# Kyrsten Sinema **Kyrsten Sinema** (b. 1976) was a U.S. Senator from Arizona (2019–2025) — Democrat until December 2022, then independent — and the other half of the [[Joe Manchin]] veto pair in the 50–50 Senate. Her arc is one of the sharpest ideological migrations in modern Senate history: Green Party anti-war activist in the early 2000s → Blue Dog House Democrat (2013–2019) → first Democrat to win an Arizona Senate seat in 30 years → corporate-donor-aligned independent → post-Senate lobbyist and crypto advisor. ## The Veto Years (2021–2023) - **Protected the carried-interest loophole.** In the final [[Inflation Reduction Act]] negotiations (August 2022), Sinema's price for her vote was stripping the carried-interest provision and softening the 15% corporate minimum tax with depreciation carve-outs — direct wins for the private equity and hedge fund donors who had become her largest funders - **Blocked corporate and individual rate increases** throughout the Build Back Better negotiations, forcing the abandonment of the straightforward rate-rollback approach to paying for the package - **Defended the [[Filibuster]] with a floor speech** in January 2022, delivered just before the voting-rights carve-out vote failed — rhetorically framing the procedural status quo as a guardrail of democracy while it blocked the voting-rights response to [[Shelby County v. Holder]] - **Co-negotiated the [[Bipartisan Infrastructure Law]]**, her signature affirmative achievement Facing a likely primary loss to Ruben Gallego after her party switch, she declined to run in 2024; Gallego won the seat. ## Post-Senate: The Revolving Door, Comprehensively (2025–) Sinema's first year out of office is close to a complete taxonomy of monetization paths: - **Crypto:** Joined [[Coinbase]]'s Global Advisory Council (January 2025) to help the industry work Congress — see the [[Cryptocurrency Lexicon]] political layer for context - **Lobbying:** Senior advisor at Hogan Lovells' government relations practice (March 2025) - **Business association:** President/CEO of the Arizona Business Roundtable - **Academia:** Distinguished Professor of Practice, ASU School of Social Work - **AI infrastructure:** Unsuccessfully lobbied the Chandler, AZ city council in October 2025 on behalf of an AI data center development — aligning with the Trump administration's data-center buildout push ## Why She Matters for the KB Sinema is the cleaner of the two veto-pair case studies in **donor-class capture**, because her migration was so legible: the positions she took at maximum leverage (carried interest, corporate rates, filibuster) map one-to-one onto her donor base's interests rather than her state's median voter, and her post-Senate placements (crypto, K Street, data centers) cashed out exactly the relationships those positions built. With Manchin, she shares responsibility for the voting-rights filibuster kill — the procedural decision that left preclearance dead through the 2026 midterm cycle the KB is tracking.