November 12, 2018

Kyrsten Sinema Just Officially Beat Martha McSally to Be Arizona’s Next Senator

This is the second Democratic pick up in the Senate.

Matt York/AP

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On Monday night, Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema officially defeated Republican Rep. Martha McSally to be Arizona’s next senator. The campaign to replace retiring Republican Sen. Jeff Flake proved incredibly tight and put the country on edge over the past week; on election night, McSally had the lead and it looked like she might win, but a week of continued counting ultimately gave Sinema the edge. She will be the state’s first female senator, and her win marks a significant victory for Democrats in a battleground state that President Donald Trump narrowly won two years ago. 

McSally, a former fighter pilot, called Sinema to concede the race on Monday, thanking supporters in a video on Twitter. 

Notably, since Election Day, McSally has not followed the lead of other Republicans in Arizona and across the country who have been making allegations of voter fraud, as the party has seen its leads shrink or as races have been forced into recounts. As Politico reported, “Top officials with the White House and Republican National Committee, who’ve been prodding the McSally campaign to amp up its efforts, have expressed frustration that the Arizona congresswoman hasn’t tried to drive a message that there’s something amiss with the vote count.” McSally’s lack of participation didn’t stop President Trump from alleging fraud: 

Throughout the campaign, both candidates appeared uncomfortable with their place in their respective parties. McSally had rejected Trump in the final weeks of the 2016 election, though she has embraced his platform over the past two years. (It was McSally who told her colleagues during the push to repeal the Affordable Care Act to get the “fucking thing” done.) But she refused to ever say who she had voted for for president.

Sinema, for her part, moved hard to the center from her early days as a progressive firebrand in the state legislature. This year, she declined to endorse the Democratic nominee for governor, David Garcia, and in the closing days of the race, backed Trump’s decision to move 5,000 troops to the southern border.

For such a marquee race, it was waged, in the end, with smoke and mirrors. McSally declined to say she’d make abortion a litmus test for Supreme Court nominees, and Sinema waited until the last minute to say she’d vote against Brett Kavanaugh. McSally and her allies tarred Sinema—in the face of all evidence to the contrary—as a socialist radical and hammered the Democrat’s opposition to the war in Iraq. When Sinema hammered McSally over her vote to roll back protections for people with pre-existing conditions, McSally simply lied and said she never did.

Arizona proved a winnable race for Democrats, and they’ll get another chance soon enough to try to solidify their gains; the special election for the seat formerly held by John McCain is coming up in 2020.

Listen to our reporters explain the on-going tussle over every vote in key battleground states, on this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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