Gallego 'Not Concerned' About Potential 3-way Race for Sinema's Seat
Arizona senator abandoned the Democrats in December
The Democrat looking to take Kyrsten Sinema's seat in the US Senate is “not concerned” that his candidacy potentially setting up a tricky, three-way race could throw the election to a Republican.
Rep Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz) has already declared that he's running to succeed Sen Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected as a Democrat in 2018 but functionally abandoned her party and its priorities to the extent that the Arizona Democratic Party took the extraordinary step of voting to censure her.
Sinema officially broke with the Democratic Party in December when she switched to independent (although she continues to caucus with the Democrats and receive committee assignments from them).
Although she has not said if she will seek reelection next year, if she does, it would likely set up a three-way contest among herself, Gallego and a Republican nominee.
Asked in an on-camera appearance about the potential to split votes, Gallego responded, “Look, I’m not concerned. We know that we’re going to run the best campaign that can possibly run in Arizona, focusing on the American dream and making sure that Arizonans know that they can reach their aspirations. We’re going to talk to the best in all parts of Arizona.
And I think someone like Kyrsten Sinema really has abandoned Arizona. So, the question isn’t going to be whether we’re going to split the vote, we know that’s not going to happen,” he added. “Kyrsten Sinema cannot win this race, whether she’s in the race, just head-to-head with Republican or in a three-way race. But if we concentrate, we focus in talking to Arizonans about their everyday kitchen to kitchen table issues, we’re going to win and Kyrsten is not going to be a factor in this.”
Neither is he trying to discern whether Sinema will ultimately seek a second term, Gallego said in the interview with MSNBC.
“You know, I think there’s a lot of prognosticating right now. People are looking and trying to read some tea leaves. We can’t focus on that,” he said. “What we’re going to focus on is putting together the best campaign possible, getting out there. We’ve already had more than 50,000 individual donors to gallegoforarizona.com.
“We’ve traveled more than 800 miles up and down Arizona starting in Tucson and ending on tribal land in the Whiteriver Apache and Navajo, Navajo land also something that rarely is done at this stage of the campaign. And we had excitement every step of the way,” the congressman said. “So we know that if we stick to what we believe in talking to Arizonans about the American dream about how we’re going to get them there we’re going to win this race and it doesn’t matter who the Republicans put up either.”
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