Today the Daily Beast revealed the contents of a 37-page guide for aides who set the schedule for and staff Senator Kyrsten Sinema during her workdays in Washington and Arizona. Despite staffers conducting personal tasks being a clear violation of Senate ethics rules, aides to Sinema were expected to get her groceries, fix her internet, and ensure her very specific preferences for airline seats, room-temperature water, and Olympic-sized swimming pools were upheld, or else.
The memo also revealed that Sinema’s limits meetings with constituents to three minutes during a 30-minute block on Wednesdays. However, meetings with lobbyists, donor calls, and coffee dates get several hours a week – along with her physical therapy appointments and weekly massages.
“This memo reveals a Senator who prioritizes lobbyists, donors, and her own creature comforts over her constituents. Arizonans sent Kyrsten Sinema to the Senate to work for them, not get weekly massages or resell clothes on the taxpayer’s dime,” said Sacha Haworth, senior advisor to Replace Sinema PAC. “Arizonans deserve someone who will devote more than three minutes a week on them; that’s why we need a real Democrat to be elected in 2024.”
//
The Daily Beast: The Incredible 37-Page Guide for Staffing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema
Sam Brodey // December 22, 2022
Always have a “room temperature” bottle of water on hand for her at all times. Make sure you get her groceries. And book her a weekly, hour-long massage.
These are just a few of the tasks, framed in a dizzying array of do’s and don’ts, that have fallen to the staffers for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), according to an internal memo obtained by The Daily Beast.
The 37-page memo is intended as a guide for aides who set the schedule for and personally staff Sinema during her workdays in Washington and Arizona. And while the document is mostly just revealing of Sinema’s exceptionally strong preferences about things like air travel—preferably not on Southwest Airlines, never book her a seat near a bathroom, and absolutely never a middle seat—Sinema’s standards appear to go right up to the line of what Senate ethics rules allow, if not over.
[…]
“Kyrsten works hard, but is protective of her personal time,” reads the very first paragraph of the document, which explains that Sinema has “time-consuming commitments outside of this job.” Those commitments seem to be a reference to her extensive schedule of training and competing in marathons and Ironman events—which are referenced numerous times in the memo—as well as her other job teaching classes at Arizona State University.
“Do not schedule anything, ever, outside of ‘regular’ work hours without first getting Kyrsten’s permission,” the document reads. “She will very, very rarely agree to work outside the regular hours, so only ask if it’s a big deal.”
The memo is clear that Sinema doesn’t start work before 8:45 a.m. and staffers should not schedule anything after 8 p.m. In fact, it specifies that the senator is “often not reachable” after 8 p.m. during the week, which would make her highly unusual among U.S. senators.
The document also makes clear that much of Sinema’s time outside of “regular hours” consists of exercising and training for athletic competition. “She wakes up very early to work out, and sleep is very important to her,” it says. The memo also specifies that on weekends, she “needs a later start to accommodate her training schedule,” which entails scheduling no work obligations earlier than 1 p.m.
[…]
Sinema was said to be so committed to her workouts that, ahead of trips, she would make aides check if hotels’ swimming pools had the exact right dimensions for her training purposes—a task that could consume hours.
[…]
Unsurprisingly, some staffers found these instructions—and Sinema’s zeal in ensuring they were followed to the letter—to not only be onerous but detrimental to the overall staff’s mission to serve constituents, craft policy, and communicate that work to Arizona.
“When I look back, it’s unbelievable the amount of time staffers spent just to accommodate her,” said the former aide.
[…]
The document outlines that Sinema should keep all meetings with constituents in her D.C. office limited to a block on Wednesdays. Her former aide told The Daily Beast that Sinema would stack as many constituent meetings as possible, usually no longer than three minutes, into a half-hour period on Wednesdays.
That meant that Sinema likely spent more time during the work week in physical therapy appointments and massages than with constituents. The document also outlines that scheduling “coffee meetings with lobbyists and donors are fine” and to allot those 15 to 20 minutes—a comparatively lengthy stretch of time for a senator routinely scheduled down to the second.
[…]
In at least one small respect, however, staffing Sinema isn’t so intense. “Call her Senator when referring to her to a third party,” the memo reads. “When speaking directly to her, call her Kyrsten.”
###