Sinema Also Tried to Bury the News that Her Chief-of-Staff Quit Weeks Before Party Switch
Today, HuffPost reported that newly “independent” Senator Kyrsten Sinema has lost her pollster (Impact Research) and TV firm (Dixon/Davis), and that Democratic tech firm NGP VAN is cutting off Sinema’s access to their platforms following Sinema’s departure from the Democratic Party.
This news follows an earlier announcement that Sinema’s digital fundraising firm Authentic would be dropping her– with one Authentic employee saying they felt they were “doing the devil’s work” working on Sinema’s account.
It also comes after Sinema buried the news that her longtime chief-of-staff Meg Joseph left her office in the lead-up to Election Day, during which we now know Sinema was already planning to leave the Democratic Party. (As the Washington Post reported, the party switch was “months in the making.” Ms. Joseph served as Sinema’s chief for nearly eight years.)
“Kyrsten Sinema abandoned the Democratic Party because she knew she couldn’t win a primary after spending years obstructing popular reforms and alienating her own voters,” said Sacha Haworth, who was once Sinema’s communications director and is now a senior advisor for the Replace Sinema campaign. “She chose to forfeit the Democratic Party infrastructure, so it’s only right that no Democratic staffer, consultant or vendor should work with her.”
ICYMI:
Huffington Post: Powerful Democratic Consultants Split With Kyrsten Sinema
By Kevin Robillard // December 21, 2022
(EXCERPTS)
If Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) decides to run for reelection next year, she’ll do so without the help of the big-name Democratic ad makers and pollsters who helped her win her Senate seat in 2018, and without access to the voter database maintained by the Democratic Party.
NGP VAN, which manages Democratic voter data, is set to cut off Sinema’s access at the end of January, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. The ad makers who worked with her in 2018, Dixon/Davis Media Group, have split with her campaign. Two other Democratic sources said polling firm Impact Research made the same decision.
[…]
The decisions make Sinema’s road to reelection even steeper and more complicated. Polls of Arizona’s electorate show that her efforts to ingratiate herself with Republicans have mostly backfired electorally, alienating Democrats en masse without building up an equivalent base of independent or GOP voters.
[…]
Losing access to the Democratic Party’s voter data is also likely to be a headache for Sinema, since it will make it more difficult to target voters for digital advertising, mailers and door-knocking.
Politico: Top progressive firm drops Sinema as a client
By Hailey Fuchs // December 9, 2022
(EXCERPTS)
The leading progressive digital firm Authentic has dropped Kyrsten Sinema as a client, after the Arizona senator announced she was leaving the Democratic Party, according to a person close to the firm. […]
Authentic has represented Sinema for years. But the firm saw an internal revolt over its work for the senator earlier this year as she voted against several of the Biden administration’s initiatives and refused to support revamping filibuster rules to move legislation on voting rights.
One employee wrote in a union message that the person felt that they were “doing the devil’s work.” Employees were told they could be removed from the account if they did not feel comfortable.
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