EMULATING MCCAIN — KYRSTEN SINEMA’S advisers heard it constantly from her during her 2018 campaign for Senate: “I want to be the next JOHN MCCAIN.”
After she won, Sinema called the late senator a “legend” and “my personal hero.” This year, when she voted against a minimum wage hike, she rankled the left by mimicking McCain’s iconic thumbs-down that tanked the GOP’s effort to kill Obamacare.
Now Sinema’s commanding the spotlight not only as a rare swing vote in a hyperpartisan Congress but as a lead negotiator on an infrastructure deal that could determine the success of President JOE BIDEN’S first term. If she pulls it off, she will establish herself, like McCain, as a legislative force inside the Senate.
McCain is obviously a singular figure who spent decades building his stature in the chamber. But Sinema’s current and former colleagues say the two do share some traits: She doesn’t like to be told what to do. She’s also unafraid to buck her party, and at times seems to relish it.
— WHAT MEGHAN SAYS: We asked McCain’s daughter what she thought of the comparison.
“I do believe when she makes decisions she thinks about what [John McCain] would do, which is both surprising and nice and interesting — and not what I expected from her at all,” MEGHAN MCCAIN said.
She added that her father was also “obsessed” with his predecessor BARRY GOLDWATER’S legacy.
“I think she’s pretty fearless,” McCain said. Sinema, she added, has the mindset, “‘What’s the worst that can happen to me?’ She’s not scared of being uncool with the woke left. Politically she’s pretty well tuned to the state in a lot of ways.”
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— HER GOP CHARM OFFENSIVE: Sinema doesn’t really fit in with Democrats. She’s been known to skip party lunches and votes and even missed VP KAMALA HARRIS’ dinner with female senators this week. (Her staff said it was because Sinema broke her foot.) All the while she’s been on a charm offensive with Republicans, many of whom adore her. They say they can trust her, that she keeps her word.
“I think Sen. Sinema is comfortable with who she is,” Sen. DEB FISCHER (R-Neb.) told Playbook. The two senators have become close friends and regularly have dinner together, most recently two weeks ago at Charlie Palmer with Sens. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO (R-W.Va.) and CYNTHIA LUMMIS (R-Wyo.).
“She is certainly willing to step in in a needed way to bring people together, and she does go her own way. I would say she’s probably similar to McCain in that way. They’re willing to take the slings and arrows from their own side when they’re trying to accomplish something.”
— DEMS SAY SHE’S GOT IT WRONG: On the flip side, some Democrats worry that she’s feeling the love from Republicans only because they need her while they are in the minority.
“She’s still new, that’s the bottom line,” said a senior Democratic Hill official. “Do you think if the Republicans were in the majority they would care about Sinema? She has to be wary of the relevancy trap. You can easily be beguiled by the moment. It’s a mistake of early legislators who want to make inroads with the other side at the expense of their own caucus, of their advancement and at the expense of their state.”
Sinema was the first Democrat to win an Arizona Senate seat since 1995, and she won by a small margin. A former Sinema aide warned that she’s not reading the Democratic Party in Arizona if she thinks McCain is the person to emulate.
“She’s trying to brand herself as a brand of Arizonan that won’t exist anymore,” the aide said, referring to the leftward shift of the state, which narrowly backed Biden in November. “It’s misguided to look backward than forward. You can’t be a carbon copy because it won’t work.”
McCain was a prisoner-of-war hero, which Americans consider to be a sort of sainthood. And his “maverickyness” also stemmed from having been caught out in a corruption scandal which caused him to feel some shame and work across the aisle on an issue like campaign finance reform. He was also hugely popular with the beltway press because he was a raconteur who appealed to a certain macho sensibility. Kyrsten Sinema isn’t John McCain.
And yes, it was mostly pure ego so in that respect he has a lot in common with Sinema. Other than that, I really don’t see the resemblance.
It isn’t 1988, 1998 or 2008 anymore and Arizona isn’t the same place it was when McCain was in office. In fact the wingnuts ground him hard in his last election and would have taken him out just like Flake if he had continued. Good luck with this, Kyrsten.