Mark Karlin: In 2016, Kyrsten Sinema Shocked Democrats by Endorsing Right-Wing GOP Insurrectionist Andy Biggs for Congress, and He's Still Her BFF
Even more than Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema has cast a pall over the possibility of eliminating the filibuster as she embraces right-wing Republican members of Congress and the Senate. (Gage Skidmore)
June 25, 2021
BuzzFlash:“Making Good Trouble Since May of 2000”
By Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash Short Takes
The senior Senator from Arizona often comes off as an enigma considering how much she pals around with right-wing Republicans including Troglodyte Ted Cruz (R-TX). However, her performative “bipartisanship” with the most destructive members of the Republican Party and supporters of “The Big Lie,” should not come as a surprise.
Take for example Sinema’s endorsement in 2016, while she was serving as US Democratic Congresswoman from the 9th District, of Andy Biggs for the Republican seat in Congress for the nearby 5th District. Biggs is a right-wing insurrectionist, widely thought to have played a lead role in assisting in the January 6 coup attempt.
The independent Phoenix New Times wrote in a May, 2016, article that,
Democrat Kyrsten Sinema raised eyebrows at a recent East Valley Partnership luncheon in Mesa, by stating that she hopes right-wing ideologue and Republican state Senate president Andy Biggs wins in Arizona's deeply red Fifth Congressional District this year….
"I can't wait to sit here and do this with Andy next year," Sinema enthused, according to one businessperson present at the event, who spoke with New Times on condition of anonymity….
“There were a few claps," [a business forum spokesman] says of the crowd's reaction to Sinema's comment. "People were wondering, 'Was that really just said? Is this something she knows that we don't know?'"
Yes, there are many riled-up progressive Democrats who want to know what Sinema is up to in not infrequently betraying her liberal supporters. Sinema also didn’t play a role in removing the dreaded GOP State Senate President, when Sinema was in that body. Republican Russell Pearce was an out in the open anti-Chicano and racist legislator who was an early version of Ron De Santis in creating bills to incite cultural divisions and punish non-whites. Sinema steered clear of the successful recall effort (passed in November, 2011), although she passively supported it.
Why did she sit the recall effort out, she was asked after activist groups worked their hearts out to displace him? Sinema shockingly responded that she couldn’t participate because, “He’s my boss.”
A summer 2021 Mother Jones article covering Sinema’s political career recalls:
Pearce was defeated, and at a tense community meeting afterward, Sinema was asked by an immigration activist why she hadn’t helped with the recall.
Pearce, she replied, was her boss.
Her answer stunned the room—someone else in the audience asked if they really heard her right. Yes, Sinema confirmed—Pearce, as Senate president, was her boss; antagonizing him would have made it harder to get things done. “She just didn’t show up,” the recall campaign’s lead organizer would say later. To them, recalling Pearce was getting things done. In doing so, they previewed a new power dynamic in state politics and a coalition that would change the culture of the state. The Pearce recall was powered by both Mexican-American activists and progressives as well as moderate Mormons in his district. They, too, had united and conquered.
Even as she was sitting out the recall, Sinema was working alongside Pearce on an “anti-trafficking” measure that critics feared would open families of undocumented residents to criminal penalties.
This reminds me of reading in an article a few weeks ago that Andy Biggs, whom Sinema sat next to and became friendly with in the Arizona legislature, called her the top Arizona politician in understanding Arizona voters.
Oddly and paradoxically, Biggs said he was for eliminating the filibuster (which he has no actual say in because he is in the House), while Sinema is against it as revealed in a conversation among friends she had in 2018. That year, EastValley.Com detailed their talk on the “nuclear issue”:
Sinema said that she believes in retaining the Senate’s cloture rule, by which 60 senators can circumvent a filibuster and quickly end debate on a bill.
Instead of doing away with the oft-used maneuver, she said the country needs more senators who won’t invoke cloture in order to avoid debate.
“I think the solution is to get senators who are more willing to work together across the aisle to solve problems and get things done, because we used to have a Senate that worked,” Sinema said.
Biggs disagreed, arguing that cloture “dilutes representation” and is an arcane rule that “needs to go.”
He blamed cloture for the last-minute spending additions that ballooned the price tag for Congress’ $1.3 trillion omnibus budget bill and the fact that hundreds of other bills passed by the House currently sit untouched in the Senate.
Like baseball cards, can we trade Andy Biggs (before he goes to jail for treason) with Sinema, just long enough to be the 50th vote to allow Kamala Harris to do away with the filibuster? Who needs a Senator who is BFF forever with an insurrectionist and wears rings that tell her critics to “Fuck off”?
It is going to get dicey for the Senator with a purple wig and a “John McCain” thumbs down for a bill to set a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour. Her efforts to defy the Democrats on key issues and to write “guest essays” that make no logical sense is about to run up against the pitting of her loyalties in the 2022 Senate Race. According to a March 1 azcentral. article, Biggs is thinking of running against Democratic AZ Senator Mark Kelly, who is seeking a full year six-year term.
Sinema won’t be able to split the baby:
Arizonacentral.com recalls in its article:
Biggs was among the more vocal critics of the 2020 elections, saying Pennsylvania was "an utter disaster," and he argued to set aside Arizona's election results on Jan. 6 just before the mob that invaded the Capitol interrupted the proceedings.
He voted to set aside the results in both states.
Even before that day, Biggs had lent his name and words to rallies trying to "Stop the Steal." He has maintained he wasn't involved in working with Ali Alexander, one of those who helped organize pro-Trump supporters on Jan. 6, though Alexander named Biggs as one of three GOP members especially helpful to his efforts.
This is Sinema’s legacy of embracing the treasonists instead of defending democracy from the Damocles sword of the filibuster.
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