Washington Wednesday: Kyrsten Sinema leaves the Democrats

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 14th of December, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Washington Wednesday.

After last week’s runoff election in Georgia, Democrats were set to hold a 51-seat majority in the Senate. But then the math seemingly changed.

Right after Sen. Raphael Warnock won reelection, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced that she’s leaving the Democratic party.

Here to talk about her announcement, as well as the Georgia election—and the Trump effect—is Kyle Kondik. He is an elections analyst and director of communications at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

REICHARD: Kyle, good morning!

KYLE KONDIK, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well Kyle, technically, Democrats were set to have 49 seats after Warnock’s win, not 51, because senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King are independents, at least on paper. But they caucus with the Democrats, and that’s really all that matters.

What are Kyrsten Sinema’s plans as she departs the Democratic party?

KONDIK: I mean, it seems like her role is going to stay fairly similar in that she's going to be, you know, effectively a Democrat, but probably one of the less reliable Democratic votes in the caucus along with Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia. It does not seem though that Sinema would kind of switch to the Republicans. It seems like she's gonna vote for Chuck Schumer to be the majority leader. And so nominally the Democrats I think are still gonna have this 51-49 majority. So I think she's probably going to be a less reliable “Democrat” than Angus King and Bernie Sanders are. Both of them are Independants, but they're pretty loyal Democrats, they really haven't been a pain in the neck for leadership the way that Sinema was as a Democrat and how she might be as an Independent for the next two years.

REICHARD: And was this Sinema’s way of avoiding a tough Democratic primary fight in the next election or was there more to it?

KONDIK: I think it's probably about the 2024 election. Sinema’s polling numbers are really pretty bad in Arizona. She has fairly weak numbers with both Democrats and Republicans and unaffiliated or independents, however you want to put it. And so she probably figured she would lose a primary situation. It's kind of similar to that of the previous occupant of this seat, Jeff Flake, a Republican who was sort of an anti-Trump person. And it became clear to Flake early on in the 2018 cycle that he was gonna have a very hard time winning re-nomination. He decided not to run that year and set up an open seat battle that Sinema ended up winning herself. And now she finds herself in kind of a similar position that Flake did in that her overall numbers are fairly poor. And, you know, frankly, I think she'd have a hard time winning a Democratic primary, but I think she'd also have a hard time winning, you know, as an Independent, particularly if there are credible Democratic or Republican opponents as well.

REICHARD: Right now, we have a 50/50 split in the Senate, but Democrats have the tie-breaking vote in the person of Vice President Kamala Harris. So what difference will having one extra seat make for Senate Democrats?

KONDIK: A lot of it has to do with the logistics of confirming nominees. When you've got the Senate as being the same party as the president, one of the Senate's main functions is essentially to operate as a judicial nomination factory - or rather a judicial confirmation factory. And it's just easier to get the judicial nominees through the committee process because the Democrats will actually have majorities on committees now, as opposed to it being a split in a power sharing situation. So the Democrats are going to continue to fill these judicial vacancies and to fill vacancies in the administration. And they just will logistically have an easier time doing that. Part of the challenge in the Senate is just getting the kind of getting the schedule right, and getting things on the calendar and moving through the sometimes arcane processes in the Senate. And the processes will just be easier for Democrats over the next two years, assuming that they retain an actual 51-49 majority. Again, it doesn't seem like Kyrsten Sinema’s move necessarily threatens that, but maybe something could happen down the line here that would change things. There haven’t been that many party changes in recent Senate history. One that was really pretty consequential was more than 20 years ago, the Senate was 50-50 in the 2000 election, and the Republicans ended up having a majority with Dick Cheney as the vice president then as being the tie breaking vote. Jim Jeffords of Vermont who was kind of a liberal-moderate Yankee Republican. Jeffords left the Republican Party became an independent, decided to caucus with Democrats. And that gave the Democrats a 51-49 advantage until the 2002 election. So you know, these things, they do change over time. You do sometimes have members who will migrate from one party to being independent or from one party to the other. And there's always the possibility that something like something else like that could happen between now and the next election.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about last week’s Georgia election—an interesting one—because voters did not divide the ballot straight down party lines. Republican Governor Brian Kemp easily won reelection, but GOP Senate challenger Herschel Walker lost a close race to the Democratic incumbent.

What stood out to you as you looked at the numbers coming out of Georgia last week?

KONDIK: It’s just the continued Republican erosion in metro Atlanta. Not only is the core of Atlanta, so heavily blue and some of the kind of inner inner rings, sort of suburban counties, but you're also seeing erosion for Republicans in some traditionally much redder, suburban/exurban counties. And that's the real thing that's driving the trends in Georgia. And despite Herschel Walker got some better margins in certain parts of the state between November and the December runoff, Raphael Warnock just did even better in terms of his margins or in terms of his share of the vote in the metro Atlanta area in some other parts of the state. And that was the difference. And Republicans really need to be careful in Georgia, because obviously they can win the state with strong nominees, but with a weak nominee, with someone who has really identified with Donald Trump, we've seen that they just haven't come through. And the fact that Georgia is gonna continue to have two Democratic senators here, it's pretty striking given where Georgia was even 5-10 years ago.

REICHARD: Many people thought that this did really come down to candidate quality. In fact, Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan called Herschel Walker “one of the worst Republican candidates in our party's history.”

Do you think a different GOP candidate might have defeated Warnock? What are your thoughts on that?

KONDIK: Yeah, I think certainly it's possible and the final margin ended up being a little less than three points. The first round voting, the race was decided by less than a point and all the rest of the Republican statewide ticket, many of whom were incumbents, ended up winning. So yeah, you can easily imagine there being, you know, a different Republican candidate maybe producing a different result. However, you also have to give credit to the fact that Warnock, just like Brian Kemp, was an incumbent and an incumbent who didn't have really obvious problems. So it was, it wasn't just that Walker was a weak challenger, it was that Warnock is also a pretty strong incumbent, I think. And it's not like he's winning landslide victories or anything. And again, maybe a different challenger would have produced a different result. But I do think you have to give credit to the incumbent here a little bit too.

REICHARD: You touched on the Trump effect earlier. Prior to November, Walker was advertised as the Trump-backed candidate. But after that election, heading up to the runoff, a lot of the advertising in Georgia touted Gov. Brian Kemp’s endorsement, without any mention of Trump.

Kyle, with Trump-backed candidates losing high profile races in the midterms. Do you think this changes Trump’s standing within the Republican party and his odds of holding off primary challengers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis?

KONDIK: There’s been some polling that indicates that Trump could potentially be vulnerable to a strong challenger, which Ron DeSantis may or may not end up being a strong challenger. So we'll have to kind of wait and see on that. But I don't think Trump came out of this midterm looking particularly good. And frankly, I think Republicans do need to ask themselves if they think they're going to actually win in 2024 by nominating Trump because you also do see some polls that indicate that Biden might be a little bit stronger against Trump than he might be against DeSantis or another Republican, although, again, I think the numbers are, you know, you could you could sort of spin the numbers in different ways and find different results from different polls. But, again, Trump did not come out of this election looking particularly great, particularly in the states that end up deciding the presidency. Georgia is one of them, Arizona and Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Democrats held up pretty well in those states. And midterms are not really predictive of general elections but certainly if you look at what happened in the most important states, you know, places that maybe voted for Trump in ‘16, but didn't vote for him in ‘20. I don't think you can really point to a whole lot positive that happened in those states and kind of poor nominees who were either hand-selected by Trump or backed by Trump were part of the reason why.

REICHARD: One final question, Kyle. After President Biden spoke at a recent event, someone shouted “four more years,” and Biden responded, “I don’t know about that.” Do you think he’ll seek another term in his 80s?

KONDIK: I mean, I think at this point we have to assume that he’s running and then we can recalibrate if he decides he's not. He sort of left the door open to not running again. But there's also been some reporting indicating that Biden wants to run particularly if Trump runs again, which would set up potentially his rematch at 2024, assuming both were re-nominated, which isn't necessarily a safe assumption and particularly on the Republican side. But we should assume Biden is running again and maybe he changes his mind on that later on, but that's my working theory for now.

REICHARD: Kyle Kondik is with the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Kyle, thanks so much!

KONDIK: Thank you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 14th of December, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Washington Wednesday.

After last week’s runoff election in Georgia, Democrats were set to hold a 51-seat majority in the Senate. But then the math seemingly changed.

Right after Sen. Raphael Warnock won reelection, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced that she’s leaving the Democratic party.

Here to talk about her announcement, as well as the Georgia election—and the Trump effect—is Kyle Kondik. He is an elections analyst and director of communications at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

REICHARD: Kyle, good morning!

KYLE KONDIK, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well Kyle, technically, Democrats were set to have 49 seats after Warnock’s win, not 51, because senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King are independents, at least on paper. But they caucus with the Democrats, and that’s really all that matters.

What are Kyrsten Sinema’s plans as she departs the Democratic party?

KONDIK: I mean, it seems like her role is going to stay fairly similar in that she's going to be, you know, effectively a Democrat, but probably one of the less reliable Democratic votes in the caucus along with Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia. It does not seem though that Sinema would kind of switch to the Republicans. It seems like she's gonna vote for Chuck Schumer to be the majority leader. And so nominally the Democrats I think are still gonna have this 51-49 majority. So I think she's probably going to be a less reliable “Democrat” then Angus King and Bernie Sanders are. Both of them are Independants, but they're pretty loyal Democrats, they really haven't been a pain in the neck for leadership the way that Sinema was as a Democrat and how she might be as an Independent for the next two years.

REICHARD: And was this Sinema’s way of avoiding a tough Democratic primary fight in the next election or was there more to it?

KONDIK: I think it's probably about the 2024 election. Sinema’s polling numbers are really pretty bad in Arizona. She has fairly weak numbers with both Democrats and Republicans and unaffiliated or independents, however you want to put it. And so she probably figured she would lose a primary situation. It's kind of similar to that of the previous occupant of this seat, Jeff Flake, a Republican who was sort of an anti-Trump person. And it became clear to Flake early on in the 2018 cycle that he was gonna have a very hard time winning re-nomination. He decided not to run that year and set up an open seat battle that Sinema ended up winning herself. And now she finds herself in kind of a similar position that Flake did in that her overall numbers are fairly poor. And, you know, frankly, I think she'd have a hard time winning a Democratic primary, but I think she'd also have a hard time winning, you know, as an independent, particularly if there are credible Democratic or Republican opponents as well.

REICHARD: Right now, we have a 50/50 split in the Senate, but Democrats have the tie-breaking vote in the person of Vice President Kamala Harris. So what difference will having one extra seat make for Senate Democrats?

KONDIK: A lot of it has to do with the logistics of confirming nominees. When you've got the Senate as being the same party as the president, one of the Senate's main functions is essentially to operate as a judicial nomination, factory or rather a judicial confirmation factory. And it's just easier to get the judicial nominees through the committee process because the Democrats will actually have majorities on committees now, as opposed to it being a split in a power sharing situation. So the Democrats are going to continue to fill these judicial vacancies and to fill vacancies in the administration. And they just will logistically have an easier time doing that. Part of the challenge in the Senate is just getting the kind of getting the schedule right, and getting things on the calendar and moving through the sometimes arcane processes in the Senate. And the processes will just be easier for Democrats over the next two years, assuming that they retain an actual 51-49 majority. Again, it doesn't seem like Kyrsten Sinema’s move necessarily threatens that, but maybe something could happen down the line here that would change things. There haven’t been that many party changes in recent Senate history. One that was really pretty consequential was more than 20 years ago, the Senate was 50-50 in the 2000 election, and the Republicans ended up having a majority with Dick Cheney as the vice president then as being the tie breaking vote. Jim Jeffords of Vermont who was kind of a liberal-moderate Yankee Republican. Jeffords left the Republican Party became an independent, decided to caucus with Democrats. And that gave the Democrats a 51-49 advantage until the 2002 election. So you know, these things, they do change over time. You do sometimes have members who will migrate from one party to being independent or from one party to the other. And there's always the possibility that something like something else like that could happen between now and the next election.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about last week’s Georgia election—an interesting one—because voters did not divide the ballot straight down party lines. Republican Governor Brian Kemp easily won reelection, but GOP Senate challenger Herschel Walker lost a close race to the Democratic incumbent.

What stood out to you as you looked at the numbers coming out of Georgia last week?

KONDIK: It’s just the continued Republican erosion in metro Atlanta. Not only is the core of Atlanta, so heavily blue and some of the kind of inner inner rings, sort of suburban counties, but you're also seeing erosion for Republicans in some traditionally much redder, suburban/exurban counties. And that's the real thing that's driving the trends in Georgia. And despite Herschel Walker got some better margins in certain parts of the state between November and the December runoff, Raphael Warnock just did even better in terms of his margins or in terms of his share of the vote in the metro Atlanta area in some other parts of the state. And that was the difference. And Republicans really need to be careful in Georgia, because obviously they can win the state with strong nominees, but with a weak nominee, with someone who has really identified with Donald Trump, we've seen that they just haven't come through. And the fact that Georgia is gonna continue to have two Democratic senators here, it's pretty striking given where Georgia was even 5-10 years ago.

REICHARD: Many people thought that this did really come down to candidate quality. In fact, Georgia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan called Herschel Walker “one of the worst Republican candidates in our party's history.”

Do you think a different GOP candidate might have defeated Warnock? What are your thoughts on that?

KONDIK: Yeah, I think certainly it's possible and the final margin ended up being a little less than three points. The first round voting, the race was decided by less than a point and all the rest of the Republican statewide ticket, many of whom were incumbents, ended up winning. So yeah, you can easily imagine there being, you know, a different Republican candidate maybe producing a different result. However, you also have to give credit to the fact that Warnock, just like Brian Kemp, was an incumbent and an incumbent who didn't have really obvious problems. So it was, it wasn't just that Walker was a weak challenger, it was that Warnock is also a pretty strong incumbent, I think. And it's not like he's winning landslide victories or anything. And again, maybe a different challenger would have produced a different result. But I do think you have to give credit to the incumbent here a little bit too.

REICHARD: You touched on the Trump effect earlier. Prior to November, Walker was advertised as the Trump-backed candidate. But after that election, heading up to the runoff, a lot of the advertising in Georgia touted Gov. Brian Kemp’s endorsement, without any mention of Trump.

Kyle, with Trump-backed candidates losing high profile races in the midterms. Do you think this changes Trump’s standing within the Republican party and his odds of holding off primary challengers like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis?

KONDIK: There’s been some polling that indicates that Trump could potentially be vulnerable to a strong challenger, which Ron DeSantis may or may not end up being a strong challenger. So we'll have to kind of wait and see on that. But I don't think Trump came out of this midterm looking particularly good. And frankly, I think Republicans do need to ask themselves if they think they're going to actually win in 2024 by nominating Trump because you also do see some polls that indicate that Biden might be a little bit stronger against Trump than he might be against DeSantis or another Republican, although, again, I think the numbers are, you know, you could you could sort of spin the numbers in different ways and find different results from different polls. But, again, Trump did not come out of this election looking particularly great, particularly in the states that end up deciding the presidency. Georgia is one of them, Arizona and Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Democrats held up pretty well in those states. And midterms are not really predictive of general elections but certainly if you look at what happened in the most important states, you know, places that maybe voted for Trump in ‘16, but didn't vote for him in ‘20. I don't think you can really point to a whole lot positive that happened in those states and kind of poor nominees who were either hand-selected by Trump or backed by Trump were part of the reason why

REICHARD: One final question, Kyle. After President Biden spoke at a recent event, someone shouted “four more years,” and Biden responded, “I don’t know about that.” Do you think he’ll seek another term in his 80s?

KONDIK: I mean, I think at this point we have to assume that he’s running and then we can recalibrate if he decides he's not. He sort of left the door open to not running again. But there's also been some reporting indicating that Biden wants to run particularly if Trump runs again, which would set up potentially his rematch at 2024, assuming both were re-nominated, which isn't necessarily a safe assumption and particularly on the Republican side. But we should assume Biden is running again and maybe he changes his mind on that later on, but that's my working theory for now.

REICHARD: Kyle Kondik is with the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Kyle, thanks so much!

KONDIK: Thank you.

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