By Ronald J. Hansen || The Arizona Republic
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema told an international audience in Switzerland that last year’s losses for many U.S. election deniers showed that Democrats’ urgent worries about the need “to eliminate an important guardrail and an institution in our country” to save democracy may have been “premature or overreaching.”
Sinema, I-Ariz., noted the election results as she again defended keeping in place the Senate’s legislative filibuster, which she cast as an “important guardrail.” It was a familiar position that Sinema, a former Democrat, shared with attendees at the annual global economic forum in Davos, which included several fellow U.S. senators, and could preview a key argument she will make to Arizona voters if she seeks a second six-year Senate term in 2024.
Sinema said Tuesday that her former party may have overreacted to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob intent on keeping former President Donald Trump in office.
That attack sparked “concern and fear for every patriotic American,” she said.
“But in the resulting two years, the Democratic Party shared a narrative that said we would not have any more free and fair elections in this country if the United States Congress didn’t eliminate the filibuster and pass a massive voting rights package,” Sinema said with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., at her side.
