• Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema will run as an independent.
• Joe Biden’s party will have the same number of Senate seats as before.
• There are now three independents serving in the upper body of Congress.

Kyrsten Sinema, a senator from Arizona, has declared her intention to defect from the Democratic Party and run as an independent, giving the party the same number of Senate seats as before the midterm elections.

Revealing the news on Twitter along with a slick campaign-style video, Ms. Sinema – whose economically conservative centrism has at times caused major problems for Joe Biden’s agenda – wrote that “In a natural extension of my service since I was first elected to Congress, I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington and formally registering as an Arizona Independent.

“Over the past four years, I’ve worked proudly with other Senators in both parties and forged consensus on successful laws helping everyday Arizonans build better lives for themselves and their families.

“Becoming an Independent won’t change my work in the Senate; my service to Arizona remains the same.”

With the addition of Ms. Sinema, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, and Maine’s Angus King, who both caucus with the Democrats, giving Mr. Biden’s party the majority, there are now three independents serving in the upper body of Congress. As of now, Ms. Sinema is anticipated to remain in the caucus.

Raphael Warnock’s victory in this week’s Georgia runoff gives Democrats a 51st vote in the Senate, enabling them to gain majorities on committees that have been evenly divided during the current Congress.

Consequently, they would have a much higher chance of confirming significant Biden administration choices in votes that frequently follow party lines.

Additionally, it is unclear how Ms. Sinema’s shift of affiliation would influence the Senate election map in 2024.

Her current term is set to expire at the beginning of 2025, and if she decides to seek for re-election, she will be able to do so without having to compete in a Democratic primary, perhaps creating a three-way contest if the other parties decide to produce candidates to run against her.

But Arizona has recently shifted toward the Democratic Party; Joe Biden won the state in 2020, and this year, her fellow Democrat Senator Mark Kelly was re-elected, and Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was promoted to the position of governor.

Prior to Ms. Sinema’s declaration, Democrats were glad that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia would no longer be the Senate’s effective deciding vote as they attempted to advance their own ideas on energy, welfare, and wages, which he has steadfastly opposed.

However, Ms. Sinema has proven almost as problematic for the party, particularly when it comes to increasing the minimum wage, a top issue for progressives.

She also threatened to stall the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was negotiated by Mr. Manchin and Chuck Schumer after the former scuttled the Build Back Better package due to a number of differences.

The IRA is the party’s most significant legislative accomplishment of the year. Ms. Sinema’s resistance to eliminating the so-called “carried interest loophole,” which affords private equity and venture capital income the benefit of a relatively low tax rate, served as the foundation for her opposition to the IRA.

She was eventually accepted into the law, which her office referred to as “Sinema-shaped,”

In a natural extension of my service since I was first elected to Congress, I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington and formally registering as an Arizona Independent. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/jUQHAeuxym

— Kyrsten Sinema (@kyrstensinema) December 9, 2022

At the beginning of this year, when she refused to support filibuster reform so that the Democrats could pass significant voting rights legislation with a simple majority, she generated some of the most controversy of Mr. Biden’s tenure to yet.

She reaffirmed her opposition to the draconian laws being passed in Republican-led states like Texas and Georgia in a floor speech to make her position plain, but she also stressed that she would not support “separate acts that aggravate the fundamental cancer of division ailing our society.”

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