Not long before independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona publicly announced she would not run for reelection, she and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut had a talk.
For months, the two of them had worked tirelessly alongside Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma to craft a bipartisan deal on immigration. It had been a grueling negotiation, one of the toughest deals of their careers to clinch. But after four months of closed-door haggling, the trio announced their deal. Within hours of its release, it was clear, the plan was not going to pass.
When Sinema told Murphy she planned to retire, Murphy says she laid out her rationale. The American public wasn’t looking for a moderate, bipartisan member who cut deals, she argued. That model wasn’t the future; it was the past. He told her point blank he thought she was wrong.
“I don’t buy Sinema’s exit memo,” Murphy said. “I love her to death, but she proved herself wrong. She makes the claim that compromise is dead, but she helped forge some of the biggest, toughest compromises.”
Sinema declined to comment further about her reasons why she is retiring, telling CNN she put out a statement.
But there is no denying that the middle is shrinking in the Senate. The long-lauded dealmakers have slowly lost reelection or headed for the exits on their own volition, some knowing there was no path for winning back home. Over the last decade, senators who once saw the institution as a place to make laws, are finding it hard to even get a vote on an amendment. Republicans are looking over their shoulder knowing what can happen if they find themselves at odds with former President Donald Trump. And in more than a dozen interviews with senators, many candidly admit there are few political upsides for trying to find consensus when it seems all the base…
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