Arizona’s largest circulation newspaper on Sunday endorsed Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in the hotly contested open Senate seat race against GOP Rep. Martha McSally.
In an editorial, the Arizona Republic chastised both candidates as being centrists who “have been in campaign mask.”
"We need to get back to a saner time, when senators didn’t call each other names — or if they did, they could put it all aside after the vote and go get a beer together," the paper's editorial board wrote. "There is too much 'us and them' in D.C., and it hurts how we are governed."
"The real Martha McSally and Kyrsten Sinema know that," the board argued. "But Sinema is the only one willing to say it (repeatedly) from behind her mask."
“In a Washington in which rancor and malice are disturbingly normal, Sinema is the antidote,” the board added. “Leaders like her can come from any party and they are needed more than ever.”
It’s the first time since at least 2000 that the Phoenix paper endorsed a Democrat for Senate, Axios reported. The paper backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 for her White House bid.
The editorial board lauded Sinema’s voting record, noting 60 percent of the bills she co-sponsored this session were introduced by Republicans, and that she sides with "with Trump's agenda 62 percent of the time."
"She has traveled a long ways from the street-marching activist she once was to the good-natured centrist she now is," the paper's board said.
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