Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced in an interview that she is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as a political independent.

“I’ve registered as an Arizona independent. I know some people might be a little bit surprised by this, but actually, I think it makes a lot of sense,” Sinema said in an interview on Thursday.

“I’ve never fit neatly into any party box. I’ve never really tried. I don’t want to,” she continued. “Removing myself from the partisan structure – not only is it true to who I am and how I operate, I also think it’ll provide a place of belonging for many folks across the state and the country, who also are tired of the partisanship.”

Who is Kyrsten Sinema?

Kyrsten Lea Sinema is an American politician and has been the senior US senator from Arizona since 2019. She is a registered Democrat although she has been ranked the 47th most conservative member of the Senate in 2019, according to analysis done by the website, GovTrack.us

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Born on July 12, 1976, Sinema was born in Tuscon, Arizona. After her parents split, she moved to DeFuniak Springs in Florida, where she stayed with her mother and stepfather. After completing school at the age of 16, Sinema moved to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. While working as a social worker, she worked on completing her Master of Social Work degree from Arizona State University in 2004. She first entered politics by joining the Green Party before registering herself as a Democrat in 2004. 

Given her more conservative patterns, Sinema has made news  recently for supporting the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act which is a sweeping $739 billion piece of legislation that is aimed at increased investment in health care, funds to climate change and fighting increasing inflation. However, in order to pass the bill, Senate Democrats had to introduce an amendment supported by Sinema without which, it seemed unlikely that Congress would pass the reform bill. 

Sinema’s amendment protects private equity firms from new taxation policy meant for billion-dollar corporations. The Arizona Senator has spent a lot of her time since last year thwarting Democratic ambitions to raise taxes.

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Her opposition to raising taxes on equity firms was based on Sinema’s belief that small and medium-sized businesses that are owned by such organisations will unfairly be impacted by the new legislation. According to her, without her amendment, the Inflation Reduction Act would violate a Democrat pledge to raise taxes only for the largest firms.