It’s too little and too late but Democrats are finally, kinda-sorta getting tough with one of the obstructionists who helped Republicans kill new voting rights protections in the Senate.
The Arizona Democratic Party over the weekend censured Sen. Kyrsten Sinema over her refusal to help get a new voting rights bill passed, which is to say the party waited until after the vote was done and the bill failed, and then wrote a strongly worded letter that will have absolutely no meaningful impact on Sinema at all.
From Politico
The Arizona Democratic Party’s Executive Board held a meeting on Saturday morning to discuss action against the senator, and ultimately the board formally censured Sinema “as a result of her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy.”
“I want to be clear, the Arizona Democratic Party is a diverse coalition with plenty of room for policy disagreements, however on the matter of the filibuster and the urgency to protect voting rights, we have been crystal clear,” ADP Chair Raquel Terán said in a statement following the decision.
“In the choice between an archaic legislative norm and protecting Arizonans’ right to vote, we choose the latter, and we always will,” Terán continued, adding that Arizona Republicans are in the midst of trying to “push restrictive legislation” that would make it harder to vote.
Way to go, Dems! That’ll show her.
Sinema represents Arizona in the Senate, so her own state’s party issuing a censure matters, but not by much. If the party doesn’t plan to throw its support behind another candidate to run against her in the state’s next primary and aligning with some major donors who said they’d stop funding her if she didn’t get onboard with voting rights, or asking the Senate Democratic leadership to remove her from committees, a censure is hollow. Sinema’s an incumbent US Senator with a safe seat and cushy committee assignments.
What’s not safe are voting rights, specifically for Black people and just about anybody else in parts of the country where GOP legislatures are redrawing voting maps that look unrecognizable, rewriting voting laws and even proposing special election police to enforce it all.
Meanwhile, zero word out of West Virginia or Washington on any shred of consequence for Sen. Joe Manchin, who stood with Sinema by sitting down on voting rights.