Sinema’s latest FEC filing shows over $100,000 in contributions from airline PACs and executives
Today Business Insider highlights the influx of cash Kyrsten Sinema has received from the airline industry over the past year while doing the industry’s legislative bidding – even at the expense of passenger safety.
Sinema’s proposal to reduce the number of training hours for pilots is supported by commercial airlines, but opposed by the Air Line Pilots Association, which said in a letter that the measure would undermine safety.
Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) took the extraordinary step of calling out Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s dangerous proposal at the behest of the airline industry to loosen pilot training requirements. Duckworth explicitly said the proposal will result in “blood on your hands,” and she elaborated: “Now is not the time to put corporate profits ahead of the lives of our constituents who may want to board a commercial flight in the future.”
Prior to this, Sinema’s received nearly $200,000 in contributions from the airline industry, $54,350 in 2022 alone. In 2023 she raked in $24,600 from PACs, including $5,000 from Delta Airlines, $4,500 from Southwest Airlines, $3000 from Alaska Air Group, and $77,700 from executives within the airline industry.
“Kyrsten Sinema has shown that the only people she sticks her neck out for are her corporate donors, from preserving Wall Street tax loopholes to putting airline industry profits over passenger safety, in order to get thousands in donations,” said Sacha Haworth, a spokesperson for the PAC. “It’s no wonder her own colleague says she’ll have blood on her hands if her proposal passes.”
Excerpts below.
Business Insider: Kyrsten Sinema Raked In More Than $100,000 From The Airline Industry As She Pushed To Alter Pilot Training Requirements
Bryan Metzger // July 18, 2023
In June, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona began a last-minute push to change the training requirements for airline pilots by establishing a new training program that critics argue could reduce safety in the industry.
[…]”Now is not the time to put corporate profits ahead of the lives of our constituents who may want to board a commercial flight in the future,” Duckworth said on the Senate floor that day. “A vote to reduce the 1500-hour rule for pilot training will mean blood on your hands when the inevitable accident occurs as a result of an inadequately trained flight crew.”
But for the airline industry that’s been pushing for that reduction, it was a sign that they had Sinema’s ear.
It’s not hard to see why.
Political action committees and airline executives gave over $100,000 to Sinema’s campaign from April to June, according to recently-filed documents with the Federal Election Commission.
That sum includes $24,600 from PACs — including $5,000 from Delta Airlines’, $4,500 for Southwest Airlines and $3000 from Alaska Air Group — and $77,700 from self-identified employees of the industry, the vast majority of which listed themselves as executives.
Altogether, the money accounts for over a tenth of contributions to Sinema’s main campaign account over the last 3 months.
And before this past quarter, airline PACs and executives had contributed $150,000 to Sinema’s campaign over the last two years, as reported by The Intercept in June — indicating a significant uptick in contributions from the industry as a potentially blistering re-election campaign looms ahead.
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