This morning, The Daily Beast reports that Kyrsten Sinema has spent $210,000 of taxpayer money on private planes since 2020 – including $116,000 in 2023 alone, “a high sum on an expense most lawmakers rarely, if ever, make.” Importantly, the story notes that Sinema’s home state colleague, Sen. Mark Kelly, has NEVER used his office’s budget for private flights, despite representing and visiting the same cities that Sinema does.
This new revelation comes following a series of additional spending and ethics scandals surrounding Sinema – including allegedly illegal campaign luxury spending, abuse of taxpayer-funded Senate staff, and alleged omissions in her legally required financial disclosure reports.
Earlier this month, our PAC launched a TV ad hitting Sinema for her luxury spending on expensive resorts, hotels, wineries, and restaurants and doing legislative favors for campaign donors. The Arizona Republic has gone as far as to say that luxury spending is now a part of Sinema’s established brand – but routine, taxpayer-funded private flying – to destinations that are served by commercial airlines or are within driving distance of Phoenix – is a new level.
See excerpts below.
Daily Beast: Kyrsten Sinema Loves to Fly Private—on the Taxpayer’s Dime
By Sam Brodey // Jan. 29, 2024
Since 2020, Sinema has spent roughly $210,000 of her U.S. Senate office budget on private charter flights for herself and her staff, according to publicly available records—a high sum on an expense most lawmakers rarely, if ever, make. […]
The Arizona senator has booked at least 11 private plane trips since 2020, with five of them coming in 2023, when she spent $116,000 on chartered air travel. According to the reports, nearly all of the flights were charted for travel within Arizona, as the senator and several of her staffers hit several cities and towns around the state on one- or two-day trips.
By comparison, Sinema’s home-state colleague, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), appears to have never used his Senate budget for privately chartered flights, even though he regularly travels to the same places in the state that Sinema does. […]
In one case, Sinema flew private between Washington, D.C., and Arizona—a journey that lawmakers typically fly on commercial airlines.
On Aug. 8, 2023, Sinema chartered a flight for herself and four staffers from Washington to the Grand Canyon, with Monarch Air Group, at a cost of $50,250. The Florida-based company, which offers luxury jets for cross-country trips, bills itself as a “leading provider of on-demand air charter and private jet solutions for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and discerning individuals around the globe.” […]
The amount that Sinema spent on private planes in 2023 alone is greater than the current annual salaries of all but just a few of her most senior staffers, according to the congressional database Legistorm. Just the cost of Sinema’s private flight to the Grand Canyon is only a couple og grand short of covering the annual salary of her deputy press secretary or her military and veterans affairs representative. […]
But for Sinema, who is seemingly quite willing to risk scrutiny and public backlash if it means cashing in a perk or clearing time on her schedule, the use of private taxpayer-funded planes is part of a well-established broader pattern. […]
The taxpayer funded private jet use, said Libowitz, “plays into this larger thing we’ve seen with her, where she tends to go right up to the line of what she’s able to do with spending other people’s money in the way she would best prefer.” […]
There’s no question that the senator has a penchant for leveraging her office to underwrite her lifestyle—charging a $8,470 stay at the Boston Ritz-Carlton to her campaign, for instance, around the 2022 Boston Marathon. An internal office guide to staffing Sinema, which The Daily Beast reported on in December 2022, contains a lengthy section on the senator’s air travel preferences. There were detailed protocols for staffers in the event she did not get a first-class seat. […]
A big reason why Sinema sought to maximize her productivity was her rigorous athletic training schedule, which prompted her to get up early in the morning for long, grueling workouts, and then block out time for massages and physical therapy sessions during Senate workdays. According to the staff document, aides were also expected to clear weekends and other lengthy periods of time for her races, which were treated as sacrosanct. […]
Most senators who represent large states do not rely on private air charters to make their travel back home more convenient. Kelly, of course, visits many of the same places in Arizona, presumably in a car or on commercial aircraft. […]
Read the rest of the story here.
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