Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema hasn't said if she is pursuing reelection. Is she running out of time?

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is rapidly approaching what political operatives see as a realistic deadline for her to take public steps on an uphill reelection campaign or bow out after 12 years in Washington.

Sinema, I-Ariz., has until April 8 to submit the signatures of more than 40,000 registered Arizona voters to qualify for the November ballot. If that is her plan, she likely would want to submit thousands more than the minimum as insurance because some signatures likely would be ruled invalid.

The later the operation begins, the more it costs, experts in that field say.

The looming deadline comes as Sinema is about 20 percentage points behind the leading challengers for her seat in the limited available polling on the race and as her once-stellar fundraising has slowed noticeably since she left the Democratic Party 13 months ago.

A Sinema spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment about the approaching timeline. In the past, the spokesperson has said Sinema remains focused on her legislative work, not politics.

Sinema has played a key role in the ongoing effort to strike a bipartisan deal in the Senate on border security, but Republicans in the House of Representatives have indicated they are unwilling to pass such a measure.

Sinema’s campaign spending throughout the past year suggests she has been running a low-profile operation that would require a significant boost in spending and resources if she intends to compete for her job.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., is running for his party’s nomination. Republicans Kari Lake, a former TV newscaster and 2022 gubernatorial candidate, and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb are running on the GOP side.

Unlike those campaigns, Sinema has left in doubt whether she will seek another six-year term.

If she does, her campaign must file a statement of interest with the Secretary of State's Office and only then can begin gathering signatures to qualify for the ballot. It is a dull but essential foundation on which every campaign builds.

Under Arizona law, a prospective independent candidate must gather signatures from 3% of registered independent voters. It is 6 times more than the 0.5% figure for candidates aligned with a party.

The exact number that candidates must reach will be determined by the secretary of state’s next registration report, perhaps as early as Monday.

“As an independent, she will have significantly more signatures to collect than if you were in either of the registered parties,” said Meghan Cox, who has led ballot-access efforts for initiatives and conducted field campaigns for the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former President George W. Bush.

“You certainly can’t do it in a week, but less than two months is more than doable,” said Cox, who is the CEO of Impact Advocacy Group. “With a signature campaign, I always say any crunch can be overcome with time or money.”

It is possible but gets far pricier as time passes and as demand from other candidates across the country drains resources in Arizona, said Jon Sutton, who heads the Democratic firm Groundswell Contact, which collects signatures.

“I think by the turn of the month, these timelines start to get very, very tight and very, very, very expensive,” said Sutton, who was a field director in 2018 helping Sinema win her seat.

He estimated that overall expenses related to Sinema qualifying for the ballot could top $4 million.

“That’s a high hurdle,” Sutton said.

Cox, who has handled signature collection efforts in all 50 states, estimated the work could cost between $500,000 and $1 million depending on how soon it starts.

Campaign cash on hand

Entering November, Sinema’s campaign had $10.8 million in cash on hand. It’s a figure that tops her challengers, but they stand to receive millions in party money and resources that an independent will not get.

As of the last quarterly report, an independent would need to collect about 43,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

One person who handles such signature work for Democratic candidates said they try to get about 130% of whatever is needed to ensure there are no snags as signatures are spot-checked.

Using that approach, Sinema’s campaign would need to gather about 56,000 signatures, based on the most recent registration report.

Cox and Sutton said they recommend even more cushion.

Sutton said the likelihood of verification problems varies by the kind of collection methods used. Sending emails and text messages to known voters to sign a petition electronically using what is known as E-Qual brings in signatures that rarely have verification problems, but that method dips into a relatively shallow pool of registrants.

“What’s great with your lists is you can blast out E-Qual on a weekly basis and get signatures in. That’s close to free,” Cox said. “You can bank valid signatures immediately, but that would never be a strategy I would advise for 100% for a candidate.”

Standing outside public places, such as a grocery store, can yield many more potential voters, but tends to have far higher disqualification rates, Sutton said.

“We call that ‘hot spot’ or ‘crowd canvassing.’ It has a lower validity rate than me coming and knocking on your door,” he said.

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Timeline shortening for signature-gathering

Cox said she would think Sinema’s campaign could comfortably collect the needed signatures if they begin around mid-February. Another person said the job could be done in less than a month, though that raises risks of a misfire.

Sutton thinks Sinema’s campaign will view February as a make-or-break period.

Starting early can help hold down costs by having a smaller number of people out for six to eight weeks, he said. Starting later means paying for dozens of people scouring for signatures for about half that time.

The later the effort begins, the cost of gathering signatures goes up, Cox and Sutton agreed. That’s because signature-gathering would likely require bringing in personnel from outside Arizona, adding significant travel and lodging costs to the matter.

Doing it in March, for example, means out-of-state workers would need lodging during Arizona’s peak tourist season, when hotel rooms are packed with people visiting for baseball’s spring training and those on spring break, Cox said.

“When you’re dealing with Motel 8’s that are charging $300 a night, that is what is really going to add to that cost,” she said. “With hotels every night for a month in the middle of our peak season, that’s where the cost comes from. It really adds up.”

And other campaigns are looking to make the ballot as well.

“I’ve already started raising my rates. … I woke up this morning to three people reaching out for signatures,” Sutton said. “It’s that time of year.”

Gathering signatures for Sinema’s campaign could rest heavily on the cost of paid collectors, in part because she doesn’t typically participate in large-scale political events, such as town halls, that can help pile up signatures from supporters.

And this time there is also no political party dispatching personnel to help get her on the ballot.

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Sutton said Sinema faces the reality that Democratic firms like his own would not take her as a client.

“Maybe she goes to a Republican firm. Maybe she goes to someone out of state,” he said. “I would not take this work. … I don’t harbor any personal ill will, but I’m a Democrat and I run a partisan firm. From the colleagues I’ve talked to, I think most would feel the same way.”

A non-Arizona company would have to file paperwork to be able to do the work, adding another layer of cost and complexity, Sutton said.

The steeper the cost, the more it cuts into Sinema’s cash reserves.

Her campaign has had about $10 million in cash since the end of March 2023. That’s more than any of her challengers. But it’s also unlikely to go far in a race that will likely cost the participating candidates more than $130 million combined.

In the first nine months of 2023, Sinema’s campaign raised $4.6 million and had $1.8 million in operating expenses. It meant her cash total grew relatively slowly.

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Meanwhile, the cost of Senate races in Arizona has mushroomed in recent years.

In 2004, for example, McCain won his fourth term in a race in which campaign disbursements from all candidates topped out at $4.3 million. He won his sixth and final term in 2016 in a race that cost all involved $31.7 million.

Costs shot up dramatically beginning with Sinema’s successful 2018 campaign as a Democrat. Her campaign spent nearly $25 million on its own. Republican Martha McSally matched that, and independent expenditures raised spending in the entire race to $115 million.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., spent $93 million to win reelection in 2022 and overall spending in that race topped $309 million.

Qualifying for the ballot is easy to take for granted, but mistakes happen.

In 2018, for example, Republican congressional candidate Seth Leibsohn missed the signature mark and sued his campaign consultants. The radio show host said at the time he was “embarrassed about it and I am ashamed over it.”

In 2020, Republican congressional candidate Shay Stautz fell short of the needed signatures for a Tucson-area seat when the deadline to qualify fell in the second month of the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2022, Democratic congressional candidate Ginger Sykes Torres dropped out of the race for a north-central Phoenix seat after her signatures were challenged in a lawsuit.

Last year, the Patriot Party of Arizona failed to qualify as a political party in the state when initial screening of its signatures found about one of every six names was invalid. That suggested further scrutiny would erase too many names for the party to make the ballot.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Is AZ's Sen. Sinema running for reelection? Time may be slipping away