confrontation, saying Sinema "denied our requests, ignored our phone calls, and closed her office to her constituents," and that she "hasn’t had a public event or town hall in years."

That confrontation happened at the Phoenix campus of Arizona State University, where Sinema taught a graduate-level course on campaign fundraising. The Intercept's Ken Klippenstein likened Sinema's course to "getting rich people to give you money." He reported that Sinema racked up nearly $1 million in campaign donations from groups opposed to the Build Back Better bill she helped defeat, and that she "has received tens of thousands of dollars in maxed-out contributions from private equity partners and investment firm CEOs who stand to lose in the event of a tax hike on corporations or the rich."

In January, Sinema made headlines after a Daily Beast investigation found that she had spent more than $200,000 in taxpayer money on private jet flights since 2020. Sinema reportedly spent roughly $116,000 in 2023 alone. Almost all of the flights were within Arizona, and were for one or two-day trips. The Beast observed that the cost of Sinema's flights last year were more than the annual salaries of nearly all of her staff.

With Sinema no longer running, the Arizona US Senate race in 2024 will be between Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) and former newscaster Kari Lake, the presumptive Republican nominee who ran a failed campaign for governor in 2022.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kyrsten Sinema

Several GOP Senators Backed Biden Judicial Nominee -- But Not Sinema

On Wednesday, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema reached a new milestone in her turncoat Senate journey when she voted not to confirm U.S. District Judge S. Kato Crews to a Colorado seat. Luckily Crews received the support of every other Senate Democrat, a couple Republicans, and one independent not named Sinema and was confirmed by a 51-48 vote.

Sinema did not respond to queries about her vote, but considering that she reportedly voted in 95 of the Trump judicial nominees, it seems unlikely she found an honest criticism of Crews. It seems more likely that as we enter the election year, Sinema is looking to find splashy ways to prove that she is an “independent.” What she’s “independent” about is hard to divine. While her team has quietly crafted a plan to show donors how she could win reelection, she has made no formal announcement about her 2024 plans.

This was the first time Sinema has voted against one of Biden’s judicial nominations, but not her first time voting against the Democratic Party. Since ascending to the Senate after defeating Republican Martha McSally, Sinema has quickly become something of a monster, turning her back on so many of the constituents who voted her into office. In her first year in office she voted against her then Democratic colleagues 27.5 percent of the time—second only to West Virginia’s most corrupt official, Sen. Joe Manchin.

Sinema’s crowning achievement was the derision she earned when she voted to tank the $15 minimum wage amendment to the American Rescue Plan, and made a big show of licking Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s boots to do it. Less than a year later, Sinema was announcing to everybody she was no longer a Democrat but an independent. The people who were surprised or cared about the Arizona senator’s new affiliation at the time could be summed up as Kyrsten Sinema.

Sinema’s ever-increasing betrayal of her originally stated values has led virtually every former Democratic organization to endorse Rep. Ruben Gallego’s run for Senate in 2024. That Sinema’s lip service to centrism rings untrue and she has only proven to voters of all political persuasions that she is untrustworthy have also made her unpopular across the political spectrum.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Martha McSally as the incumbent in the Senate race she lost to Kyrsten Sinema. The race was for an open seat.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Kyrsten Sinema

Sinema Took $27K From Lenders After Voting To Kill Biden's Student Debt Bill

Earlier this year, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) voted with Senate Republicans for legislation to kill President Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness proposal. In the months following that vote, she was a major recipient of the student loan industry's largesse.

The bill itself, H.J. Res 45, would have blocked Biden's plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower, though the president promised to veto it if it reached his desk, and the Supreme Court ultimately struck down the proposal at the end of its 2023 session. The bill narrowly passed the Senate in June, with 52 votes in favor and 46 in opposition. Sinema joined forces with all Senate Republicans to give the bill the narrow majority it needed for passage. Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Az) and Jon Tester (D-MT) also voted with the GOP to pass the measure.

According to the Phoenix New Times, Sinema proceeded to rake in thousands of dollars in contributions from various donors connected to student loan servicers, for-profit colleges, banks and debt collectors after her vote.

The New Times combed through Sinema's campaign finance disclosure forms on the Federal Election Commission database and learned that the Arizona senator received approximately $27,000 in PAC donations between June and September of 2023. That includes a $5,000 contribution from NelNet PAC, which is a political action committee representing the interests of the second-largest provider of federally backed loans given by private lenders. Sinema also received $5,000 from a PAC connected to private lender Sallie Mae and $5,000 from a PAC run by the board chair of a for-profit Arizona college.

Smaller donations from the industry during that time period include a $2,500 donation from debt collector Portfolio Recovery Associates, $2,500 from a Washington, DC-based trade association representing the interests of for-profit colleges, and a combined $7,000 in donations from three PACs run by banks.

Despite her fundraising activity, Arizona's senior US senator has not yet indicated if she plans to run for reelection in 2024. She currently faces opposition from Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and failed 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who campaigned as a vociferous supporter of former President Donald Trump.

Current polls show a virtual dead heat between the three candidates, with Gallego having a slight edge over his two opponents. Gallego brought in more than $3 million in donations during the third quarter of 2023, with an average donation amount of $28.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.