Arizona

For more than 100 years, the U.S. Senate’s legislative “filibuster” rule has been used to ensure bipartisanship and consensus-driven decision making, requiring Congress to bridge deep ideological differences and political divides to pass most major legislation. Under this rule, legislation in the Senate can only advance with bipartisan support of 60 total Senators to prevent the majority party from pushing aside the minority party. But liberals in Washington led by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are trying to abolish the filibuster rule so they can force their harmful and most controversial legislation into law, including a federal takeover of state elections with only 51 Democrat votes instead of the normal 60 votes.

Importantly, Senator Sinema has unequivocally pledged to uphold the 60-vote filibuster and reject efforts to destroy bipartisanship, echoing the bipartisan pledge signed by the late senator John McCain in 2017 calling for preservation of the time-honored rule.

“It’s no secret that I oppose eliminating the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. I held the same view during three terms in the U.S. House and said the same after I was elected to the Senate in 2018. If anyone expected me to reverse my position because my party now controls the Senate, they should know that my approach to legislating in Congress is the same whether in the minority or majority,” Sinema wrote in The Washington Post.

“They will not get my vote” to eliminate the Senate’s 60-vote requirement, Sinema told POLITICO. “In fact, whether I’m in the majority or the minority I would always vote to reinstate the protections for the minority. … It is the right thing for the country.”

Senator Sinema has maintained that John McCain is her personal hero and takes her legacy in the seat that the late senator once held very seriously. But if she does not protect the filibuster form every effort to eliminate or weaken minority procedural rights, then she will violate her own statements about John McCain and will become another hypocrite politician who can’t be trusted.