Luxury trips, fine wines are now part of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's image. Will voters care?

When Sen. Kyrsten Sinema rolled out her first statewide campaign in 2018, a key message was how she grew up poor.

The story of a childhood spent in part living in an abandoned gas station without indoor plumbing lent an air of humility to the Democrat who was seeking to break her party’s 30-year string of losses in Arizona's U.S. Senate elections.

For many, that narrative of humble roots has given way to another, more contemporary image of a senator hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, someone more comfortable sipping sangria in flashy apparel at a private gathering than meeting in public with constituents about what troubles them.

Sinema hasn’t officially said she is seeking reelection to the Senate since she left the Democratic Party in December to become an independent. As she considers her options, she does so knowing many of her former supporters haven’t reconciled the image of who she once was to how she now comes across.

News accounts, social media and campaign finance reports have connected her to a lavish lifestyle beyond the reach of most Arizonans and more in line with the titans in the financial industry she helps oversee.

She missed several Senate votes to compete in a triathlon in New Zealand and later sought campaign money while staying in a luxury hotel in Paris. She studied winemaking in Sonoma, Calif., during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In each case, Sinema’s staff maintains, taxpayers didn’t foot the bills.

Her campaign covered costs in Paris, and the jaunt raised at least $5,000 from American donors abroad. Sinema received a stipend for her California internship. And she paid for the New Zealand trip herself.

Beyond that, accounts in the New York Post of Sinema spending more than $100,000 in campaign funds on wine, hotels, and other luxury expenses since joining the Senate help reinforce an evolving image.

As the 2022 midterm elections hurtled toward a frantic finish in October, Sinema raised money in London and Paris and billed at least part of her trip to a political action committee affiliated with her.

Records show she stayed in a luxury Paris hotel located between the Louvre Museum and the Arc de Triomphe. Americans living abroad are permitted to contribute to U.S. campaigns, and Sinema has raised more from those two foreign cities than all but four senators during her term.

The trips benefited Sinema’s campaign, but also helped other Democrats.

In the past, Sinema held joint fundraising accounts with Democrats like former Rep. Joseph Kennedy, D-Mass., and her donors directly and indirectly provided thousands to candidates like Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and former Senate candidate Tim Ryan, D-Ohio.

Surprise resident Martha Y. Scott, a Democrat, is among those who have soured on Sinema.

She said she voted for Sinema in 2018, but is dismayed by the senator Sinema has become.

A retiree who worked in hospital management, Scott said Sinema’s travel habits and voting pattern reminds her of recent coverage of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his close relations with Texas billionaire Harlan Crow.

Crow, who also is a Sinema donor, paid tuition costs and provided luxury travel and lodging for Thomas in a series of unreported gifts that has prompted calls for an ethics policy for the high court. To Scott, Sinema seems disconnected from her former base.

“I was a big fan of hers. I was so proud of her when she got in (the Senate) and then all of a sudden she turned and I just couldn’t understand why. It’s like she’s a Republican,” Scott said. “I want people I can identify with. She’s a sellout.”

A political action committee supporting Rep. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona Democrat who is running for Sinema’s seat, has filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission over Sinema’s spending habits.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the Federal Election Commission historically has given candidates wide latitude on using campaign funds.

“What’s prohibited is turning campaign spending into personal use,” he said. “If a candidate used campaign money for a vacation that was completely unconnected to fundraising or something related to the campaign, that would be prohibited. But I don’t think it’s unprecedented for people to combine business and pleasure. … In a close case, the FEC is going to be unlikely to find a violation."

It remains to be seen if she has run afoul of any rules, but her critics aren’t waiting to find out.

“This is the same Sinema. I think the only difference is now voters see it, where before only progressive groups saw it,” said Tomas Robles, a Democratic consultant and former executive director of LUCHA Arizona, a liberal activist group.

Chuck Coughlin, president and CEO of HighGround, a political consulting firm, largely shrugs off reports of Sinema’s spending, calling it “catnip for the left.”

“I don’t think it loses her anything with the portion of the electorate that is available to her,” he said.

It is a nod to her relatively poor standing with most Democrats and her fleeting support from many Republicans. The little public polling on Sinema suggests independents generally are divided on her, though their loyalties may not be as wide open as their political label suggests.

Coughlin described her overall approval ratings as “heavily underwater.”

A Morning Consult poll taken earlier this year found slightly more people disapprove of Sinema than approve of her, with 14% of respondents unsure.

Her path to reelection — if she runs — is far different than in 2018. Her standing with Republicans and independents rose after her defection from the Democratic Party while her support on the left plummeted, the polling found.

In April, Arizona Republicans had a net positive view of her. In a three-way election, however, many Republicans who may approve of her moderating influence in the Senate could still vote for the GOP nominee.

Meanwhile, Gallego routinely attacks Sinema on social media and that will only intensify as the campaign moves into 2024.

In the age of instant outrage on social media, Sinema has been roasted for what is cast as a flippant thumbs down on the Senate floor in a vote seeking to raise the federal minimum wage and traveling to Davos, Switzerland, to speak to the world’s wealthiest people.

The thumbs-down gesture happens on Capitol Hill with some regularity, and Sinema said her knee bend showed appreciation for Senate staffers whom she had given cake after reading aloud a 628-page bill.

The late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., appeared in years past at the same Swiss conference she attended. But for Sinema’s critics such moments crystallize their view of an uncaring lawmaker.

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Sinema spokesperson: 'Smears' spread by 'extreme partisans' meant to distract

A Sinema spokesperson pushed back with a written statement highlighting the bipartisan infrastructure law she authored and other Senate accomplishments they view as reflecting meaningful work for Arizonans. He did not address any specific complaints about lavish campaign spending.

“It’s not surprising extreme partisans are deploying smears to distract from the historic, lasting solutions Kyrsten delivers for everyday Arizonans,” Pablo Sierra-Carmona, the spokesperson, said.

What did Sinema spend campaign money on?

One of the complaints leveled against Sinema is how her schedule combines campaign fundraising with her love of running.

In 2013, for example, she tweeted at length about getting a tattoo of the Ironman Group’s logo with 12 News’ Tram Mai and joked that the tattoo was more difficult than a marathon.

In 2016, she noted when she ran her 13th marathon.

But she has come under fire for combining running for fitness with running for office.

The FEC complaint hits her for campaign activity in the Boston area timed around the Boston Marathon. It came after the Daily Beast first connected the timing and geography of Sinema’s campaign fundraising and its expenses.

In April 2022, for example, Sinema’s campaign raised more than $16,000 from Massachusetts donors while spending about $10,000, mostly for lodging at a Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

The expenses were paid within a week of when Sinema ran in the Boston Marathon. She celebrated the race with a picture on Twitter showing her with a marathon medallion and what appears to be a bag and certificate with the Ritz-Carlton logo.

It was the same pattern in October 2021, when she attended the race but couldn’t run because of a broken foot.

Her campaign raised more than $36,000 from Massachusetts donors that month and it spent nearly $5,300 on limousine service in Massachusetts within days of the race. A PAC affiliated with Sinema paid $1,400 to a Boston catering service two days after the race.

Other reports linked her to catering of another kind.

In December, shortly after Sinema announced she had left the Democratic Party, the Daily Beast reported on a 37-page memo that at some point instructed Sinema’s staffers on her scheduling needs.

It reportedly included booking an hourlong, weekly massage, stacking three-minute constituent meetings into a 30-minute window on Wednesdays and only staying at hotels with pools of a certain size.

A Sinema spokesperson would not confirm the memo’s authenticity, but the image of a pampered senator has stayed with her critics.

“I grew up poor. There was a time for two years where we only had beans and rice to eat. I know what it’s like to miss a meal,” Robles said.

“You grow up two ways when you grow up poor. You either say, ‘I want out of this hellhole and I don’t want anyone I care about to go through what I went through,’ or there’s the other side that says, ‘I can’t wait to get out of here and make as much money in the world and leave this place behind.’

“I think she falls in that latter category,” he said. “Unfortunately, her career in public service, she’s chosen to buddy up with corporate interests, the interests of the wealthy, because that is the position she has aspired to her whole life.”

The Sinema story is, of course, more complicated.

She launched her 2018 Senate bid talking about how her middle-class Tucson family broke apart after her father lost his job and her parents divorced. Her mother and two siblings moved to Florida and became homeless for three years when Sinema was about 8 years old, she has said.

They spent that period living in an abandoned gas station lacking utility service. Sinema’s campaign labeled her upbringing as “real life experience.”

The New York Times reported in 2018 that some members of Sinema’s extended family remember that period differently, but Sinema held to what she experienced as a child, and her campaign explained why they raised the issue at all.

“This is a difficult part of her life, but Kyrsten wanted to share her experiences because she knows it matters to Arizonans,” the campaign noted at the time.

Sinema obtained several college degrees, became a social worker and found her way into politics, first at the Arizona Legislature, then in Congress.

Long before her 2018 Senate triumph, Sinema jokingly described herself as a “Prada socialist,” hinting at an appetite for finer things. She often described herself then as independent, a label that helped win over Arizona voters, but that many Democrats now find grating.

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An independent senator in polarized D.C.

In a polarized Washington, Sinema often stood as a Democrat willing to engage with Republicans and steadfast in support of the legislative filibuster used by Republicans to block passage of more Democrat-led bills.

During the first two years of President Joe Biden’s term, Sinema played an outsized role in passing into law a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan, a measure that slows gun sales to younger adults and a $700 billion law that allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices for seniors on some pharmaceuticals and seeks to mitigate some effects of climate change.

Sierra-Carmona pointed to the impact of Sinema’s infrastructure bill on internet affordability, “a more secure water future,” safer roads and other areas of American life. He also noted her influence on other issues such as border security.

“Kyrsten promised Arizonans she’d be an independent Senator laser-focused on delivering real results, and her approach has proven successful — and as always, she’ll continue putting her head down, doing the work, and ignoring the partisan noise Arizonans are tired of hearing from their elected officials,” Sierra-Carmona said in his written statement.

But Democrats may be more apt to remember that Sinema’s support of the filibuster helped block passage of voting-rights legislation, stood against a wider-ranging — and much pricier — domestic agenda and insisted on preserving lower tax bills for hedge fund managers.

Republican consultant: Sinema must reintroduce herself to voters

In December, Sinema left the Democratic Party and became an independent. Gallego jumped into the Senate race a month later.

If Sinema is running for a second term, as Coughlin expects, she must reintroduce herself, he said.

Sinema can define herself as an effective, pragmatic lawmaker to the many voters who aren’t aware of what is said of her, Coughlin said.

“It will be a blend of that narrative from 2018: the girl who didn’t have anything to the girl who made it happen,” Coughlin said.

“She’s got an incredibly strong narrative if she decides to pick up the bat and swing it,” he said. “But in this heavily partisan environment that’s not going to resonate unless you own it, and she has not owned it.”

Reach the reporter Ronald J. Hansen at ronald.hansen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4493. Follow him on Twitter @ronaldjhansen.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kyrsten Sinema's taste for luxury scrutinized as she weighs reelection