Senator Kyrsten Sinema has had a truly bizarre villain origin story play out in the press over the past year. It arguably began with her now-infamous thumbs-down vote on a Democrat-sponsored bill to raise the minimum wage and has cascaded into a rolling snowball of stories about colorful wigs and skipping out on voting rights meetings with her colleagues to grab a few more vacation days. And now it seems Sinema’s own team is turning against her.
According to CNN, five military veterans on Sinema’s advisory board resigned this week, but not before calling their former boss one of the country’s “principal obstacles to progress.” Yikes.
The military vets, who volunteered to serve on Sinema’s board, wrote the embattled Democratic senator a letter explaining their decision and issuing some harsh criticisms of her recent voting history on Capitol Hill.
“You have become one of the principal obstacles to progress, answering to big donors rather than your own people. We shouldn’t have to buy representation from you, and your failure to stand by your people and see their urgent needs is alarming,” the group wrote. “We do not know who has your ear, but it clearly isn’t us or your constituents.”
The advisors berated Sinema, who has consistently gone against her party by refusing to change the filibuster, support price changes for prescription drugs, and remaining quiet about the Jan. 6th commission, for putting personal profit before people.
“We no longer feel you are aligned with our values, and we cannot in good faith continue to serve on your council,” they wrote after accusing the senator of using them as “window dressing” for her own campaign needs.
Sinema’s reps issued a pretty bland statement in response, thanking the veterans for their service and expressing disappointment that they seemed to disagree on certain policy issues but this is just the latest aftershock the senator had had to weather because of her confusing and often confrontational voting record on the Senate floor.