Kyrsten Sinema Faces A Shrinking Window To Run For Reelection

The Arizona independent’s fundraising slowed as a deadline to gather signatures for the Senate race nears.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s fundraising for her Arizona reelection campaign slowed to its lowest level in years in the final three months of 2023, a sign the independent candidate may not be preparing to meet a potentially insurmountable deadline to gather tens of thousands of signatures.

Sinema, a Democrat until 2022, raised just $595,000 in the last three months of 2023, according to a freshly filed report with the Federal Election Commission. It’s the lowest total she’s raised since the last quarter of 2020 and less than half of what she raised each quarter of 2021, when she played a starring role in shrinking the legislative ambitions of President Joe Biden.

The report also revealed Sinema had spent no money on signature-gathering through the end of 2023. To qualify for the ballot as an independent, she needs to get 42,303 valid signatures by April 8, according to Arizona’s secretary of state office ― a task Arizona Democrats think only gets harder by the day.

“If she is running, I’m struggling to see why she isn’t in yet,” said Jon Sutton, who worked as the field director for the Arizona Democratic Party when Sinema ran for Senate in 2018. “She’s just making this harder and more expensive for herself, spending money she doesn’t really have.”

It adds up to an emerging consensus across both political parties: A typical politician would not run for reelection. There’s also an acknowledgment, however, that Sinema ― who evolved from a Green Party candidate to a Wall Street-friendly centrist ― is far from a typical politician.